Merriment Social Offers Tasty Brunches

Merriment Social. Photo by Cari Taylor-Carlson.

Merriment Social, located in a former industrial facility, has an urban chic that my companions and I found fascinating. High ceilings that retain signs of the building’s former life, tables made from aged wood, brick walls, and street-facing garage doors that open during the season, create a large spacious dining room that felt welcoming when friends and I came for Sunday brunch. Though we also found that the original concrete floor by the wall where we were seated sloped toward the center of the restaurant which led to a slight tendency for us to slide sideways on our slippery wooden chairs.

If you want to honor Sunday brunch with a bloody Mary, you have two choices: the spicy Maria made with jalapeno-infused tequila, or the one we ordered, the bloody Meri, a play on the restaurant’s name. It was a meal in a glass starting with the house-made Merriment mix.

The bloody was topped with a cheese cube, a sausage stick, a pickle and a potsticker. The drink was large, spicy, and tasted like Sunday.

Merriment Social has a tantalizing brunch menu. You could start with a shareable, breakfast sausage potstickers, fried Brussels sprouts, fried cheese curds, fries with garlic aioli, or our shareable, the freshly baked house-made pumpkin sourdough cinnamon roll. It came to the table straight from the oven. It was yeasty, soft, filled with buttery cinnamon sugar, and the best part, finished with a powdered sugar drizzle that permeated every bite of the roll. It was also large enough for two people to share.

My companion and I followed that with egg-centric entrees, the crabcake benedict and the short rib chilaquiles. The benedict was a straightforward dish with a lot of crab on house-made biscuits plus sauteed spinach, two poached eggs, and enough hollandaise to more than coat the eggs.

The chilaquiles had a unique personality. Instead of layering the tortilla chips, the salsa, some cheese, and the meat, the chef served two once-over-eggs on top of the chips and placed the short ribs on the side. The meat, lots of it, was juicy and because it was served separately, it was almost like two separate entrees.

For a second brunch, this time pre-theater, my companion and I stayed with the Mexican theme and ordered the gigantic burrito and the taco flight. The burrito, stuffed with the usual eggs, sausage, cheese, and some avocado-salsa verde, lived up to its “gigantic” billing while the side of hashbrowns stole the show. They might have looked like a commercial hashbrown patties, but they were clearly made in-house. They were crisp on the outside, crunchy on the inside, and tasted like a buttery baked potato that had been shredded and deep-fried.

There was nothing traditional about the taco flight except the tortillas. Three tacos, each with a different filling, short rib barbacoa, chorizo, and thick-sliced bacon, were smothered with an American cheese sauce. Each taco was finished with scrambled eggs balanced on top of the filling.

If you are looking for something healthy for brunch, you could order avocado toast, a salmon sushi bowl, or the avocado bowl filled with greens, cucumber, corn, beans, candied pepitas, cheese and a cilantro-lime crema drizzle.

Or, you could have a breakfast sandwich including lox in your sox — smoked salmon with Boursin cheese, red onion, and capers, on a toasted everything bagel.

There are also five Merriment Social classics: the taco flight; biscuits and gravy with a fried chicken cutlet; chicken and waffles; peaches and cream French toast; and the Merriment burger, two double wagyu smashed patties, cheese and bacon on a house-made milk bun.

If you want something alcoholic to drink with brunch and you don’t want a house cocktail, you can choose from 16 kinds of beer on tap, and if whiskey is your jam, there are 56 varieties listed alphabetically on the drink menu. There is also a brief wine list, a bottomless mimosa served until 2:30, and several N.A. choices.

We all agreed that Merriment Social will be on our list for future Sunday brunches. The food was good and there was a lot of it; our servers were attentive; our entrees came out promptly after we told our server we were going to the theater; and that house-made sourdough cinnamon bun could be addictive.

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• Location: 240 E. Pittsburgh Ave.
• Phone: 414-645-0240
• Hours: 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tue-Thu, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Fri, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. & 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sat, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sun
• Neighborhood: Harbor View
• Walk Score: 90
• Website: http://www.merrimentsocial.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/merrimentsocial
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/merrimentsocial/

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