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25 Famous Women on Breakfast and Brunch

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Imagine a perfect weekday morning: You pour a steaming cup of coffee into your favorite mug, sipping it down as the smells of bacon, sausage, eggs, and freshly baked carbs waft through the room. This is, of course, impossible: Nobody has time to make stacks of perfectly fluffy pancakes before work! That’s what brunch is for. And because it’s one of life’s simplest (yes, occasionally basic) pleasures, people can be very particular about their ideal morning meals.

Read on for a love letter to eggs, toast, and oats from women like Chrissy Teigen, Ina Garten, Simone Biles, and chefs April Bloomfield and Christina Tosi. Also recommended: second breakfasts.

Chrissy Teigen

“I get really mad when I hear there’s a continental breakfast somewhere. I’m not a big breakfast pastry, chocolate croissant girl. I have to have eggs every day. I like a farmer’s breakfast: two over-easy eggs, turkey bacon or pork sausage, sliced avocado, and grilled tomatoes. I can’t do pancakes or else I just want to go to bed. Eggs are my must — with a ton of Cholula on top.” —Delish, August 2015

Nora Ephron

“The Wynn has the greatest breakfast buffet ever. You die at that breakfast buffet. If you have cafeteria lust, which I do — if you secretly wish that all meals could be in a buffet setting — this is for you. Eight thousand strips of bacon. Every single kind of fruit imaginable. Smoked salmon. A Japanese breakfast, if you happen to be Japanese. And you can play Keno while eating. Now, Keno is a game you cannot win. It seems easy, but you cannot win it. It’s kind of a dream experience, playing Keno over breakfast at the Wynn.” —Travel + Leisure, June 2007

Tina Fey

“Eat breakfast. And then when you get to work, pretend that you have not eaten breakfast and request a second breakfast.” —Cinemax “60 Seconds With Tina Fey

Jenna Lyons

“When I was pregnant, I was obsessed with Häagen-Dazs’s chocolate peanut butter and would literally drive to every deli in the city to find it. My son Beckett and I share a deep, deep, passionate affinity for that and Talenti’s sea salt caramel gelato. Our secret little breakfast ritual when no one is watching us is to eat it out of the tub. We share. That’s our super-secret treat, being good but bad.” —Bon Appétit, September 2016

Eva Chen

“I am a big believer in breakfast — I cannot survive without it. I usually have stone-cut oatmeal and frozen sliced peaches and black cherries from Whole Foods, with some gluten-free quinoa into it. It’s super delicious, I highly recommend it. It’s my breakfast almost every day during the week. I’m also a big fan of green tea, but right now I’m trying to stay off caffeine. I use it as too much of a crutch during Fashion Week (and life in general).” – Bon Appétit, February 2014

Fran Lebowitz

“Breakfast cereals that come in the same colors as polyester leisure suits make oversleeping a virtue.” —The Fran Lebowitz Reader, 1994

Dolly Parton

“Well, this morning I had coffee, toast, and jelly. But I usually eat breakfast twice. I’m usually up at 3 a.m. — do my spiritual work, my affirmations, a little bit of songwriting, get my daily work in order, and by that time I’ve worked up a bigger appetite.” —Interview, May 2014

Ina Garten

“I have the same thing for breakfast every single day, 365 days a year: McCann’s Irish oatmeal. It’s actually quick-cooking, and I do it in the microwave with milk and salt. Most people don’t do their oatmeal with salt, and I think that without it, it just tastes like wallpaper paste. With salt, I think it’s delicious. And if it’s my birthday I’ll put maple syrup in it — but only on my birthday. After breakfast, I always go for a walk on the beach from 8 to 9. It’s a great way to start the day. I listen to music and take a walk, and then at 9 o’clock, I meet my team at the barn, which is 100 yards from my house, and we decide what we’re going to do that day.” —Bon Appétit, October 2014

Mindy Kaling

“Like everyone normal, I would never have a bumper sticker, ever. However, if I saw one that read, ‘Hell Is Waiting in Line for Brunch,’ I might buy a thousand and plaster my car with them. I’d like to be so famous that if I want to lazily eat out on a Sunday afternoon, someone whisks me past a long line of poor slobs waiting in the sun and to a private table.” —Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), November 2011

Oprah Winfrey

“No one would ever mistake me for an expert on engines, but I know one thing: They don’t work without fuel. Our bodies are the same way, which is why I’m passionate about breakfast — especially when it involves passion fruit. And blueberries. And raspberries, strawberries, some sliced banana and maybe a sprig or two of fresh mint. (And don’t forget the bread — you know I love my bread! For breakfast, my preference is multigrain, double toasted.)” —Oprah, August 2016

April Bloomfield

“My ideal food day would be a Sunday that starts with English Breakfast mid-morning, followed by some old movies and a nap, copious amounts of tea and roast chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies.” —The New Potato, April 2012

Samantha Bee

“I believe in breakfast. It’s the one meal that my kids usually eat without a fuss, so that’s huge. As for myself, I can’t function without it, and I see it as a great way to get some healthy greens in, some coffee, and on a good day, maybe even some news of the world via the newspaper. I like to start the day with a full tank of gas — I mean, I NEED to!” —Epicurious

