Ranking the UCLA sorority brunches 💅

An anthropological study by the sorority misters

Mar 29, 2025

Let’s imagine that you fell through a magical rabbit hole and arrived in a strange land, far away.

This strange land is, well, strange — its inhabitants live far removed from everyone else, yet are much discussed by those who don’t live there. Many who live outside of this strange land wonder what it’s like to live inside of it, yet never venture out of their own homes to find out.

But this strange land is not imaginary at all, nor is it far away. In fact, this mystical place is called Hilgard Avenue.

Hilgard, for those who don’t know, is the street that’s home to the 10 main sorority houses at UCLA. Female students rush (attempt to join) these sororities during their first or second year of college, and often live in the sorority house (read: mansion) the year after they join.

And so, an idea for an epic quest was born, one that would be spoken about for decades to come.

The general idea was that each sorority hosts their own Friday brunch, and these are the only times when guys are officially allowed to be in these sorority houses. Therefore, one could go with a few friends to all the different houses during this period, try their different brunches, and subsequently rank them on their personal blog.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what I’m doing. Nice!

This anthropological study began just as you might expect: my friend Dylan and I led a camping trip to Morro Bay, he invited two girls onto that trip who were both in Gamma Phi Beta (GPhi), they invited us to GPhi brunch the following week, and four dudes from that Morro Bay trip (including myself and Dylan) pulled up on Friday for a delicious meal.

Classic, right? What a completely normal sequence of events.

And it was shortly after this first GPhi brunch that I realized two profound things:

Sorority brunches are delicious.
One could easily try all the sorority brunches and subsequently become the foremost authority on the UCLA sorority brunching experience. Plus, that someone would get lots of yummy (and free) food in the process.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, we have a quest on our hands!

I really wasn't too sure how to go about writing about this brunching study, and then I thought “Fuck it, imma share the abstract, explain the methodology, hit ‘em with the rankings, and then give a detailed description of our experience in each house”. Quite a normal thought process in Dennis's mind, I’d say.

And now that I think about it, that actually sounds like a pretty good plan to me. So click play below, get comfortable, and enjoy!

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(Side note for those that don’t know: Sororities are for girls, fraternities are for guys. The sorority rushing process is pretty crazy, and you can read about the legendary (and insane) rushing process at Alabama here. From many tales and some personal experience, sorority rushing is crazy and the pledging process (the first quarter where you are becoming a full member) is chill, whereas it’s the other way around for the frats)

Abstract

This is a legit anthropological study (as much as any sorority brunching experience could be), and any research paper starts off with an abstract describing the study concisely. Here you go!

This study evaluates and ranks the brunches hosted by UCLA sororities, based on firsthand experience across ten houses. Using a consistent rubric centered on food quality, hospitality, ambiance, and overall vibe, we assessed each event to understand what truly makes a sorority brunch memorable. The results revealed strong showings from Alpha Delta Pi and Gamma Phi Beta, with Alpha Delta Pi earning the top spot for its exceptional food spread and welcoming atmosphere. Mid-tier rankings included houses like Kappa Kappa Gamma, Alpha Phi, and Pi Beta Phi, where solid hospitality made up for more modest culinary offerings. Delta Gamma landed at the bottom due to a dissappointing food selection, an unfortunate dining experience, and cold coffee. While the tone remains light, the analysis offers structured insight into how different houses approach the art of brunch and what that says about the broader dynamics of UCLA’s Greek life.

Methodology

Any great study starts off with a detailed description of its methodology, so let’s discuss that first.

As mentioned before, there are ten (10) different sorority houses on Hilgard, with a helpful map from the Daily Bruin showing exactly where they all are (this collection of houses is often called Sorority Row, or just the “Row”). And no, I don’t understand why GPhi is alphabetically last, don’t ask (and that rhymed, lit):

For each house, our brunching group reached out to active members we knew in the sorority who could bring us to brunch (active members are allowed, and from my understanding even encouraged, to bring guests to house brunches), and we’d subsequently meet up with them at the house.

