The Best Brunch Food Ideas

Planning a brunch buffet at home for Easter, Mother’s Day, or a bridal or baby shower? Over 200,000 people have used this guide to create a make-ahead brunch menu that keeps hosting as stress-free as possible!

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Plan The Perfect Brunch Menu

We love a brunch buffet hosted at home. It can be as easy or involved as you want it to be. You can go all out and make a ton of fancy brunch recipes, or just make some bacon, eggs, and a pot of coffee and call it good.

One of my classes in culinary school was literally just a class where we put on a massive breakfast buffet every single morning. Today, we’re sharing some of the tips and tricks I learned that will you help you serve the best brunch buffet at home (which probably won’t be quite as massive).

There’s also a big list of the best brunch menu ideas (all verified easy and buffet-ready) at the bottom of this post.

Bookmark this guide for brunch ideas at home for Easter, Mother’s Day, a baby or bridal shower, or simply any time you’re in the mood to host a brunch!

Brunch Foods: Narrowing Your Options

We all know that there are a lot of food options when it comes to brunch buffet ideas, with a wide range of sweet and savory foods.

The best way to host a great buffet and keep your sanity at the same time is by narrowing down your brunch menu ideas. You’re not a culinary school class with 18 students attending to the buffet line, it’s just you!

And since you’re the host, choose which brunch foods you like best. At it’s simplest, your menu could look like this:

• One savory entree – egg casserole, Veggie Quiche, etc.
• One sweet entree – a French toast casserole or Malted Waffles made earlier and kept warm in a low oven.
• Fruit (more on this below).
• Bread or pastry – store bought is great.

Brunch Buffet: Planning And Prepping Ahead

If you want to keep things easy and stress-free, now is just not the time for sunny side up eggs, Benedicts or Lemon Pancakes made to order while your guests are standing around watching you sweat (although you can make the pancakes ahead of time and keep them warm in a low oven).

But, lots of different types of brunch food, especially egg dishes, can be made in advance.

You can assemble and fully cook an egg casserole the day before, keep it in the fridge, and rewarm it right before guests arrive. One of our favorite brunch dishes, quiche, is just fine served warm or at room temperature.

Brunch Menu Items That Require No Cooking

Some of our favorite brunch ideas, like our Smoked Salmon Platter and Yogurt Bar, don’t actually require any cooking, it’s more of an assembly situation.

Even something a simple as english muffins can be served DIY style. Buy some salted butter and three or four fancy store-bought jams and scoop them into pretty bowls with serving spoons. Scatter them around the brunch buffet table and hand people a toasted muffin. They will love it.

Brunch Party Food Ideas: Easy Fruit

For the classic hotel buffet-style fruit platter, you’d either have to buy a pre-cut fruit platter from a grocery store (which is usually super expensive and the quality is generally not good), or buy a bunch of different kinds of fruit (melons, pineapple, etc.) yourself and cut it all up (which can be time consuming).

Instead, just pick a few fruits that are in season and don’t even need to be cut up. Grapes and berries of all kinds are among the best brunch ideas for fruit.

All you need to do is wash the fruit and set it out in pretty serving dishes. You’re done, and it’s one of the easiest brunch menu items at home!

Brunch Drink Ideas For A Crowd

You can Google “how to stock a bar cart” another time – right now you only need to choose a few options:

• champagne and orange juice for mimosas. Everybody has their own idea of the proper ratio for a mimosa anyway, so might as well let them pour it themselves!
• vodka + bloody mary mix, and maybe some bloody mary skewers if you’re feeling fancy.
• a pot of coffee (or a Nespresso or Keurig machine and pods), with cream and sugar for those who partake.

“What Can I Bring?”

Don’t be a brunch buffet hero! If a friend offers to bring something, give them one of these easy brunch foods that they can pick up on their way to your house:

• Bagels and some cream cheese are always a hit.
• A loaf of great bakery bread, like brioche or sourdough, for making toast. Or even buttermilk biscuits, if you have a place nearby that makes good ones.
• A box of the good donuts. Every town has a place with the good donuts, right? They’re a perfect addition to your quick and easy brunch menu.
• How about one of those big cartons of coffee, so you don’t have to make it? I think that Panera, Starbucks and Dunkin’ all sell cartons of coffee or cold brew.

Whatever it is, one thing that somebody brings to your brunch buffet is one less thing you have to make!

How To Strategically Plan Your Brunch Menu

We all know that brunch is the perfect blend of breakfast and lunch, but one common concern plagues almost every brunch host’s mind – striking the right balance between serving enough food and not going overboard and being stuck with leftovers for days.

Here are some tips to help you avoid this conundrum:

• Consider a smaller gathering, so that you can focus on quality rather than quantity of food. A larger group requires a wider variety of dishes, making it more challenging to not go overboard.
• Offering a variety of flavors is key. Including both savory and sweet options ensures that everyone finds something they love, and you won’t need as much of each item.
• Consider the size of your portion dishes. You may not need your biggest casserole dish for breakfast casserole if you’re also serving cinnamon rolls. Consider smaller dishes or even individual servings like breakfast egg muffins to keep portions in check.

Quick And Easy Brunch Menu Example

Let’s put all of these tips into practice with an easy but impressive menu (pictured in this post) that strikes the perfect balance between variety and make-ahead convenience:

• Savory Entree – our Easy Ham And Cheese Quiche that can be made ahead and is good warm OR at at room temp.
• Sweet Entree – Croissant Breakfast Casserole is loaded with berries, and HAS to be assembled and refrigerated overnight before baking.
• Smoked Salmon Platter – this as simple as knowing which ingredients to shop for, and arranging them on a pretty tray.
• Yogurt – we assembled a scaled-down version of our Yogurt Bar with yogurt, berries, honey, granola, shredded coconut and walnuts and pecans.
• Meat – choose between Bacon In Oven (pictured here), Turkey Bacon In Oven or Sausage In Oven.
• Potatoes – our Breakfast Potato Recipe pair great with anything!
• Hard Boiled Eggs – these are probably not necessary if you’re serving an egg casserole. So maybe we went a bit overboard after telling you not to.
• Pastry – blueberry muffins & croissants from a local bakery, served with fig and sour cherry jams.
• Fruit – grapes and assorted berries are one of our favorite brunch food ideas.
• Drinks – Mimosas and tea.