Critic's Review
I started to head up to Boca on Saturday to check out the new location and have some brunch; as I got to Oakland Park on 95 the black clouds rolled in and the sky opened up with buckets of rain; I decided that It wasn't the best day for a drive. Sunday morning was perfect, so I started out early hoping I could get a spot at the bar.
This place is a mall, so it's hard to gauge the crowds here by the parking lot. This place used to be a ghost town back when only Rocco's was open; but with Rocco's, Brio and now Tap 42, there are now over 600 seats between the 3 restaurants.
Quiet filled the air until I got to Brio where I could hear the muffled noise of a crowd. It was 11:15; I didn't think it would be so crowded early, but I was wrong.
At first I thought I'd have to pass and go somewhere else. In the patio, no tables and no seats at the outside bar (actually an open air window to the bar). I went inside and found 1 seat that wasn't scrunched between anyone. I was going to have some brunch.
I ordered coffee and tried to figure out the crowd. This place is just like the Fort Lauderdale location, with 130 uncomfortable seats. Stools with no backs, aluminum backed chairs. Perfect for the Millenials and backwards ball cap crowd.
The coffee came out in a full sized cup with a dainty little creamer. The server had to go into the back to get the coffee.
I'm quite sure that I was the only one drinking coffee. All of the people around me were drinking mimosas or beer. Their brunch menu sucks rocks if you actually want a classic brunch; no omeletes or eggs benedict. Just a few weird, overambitious breakfast choices. I thought about getting a burger, but that seemed stupid. I went for the "Chicago Style" steak and eggs.
One thing that isn't debatable is that the place is LOUD. The big room with wooden and metal surfaces is attractive but amplifies the loud music and voices to create a perpetual roar.
The food came out in 10 minutes.
The current trend in food presentation is to stack food, but I don't particularly like it. It makes it look like less and you can't really see what you're getting. Maybe that's the idea; to cover up the dwindling portions.
I was hoping for something like 
The beef was more rare than medium rare, with a little bit of gristle but not too bad. The creamed spinach worked well, and the eggs had nice, big yolks and were made competently with patience. I never order sunny side up because most breakfast places will serve you half-cooked eggs.
Ridiculously, the pop tart style hash browns put a damper on the entire dish; this would have been so much better if it was served with actual hash browns, or better yet, some home fries. They call these "Classic" hash browns; I didn't expect that they meant McDonald's or Taco Bell classic.
You can't go wrong with filet mignon, eggs and creamed spinach, so I enjoyed the food. Even the toaster hash browns taste good.
So after a while I figured out the deal here; and why it's so hard to get a table at these brunch things. The mimosas and bloody marys are "all you can drink", and it looked like just about everyone arrives early and just stays until brunch is over. And the reason that they have such a weak brunch menu is because nobody is eating brunch; it's just yet another drinking opportunity in Fort Lauderdale (or in Boca as we have now). They just line up the drinks behind the bar and keep feeding the ball-cappers drinks.
Somewhere along the line they order some food; most people I saw were eating burgers. A girl next to me had what looked like a tuna fish sandwich and I couldn't figure out what it was; turned out it was the Crab and Tuna Roll. They sure make a tuna fish sandwich sound interesting, don't they? Served on a lobster roll type bun; $12.50 with no side. I guess after 4 mimosas you don't really care how much the food costs. They had 2 burgers and the tuna sandwich and I just thought "That's over $40".
My server was from the Fort Lauderdale location (about 1/2 the staff is from Fort Lauderdale), so they were pretty well organized and it didn't feel like a recent opening. I only ate at tables in Fort Lauderdale, and the service was always pretty bad. They did a nice job today. I only had to ask for salt and pepper; I wasn't offered any condiments at all with the food.
I left at 11:56 and I didn't see one other person even close to cashing out. The real contrast was as I walked out, and saw 2 tables occupied at the 200 seat Rocco's Tacos across the way. This place is going to kill Rocco's; although they might get some overflow.
Conclusion
The Tap 42 drinking craze has opened in Boca, although it didn't really feel like a Boca Raton crowd. I hate just about everything about Tap 42, but it isn't designed to appeal to people like me. It's designed to appeal to Millennials and other people who still think that being in a bar is a big deal. I'm entertained that the owners think they have a great menu; this place would be the same if they served buffalo wings and straight up cheeseburgers. The people who come here aren't here for the food. The reason that I came to brunch was that I couldn't find one thing on their all-day menu that I wanted to order, except for a burger. I don't even like the burger choices; I don't like having to pay for bacon even though I don't want it.
The strategy for brunch is to get here before opening time and land a table for the 4 hours of drinking. There's really no point of coming later unless you hope to squeeze into the bar. The people next to me asked me to scrunch over to squeeze in a couple of their late-arriving friends; they weren't sharp enough to notice that I was in the process of cashing out. "I'm cashing out. Hold on a second and you can have the seat".