For the sororities where we didn’t know anyone, we’d knock on the front door, explain our study, and ask to be let inside. For the few houses with wide open front doors, we walked in confidently, explained our study to an inhabitant, and got a tour that way. Using these strategies, we were surprisingly let into every single house on the Row.

Once inside, we’d try the food and coffee, play the piano, and explore the parts we were allowed to visit. This was usually just the first floor and basement (since all the floors above were bedrooms) — the first floor was typically the common spaces and kitchen, and the basement was a study space or library. When possible, we also received a tour.

After we finished our brunch, our group walked outside, dispersed, and independently recorded our thoughts and observations from the brunch. We each recorded a voice memo into a shared Apple Note, and added all the photos we took into a shared album:

Our shared Apple Note and photo album :)

I, as the organizer of this quest, subsequently listened to all of these voice memos, looked at all the photos, and wrote this blog post. And much like trying to piece together what happened during a night out with friends the morning after, I spent many hours listening through to give an unbiased, holistic view of each house’s brunching experience.

Or something like that. I tried my best.

The last thing I want to do is shout out my amazing fellow sorority misters (the name we gave our brunching selves, derived from active members calling each other sorority sisters), who made this entire quest so much fun. Ariv, Hudson, Jack, Jake, Alex (Sasha), Nathan — your company, humor, and spontaneity made these brunches the epic adventure it turned out to be. I’m so grateful to call you all my friends :)

Rankings

“Ok Dennis, get to the damn rankings already!”, you’re thinking right now. Ok ok, we’re almost there!

There were so many different aspects to break down the rankings by, so I decided to organize them by a bunch of different criteria. Keep in mind that these rankings are extremely subjective and determined by exactly one (1) visit to each house, so it’s 100% certain that someone else who visited all the houses would have a completely different list.

And if your sorority didn’t make the rankings, I’m so sorry, I didn’t make them.

Oh wait a second, I did. Uh oh. But this is my blog, so it is what it is. And without further ado, here they are!

Best overall experience:

#1: Alpha Delta Pi (ADPi)
Runner-up: Gamma Phi Beta (GPhi)

Best brunch food:

#1: ADPi — this is the easiest decision on this list BY FAR. The food spread at this breakfast was unbelievable
Runner-up: Pi Beta Phi (Pi Phi)

(any place that has overnight chia pudding is gonna be up there for me)

Best coffee:

#1: Pi Phi
Runner-up: Kappa Kappa Gamma (Kappa)

Best fruit spread:

#1: Alpha Chi Omega (AChiO)
Runner-up: ADPi

Best piano:

#1: Pi Phi — they had an actual Steinway!
Runner-up: — Delta Gamma (DG)

Best house decor:

#1: Kappa
Runner-up: DG

Coziest house:

#1: AChiO
Runner-up: Alpha Phi (APhi)

Best conversations:

(this is based on the overall conversational experience we had inside the house)

#1: APhi — that conversation with Josie was amazing, and the gossip was hilarious
Runner-up: Kappa

Friendliest people:

(this ranking was based on the people that we met in the house and didn’t know beforehand, not the friends who met us for brunch inside)

#1: Chi Omega (ChiO)
Runner-up: ADPi
Runner-runner-up: AChiO

Chillest house mom:

#1: ADPi
Runner-up: Kappa

Best gang sign:

#1: Kappa Delta
Runner-up: APhi

Most rogue experience:

#1: Kendall saving us from almost getting kicked out of Pi Phi by an extremely flustered sorority girl and concerned house mom Pamela
Runner-up: Getting an impromptu tap dancing performance in the Kappa Delta house from Sasha

Some other interesting things to note right off the bat:

