Restaurant Scene: Got fancy pants brunch fatigue? Visit Champy’s in Cleveland

I used to love brunch. Before there was a D.J. cuing a Rihanna song. Before gold flakes glittered in flutes of passion fruit mimosas. Before they started swapping out pork belly for Canadian bacon on eggs Benedict. Before they ever started using “Benny” as slang for eggs Benedict. Before pimento cheese was smeared on everything and everybody knew about huevos rancheros. Before bloody marys were festooned with wagyu sliders and Alaskan king crab claws. Before you could barely see the fried lobster tail curled up on your red velvet waffle because the haze of hookah smoke was too thick.

My love affair started to dwindle in Charleston, South Carolina — where brunch is a highly competitive contact sport. I was there to witness Fruity Pebbles pancakes, biscuit towers at Babas On Cannon and unicorns grits, a mixture of heirloom blue and Jimmy red corn that, when cooked, yield a product that’s a pastel shade of pink. It became too outlandish, too much of an Instagrammy spectacle.

Chattanooga’s brunch scene, with its build-your-own avocado toast and bottomless Bellini, is one chorizo frittata away from being just as decadent as Charleston.