Dear Glutton: Three's Company

Photo by John Anderson

Dear Glutton,

Where's the best place to go for an awkward morning-after threesome brunch where no one wants to leave first because it's awkward?

There is no adult adventure more fraught with the possibility of uncomfortable vibes and hurt feelings than the threeway, whose excitement is almost equally matched by its potential for disaster. Very few people have the combination of emotional security, faith in their partners, and organizational skills necessary to successfully pull one off. So congratulations on living your dream; now let's talk brunch.

You're wise to get out in front of the potential awkwardness, and doing right by your third by taking him/her out for a nice meal afterward is a great way to start. It's a classy and considerate move sure to smooth over any uncomfortable feelings from the night before and, hopefully, get you on track for a repeat performance. But you can't exactly take your new friend to the neighborhood diner, and, although Austin is rife with excellent and trendy brunch spots, you definitely don't want to run into an acquaintance standing in line for migas. Instead, make reservations for brunch at a fancy hotel. Making reservations in advance, and the fact that most of these places have a pretty limited timeframe, has the simultaneous advantages of making your third feel special and ensuring that they have to be out of your living room by midmorning, eliminating the potential for uncomfortable lingering over a drawn-out discussion of where you can find the best breakfast tacos. Besides, there's always something kind of seedy and fun about hotels, the intrinsic glamor of a place full of people just passing through, in town for the weekend, and up for anything.

The Driskill, which is the oldest hotel in Austin, would probably be the most interesting option, but there's always the danger you'll run into someone you know taking a visiting relative out for some historically significant Eggs Benedict. What you want instead is somewhere like TRIO at the Four Seasons, which is the perfect combination of swanky and anonymous. It's a place where few locals fight off hangovers, but is still classy enough to feel like a celebratory affirmation of the fact that you just did a big cool grownup thing. Plus there's an omelet bar. Pretty hard to get awkward in the presence of an omelet bar. The food won't necessarily be particularly groundbreaking. Hotel breakfasts, even the fanciest hotel breakfasts, aren't traditionally the place to find culinary innovation. But that isn't the point here, is it? The point is civility, decadence, the gluttony of easy pleasure. The point is celebrating the perks of adulthood, including the right to sleep with whomever you want however you want, and the fact that you can get day drunk over a pound of shrimp cocktail because it's your life and you're the boss.

So split a carafe of mimosas three ways. Get the chicken and waffles to share with your partner as a quiet way to reinforce the bond of going through this crazy adventure together, congratulating yourselves for managing to remain on friendly enough terms to swap bites after the drama is done. Avoid conversational gaps by people watching, speculating about what excitement your fellow diners are waking up from. And pay for your third's breakfast. It's the right thing to do.