Kate Hudson

“I love eggs. Soft-boiled eggs. I do a 5-minute soft-boiled egg — it’s my favorite thing on the planet. And when I was a little girl my mom used to make soft-boiled eggs and I hated it. They were so runny.” —Glamour, June 2015

Ayesha Curry

“When I get a rare, non-work-related spare moment away from the kids and the husband, there’s usually one thing I jump at the chance for: brunching with my girls. There’s just nothing like getting together with your best girlfriends to enjoy a fabulous meal together, catch up, and maybe even ‘sip some tea’ (come on, we all do it sometimes). The bond between girlfriends is strong and fierce, and I feel like any moment you get to be together should evoke that same strong and fierce message. Everything from the menu to the dress code should scream ‘I am woman; hear me roar.’” —Elle, September 2016

Christina Tosi

“At this point days are 14 to 16 hours and I realized that if I don’t start my morning being good to myself, I’m just gonna crash and burn in the middle of the day. I have all of these things at the ready, and I can do it in a really fun way … Really one of the greatest options is just a bowl of cereal and milk. Just make it fun and exciting and boost it up with extra flavors. It’s that simple, and it’s that fun. You don’t have to go out of your way, you don’t have to spend $12 on a bottle of juice. The combination of grains and proteins in something that’s so simple and accessible and affordable is what your body needs. For me it’s like fueling your creativity while you fuel your body.” —The Daily Meal, June 2014

Padma Lakshmi

“I have [tea] with milk and honey, and usually one boiled egg, one piece of sourdough toast, and one grapefruit. On an average day when we all have school and work, that’s what I eat. The only thing that varies is the hot sauce, which I’ll drizzle over the egg. I have a whole variety of those: there’s a sauce called Lingham’s that I love — it’s from Malaysia, I think; there’s Tapatio; and one that’s sort of a sweet and spicy one with scotch bonnet peppers and mango. I’ll put coriander chutney that we’ve made at home, or mango chutney. I get into these moods and I’ll have one hot sauce for a while. I can’t think of something that would hit the spot in the same short, effective way as that breakfast. I do sometimes make savory French toast with herbes de Provence and cheese instead of honey or syrup, but I do love eggs. There’s a million ways that I’ll eat them. Sometimes I like soft-boiled, sometimes hard-boiled and sliced, and other times poached. It can be scrambled, but I don’t really do scrambled unless I do it myself. I don’t like my eggs overcooked — it just takes the pleasure out of them for me. I’m actually obsessed with eggs.” —Bon Appétit, May 2013

Rashida Jones

“Every time I look at a photo of myself as a teenager, I think, this is who I feel like …On family vacations, I used to wake up before everyone else and make a sourdough bread sandwich with butter, eggs, bacon and cheese, and then go back to bed and, like, one hour later be, ‘So what’s for breakfast?’ [Laughs.]” —The Guardian, February 2014

Kiernan Shipka

On her ideal food day: “For breakfast, I’d have avocado toast. Avocado with a squeeze of lemon, some salt, chili flakes, and pepper … it’s kind of the perfect breakfast.” —The New Potato, April 2014

Ali Wong

“Vegan brunch tastes like a bowl of erasers.” —her Twitter, March 2015

Jennifer Aniston

“When I wake up, I have warm lemon water and then I have a shake or avocado and eggs, which is one of my favorites. I sprinkle a little coconut oil on that. Sometimes, I’ll have a puffed millet cereal with a banana or I’ll do oatmeal with an egg white whipped in at the end … Justin [Theroux], my husband, taught me that little move to get extra protein! Right before [the oatmeal] is finished cooking, you just whip in an egg white and it kind of gives it this fluffy texture that’s delicious.” —Elle, April 2016

Lena Dunham

“There’s a diner in New York City called Joe Jr.’s. Sometimes my dad would let me have breakfast there before school. I’d order orange juice and a hamburger. And it wasn’t a little one. Thank you, Dad, for the freedom of letting a kid have a big burger for breakfast.” —Food & Wine, July 2016

Kourtney Kardashian

“Ghee is the first thing I put in my body every morning. I take one big teaspoon of ghee every morning and melt it on the stove in a pan and drink it out of a cute little ceramic white cup. After I take it, I don’t eat anything for 20 minutes, and then I drink a glass of water before eating food.” —Us Weekly, April 2016

Karlie Kloss

“I love having breakfast at the Butcher’s Daughter in Manhattan, they have loads of delicious and nutritious options. My favorite is the AB & J, it’s a delicious combination of home-made raw almond butter, sliced bananas and raw honey on toasted grain bread, or their smashed avocado toast.” —Vogue Paris, August 2016

Simone Biles

“In the morning, I usually get up between 7:40 a.m. and 7:45 a.m. and then I’ll brush my teeth, do my hair, and just throw on my leotard and my clothes and go to the kitchen. I make breakfast, which is usually Kellogg’s Red Berries or egg whites, and then I go to the gym that’s only ten minutes away.” —Women’s Health, July 2016

Kate Winslet

“My favorite breakfast probably in the whole wide world, real treaty favorite breakfast, is eggs Benedict.” —Total Film, August 2014

25 Famous Women on Breakfast and Brunch