REVIEW: ‘The Big Brunch’ Is Simple And Satisfying

The Big Brunch is an HBO Max Original cooking competition show created by and starring Dan Levy alongside chefs Sohla El-Waylly and Will Guidara. Brunch is the name of the game in this show, and its competitors are striving for the chance to help make their culinary dreams come true, from opening cafes to starting nonprofit culinary schools. Get your mimosas ready for the most eclectic brunch bunch you’ll see.

It’s a decently fun show. It’s low on gimmicks, with brunch as the theme and the competition straightforward. Each episode has a starter and a main course where each competitor creates two takes on the same weekly theme on different scales. The first episodes ask the chefs to show off their personalities, their dreams, and farm-to-table creativity in their dishes. The weekly Best in Brunch gets no advantage besides serving their dish first in the next day. There are no major last-second twists or turns. It’s a straightforward contest to see who can prepare the best brunch dishes.

And that works just fine for the show. It’s set in a lovely fake brunch spot where the judges sit in a little cove by a bar. Their occasional asides to take drink orders from an on-set bartender feels a bit odd whenever it happens, but it’s all pretty to look at at least. The judges are also a bit dry. Which isn’t a knock on any of them individually, I love Sohla and Dan is, well, Dan, but as a group, they don’t have especially robust personality and so their commentary becomes a bit dry. It’s all perfectly swell critique and praise though when it comes time to judgment.

This is especially fortunate given the risk of celebrity judging. Dan Levy isn’t exactly known for being a renowned chef, so while of course anybody is qualified to judge how food tastes, I appreciate that he sounds totally natural and informed as he articulates his opinions. It never feels like he’s just parroting anybody or being fed lines.

The chefs were fairly well cast too. They make up a pretty diverse set of backgrounds and experiences as both chefs and humans, which lends to not only diversity for diversity’s sake but also a great array of foods served. The cast is also fairly queer, which is awesome considering queerness is not something always very visible in the culinary world especially. I would love to some day watch a reality competition show that doesn’t feel so overbrimmed with contestants that it takes several episodes to feel like I have any sentiment about them, but alas, that’s the challenge of fitting the same lengthed contest into the same lengthen episode every single time, no matter how many folks there are competing each round.

Their stories do eventually start getting told though and I appreciate the emphasis The Big Brunch puts on everyone’s backgrounds, dreams, and reasons for doing what they do. It feels slightly more in-depth than some similar shows, spending a pretty hefty chunk of especially the third episode diving into these folks’ lives.

The one thing the show does lack is enough time spent watching the chefs make their dishes. For me, one of the best parts of cooking competition shows, or similar competitions is getting a breakdown of not only what the end result was made of but the process that went into making it. Because we’re so busy watching clips of the competitor’s backgrounds and weird banter among the judges that has almost nothing to do with the contest, if at all, we lose out on time where we could otherwise be watching the magic of cooking actually happen. I want to know how these dishes were made. I want to know whether I have a chance in the world of replicating any of it or not.

The Big Brunch is a perfectly entertaining cooking competition show. It’s simple and straightforward with one central theme and few gimmicks beyond it. It’s not the rifest with personality or chance to watch the cooking itself, but the end results and the setting as a whole are pretty and satisfying every time.

The Big Brunch is streaming now on HBO Max with new episodes on Thursdays.

Jason Flatt

Jason is the Sr. Editor at But Why Tho? and producer of the But Why Tho? Podcast. He’s usually writing about foreign films, Jewish media, and summer camp.