The Whitney

FOOD

The Whitney’s Sunday brunch starts gently, with house-made seasonal scones served at the table. Whitney-Hive honey butter accompanies them, making the opening feel more like a hosted breakfast than a dash for a buffet plate. The scone flavor is the chef’s seasonal choice. Enjoy that first small decision being made for you; the rest of brunch supplies plenty of your own.

The cool sideboard brings chilled shrimp cocktail and smoked salmon with crostini into the meal. They give brunch a seafood beginning before the hot dishes or carving boards take over. These are easy choices to keep on a separate starter plate, particularly if the next stop is going to involve prime rib and its accompaniments.

Tomato-mozzarella salad, mixed greens and berries with cream complete a useful range of cool choices. The tomato and cheese can accompany the seafood, while the greens make a simpler plate between richer courses. Berries and cream already suggest a small sweet interlude. Brunch is broad-minded about where breakfast ends and dessert begins, and this sideboard makes good use of that freedom.

Chef Gary’s seafood mac and cheese is a defining hot-buffet dish. It brings the familiar comfort of macaroni and cheese into a meal that also has a more formal carving service. The wider hot spread covers breakfast and lunch, with the day’s choices filling out the selection. Give that part of the buffet a look before assuming the first slice of roast will settle the whole meal.

Slow-roasted prime rib comes with au jus and horseradish cream at the carving boards. A second hand-carved specialty changes by the week, allowing the roast selection some variety without displacing the prime rib. These are substantial reasons to consider brunch as lunch. The horseradish cream is available for those who want it; the carving plate can be assembled to suit your own priorities.

The whipped potato bar lets that plate acquire a side of its own choosing, while the omelet station keeps a proper breakfast option in play. An omelet can follow the cool starters just as sensibly as a helping of carved meat. This is where a table’s meals may begin to look quite different, even though everyone is enjoying the same brunch.

Dessert deserves some room in the planning. Miniature sweets share attention with vanilla bread pudding and vanilla bean ice cream, and flaming bananas Foster supplies the showier ending. Small desserts invite a little variety; the pudding offers another warm, comforting choice. There’s no obligation to choose the most dramatic finish, although the bananas make an excellent argument for at least looking.

Mimosas by the glass, along with soda, milk, brewed coffee and tea, are included in the advertised brunch package. Other juice choices carry an extra charge. Coffee and a miniature dessert make a comfortable final course.