How to make money selling food: make your portions incrementally larger and larger, empty all nutritional content, and then supplement with diuretic and addictive additives made in countries with no regulatory oversight. Adding meals to the day is the next logical step. We now have breakfast, brunch, lunch, and supper. Let’s add munch.
The basics
Munch is to be eaten between supper and breakfast, particularly after binge drinking and/or smoking pot. Many already partake of this meal, usually at all night eateries like Denny’s or Dee’s, but remain torn between ordering breakfast and supper. Munch should be acknowledged as an independent, stand alone meal and munch food should be perfected by munch chefs and served at munch houses across the nation. I would like to hear munch house servers utter the phrases, “sorry sir, but we’re only serving munch right now. Would you like to see our munch menu or hear about our munch specials?”
The word
The word munch derives from the combination of midnight and lunch. Midnight lunch, for the peak hour it is served and the other meal it resembles most closely. Also derivative of the pot cultural term “munchies.” Munch is Onomatopoeia for the sound made when the meal is eaten, and it describes its consumption in manner and style.
The food
Munch food is generally good for the food industry since it consists of large quantities of cheaply made, addictive food. Classic examples include chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, chicken wings, and nachos. All munch food comes with a variety of fatty dipping sauces and even the “healthy” choices should be “lightly” fried. In addition, there should be specific munch-only food. I’m no munch chef, but I’m thinking cheddar crackers and all four flavors of easy cheese for starters, a full jar of crunchy peanut butter with spoon as entree, finished with a jar of creamy peanut butter with chocolate sauce or marshmallow cream for dessert. I also want to see a variety of whole animals ranch battered, then deep fried, then re-battered, then country fried, then buttermilk battered, then butter fried, then beer battered, then Crisco fried, then corn battered, then trans fat fried, then served with dipping sauces brought out in shot glasses lined up on an old ski, or a canoe paddle.
The munch house
Munch houses should always be steep roofed A-frame type buildings with cedar shingles and large neon signs salvaged from 70’s bowling alleys out front. They should be dimly lit with ash trays (even in no smoking states) at each table. They should be on the forefront of restaurant gimmickry such as getting text based facebook order status updates on your blackberry, voice command prompts from On Star or Garmin to hold your table in the case of a collision or rollover en route, and Ron Paul/Super Dell Schanze in 2012 midnight tableside voter registration drives. The staff should be called “munchkins” and the servers should take deep breaths of helium before asking if more fry sauce or ranch is needed. They should always be carpeted, wall to wall with marine salvage carpet. The walls should be faux wood paneling with Polaroids of famous bass fisherman and 70’s basketball players in short shorts who have dined there. Menus and vinyl booths should be coffee stained and sticky. Ski ball and wack-a-mole should be standard, but the ski balls will often be missing and the mole heads broken or worn to a nub since they will be carnival and/or Chuck E. Cheese salvage. Juke boxes will hold many titles and artists, but will only play Winona Judd since they will be truck stop salvage. A munch house should feel like home.
Munch culture
Munch can be eaten in either club clothes or sweats, but never business attire. The drunkest person should always pick up the tab, whether voluntarily or through trickery. There is no flirting or hooking up at munch. Munch is about being gross and disgusting, time to let down the bar personae and cut loose the belt buckles. Munchers will often have makeup smears from dance floor sweat, drink stains, flat hair, dejected expressions, squinty eyes and a general reversal of the hours of getting ready to go out earlier. Sometimes you go home with the one you want, sometimes you gather up the girls (or boys) and go to munch.
Let’s do munch
In the beginning, there were three meals a day. As civilization has become more egalitarian, things like golf, marital infidelity, and brunch are no longer just for the rich. There is already a rich body of lore touting munch as the key to avoiding hangovers. I believe that with some slick advertising, a P.R. campaign highlighting starving Africans who can’t afford munch, and heavy pressure from the munch lobby, munch will be taught as the most important meal of the weekend to children in elementary school nutrition classes nationwide. For my readers, get in on this now. You may be seeing a lil pepper’s munch house in your neighborhood if you don’t.
