We Spoke With The Owner of Brunch in Sayville
By Nistha Boghra
Tucked away on a bustling street corner, a fresh brunch eatery has opened its doors, promising a laid-back yet posh vibe and some seriously satisfying eats.
Michelle Panciarello, owner of the popular Eat Me, Drink Me catering, has launched a new restaurant called Brunch, located at 32 Foster Avenue in Sayville.
“It took over 3 years to get it open,” says Panciarello. “I had a bad breakfast experience, with a bad biscuit, and I thought, ‘I could totally do this better!’”
The menu of Brunch features more than ten types of customizable coffees and teas, six different full meal plates (including a Build Your Own Plate option), and several sides that can be added on to any order. The restaurant also offers rotating weekly specials, including French Toast to Spinach Feta Croissant Strata. Most items on the menu can also be modified to be vegetarian or vegan.
“I noticed that there weren’t many places that did vegan versions of everything,” said Panciarello. “I knew that we could do all of it either way.”
Isabel Chalek, left, and Haley Carter, right, at Brunch.
Alongside the new restaurant, Panciarello runs Eat Me, Drink Me, a catering truck company, and Graze, which caters grazing tables (arrangements of meats, cheeses, and fruits, a concept similar to charcuterie boards). The idea to add the restaurant to her already established operations blossomed from a tragedy; Panciarello had just lost her dog, Bruno, and was driving around Foster Avenue with her father trying to take her mind off of it.
“This used to be an animal clinic,” says Panciarello, a Bay Shore resident, reflecting on when she first saw the building that would eventually become Brunch. “My dad said, ‘this would be a really cool brunch spot’, and I thought, you know what it would be.”
The restaurant also gives Panciarello’s other businesses an advantage. The same kitchen is used for making all the catering for the trucks.
“We were in need of a more advanced commissary, because we have 3 trucks,” said Panciarello. “It gets really, really busy, and we thought it would be good to have our own kitchen space.”
Bruno, Panciarello’s dog, who passed away, is pictured on the wall and inspired the conversion of the previous animal shelter into the Brunch restaurant.
However, outside of the shared kitchen, the trucks and the restaurant are two completely separate businesses. A typical day sees Panciarello handling multiple businesses at once. On a typical Friday, she comes in at 8 am to open the restaurant at 9:30 am, and stays on site until it closes at 3 pm. She also had to prepare a Graze for an event that night and get ready for a party with the catering trucks the next day.
The small size of the restaurant also helps lighten the load of preparation in the morning. Items like hashbrowns and sausage are made the morning of, and most other menu items are made fresh upon order.
Eat Me, Drink Me had been established for 12 years before the opening of Brunch. Panciarello started the food truck business with a friend in 2012. Once her friend moved on to a different job, Panciarello hired new staff and eventually bought two more food trucks, for a total of three, to keep up with the expanding business.
Panciarello’s operations are run with an additional 8-9 staff members at the restaurant, between chefs and working at the front. Staff on the catering trucks ranges from 9 to 23 workers, depending on the season.
“For us, everything pretty much dies off by mid-November,” said Panciarello, “and then it is pretty sleepy until March.”
Brunch seats around 12, although a capacity of 16 is permitted.
Rather than staying open all seven days of the week, Brunch is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, which helps Panciarello balance the three operations and maintain a fresh quality for the restaurant.
“A lot of the stuff we do, like the biscuits and loaves of bread, are done in house,” said Panciarello. “These things need 24 hours to proof, so with our bulk fermentation we need a day for that.”
In addition to a full day to proof and bake, Panciarello takes another day to take new orders and scrub the fridges to prepare for them.
Due to the small space of the restaurant, the restaurant and trucks are generally “fresh and to order,” according to Panciarello. The kitchen includes two refrigerators, a small pantry for dry goods, and some additional bins for flour. As a result, ingredients are replenished frequently, and the inventory stays fresh.
”The potatoes that we buy today would be used on the truck tomorrow, and then they are gone,” said Panicarello, “so there is no real storage happening, which is great.”
“I love the commitment to the baking process,” says a first-time customer, who discovered the restaurant from an article. “It’s not just food, it’s art!”
All photos: Nistha Boghra.
Nistha Boghra is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.