All the different sororities have their own gang sign, where they arrange their hands in a certain way to indicate they’re from a certain sorority. The best way to describe this hand signal is as a gang sign, even though they’re not in a gang (it’s technically called a sorority). Our group of sorority misters tried to learn each house’s sign, and take a picture of us doing it inside/in front of the house. lol
The bathrooms in each house are SUPER nice. Much, much fancier than in the UCLA co-op, that’s for sure!
Every sorority house has a “house mom”, whose full-time job is to live in the house, keep it in order, and protect its occupants. I learned that they have to be alumni of the sorority they guard, and most of them were (generally) chill during our quest. I also have to comment that I’ve never heard of there being a frat equivalent to a house mom, and found myself pondering what such a person would be called. Fraternity father? Platonic padre? House hubby? Fratty daddy? I have no fucking clue.
“Brunching” autocorrects to “crunching” for some reason, every single fucking time.
Every single person, when hearing about our quest for the first time, absolutely loved it. Thanks for the support :)

A detailed description of our experience in each house

Our epic quest started on February 7th, and took about a month, ending on March 14th. I was graduating this quarter and was on a mission to hit all the brunches before I left Westwood, so we packed our schedules to hit as many as we could. The most we had in one day was four. 4! We’re very hungry, so it was totally doable.

(I must add that these voice memos have AI transcriptions, what a godsend)

(I must also add that listening back to these voice memos was so hilarious and I laughed so much while writing this —> I shared some of my favorites with y’all)

Gamma Phi Beta, ΓΦΒ (GPhi) — February 7th, 2025:

We were invited to our very first sorority brunch by Una and Lilly, Dylan’s two friends who went on our Morro Bay camping trip.

The initial four sorority sisters were me, Dylan, Alex, and Ariv (all of us from said Morro Bay trip), and we met up at the bomb shelter before walking over to the yummy brunch.

As this was our very first one (little did we know we’d be undergoing this quest quite yet), we were EXTREMELY impressed by how nice the house was. The houses are all literal mansions. It’s actually insane.

The GPhi house was super nice, with a very Barbie-Legally-Blonde pink decor vibe. Really fancy furniture, great natural light, nice piano (we thought a piano was unique to GPhi because we hadn’t been to the other houses yet lol), and the food was very delicious (vegan options weren’t too good unfortunately).

The outside patio was stunning, and we four dudes declared that we’d never leave the house if we lived there. Honestly, we were just impressed by our very first sorority house brunch, and were quite blown away.

The highlight of the house tour was when we met another one of the girls in GPhi, who couldn’t fathom the fact that our group had went camping. In the most basic Valley sorority girl voice imaginable, she proclaimed, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you slept outside… like in a tent”. It kinda broke my mind. Here’s my best impression:

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After our tour and brunch, we were invited to stay for a bit longer, so we did some homework and played some more on the piano. Very solid first house experience!

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Kappa Kappa Gamma, ΚΚΓ (Kappa) — February 21st:

The second house that we went to was Kappa, two Fridays later. My friend Katherine is in that sorority and was the one who showed our group of sorority misters around the house. Thanks, Katherine!!

Going to Kappa was very interesting because we had something to compare it against. The house’s house decor had this very nice pastel blue vibe, which we felt was more classy and elegant than GPhi, but also a slight bit too corporate. The piano in Kappa was extremely nice, much fancier and of higher quality than GPhi’s.

Unfortunately, the actual brunch at Kappa was not it. For starters, the food options were extremely limited, so our group mostly just ate the deliciously wide selection of tasty, fresh berries (Hudson had the eggs). On the bright side, the coffee machine at Kappa was exquisite, especially coming from the standard black coffee options at GPhi.

I also must add that I’ve never felt more observed in my life than in the Kappa dining room — our group constantly felt like we were being stared at, and it was quite the strange feeling. They also had a Porsche in the parking lot. Crazy stuff

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Kappa Alpha Theta, ΚΑΘ (Theta) — February 21st:

Theta was the third sorority brunch we went to, and notably, was the first one where we didn’t know anyone. After our Kappa brunch earlier that morning (right next door), we noticed that Theta’s front entrance was wide open, so Ariv and I walked right in to see what would happen.

And surprisingly… nothing! We were completely shocked that no one asked who we knew, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight because there’s no way every person living in the house knows all the guests.

By the time we walked in, brunch seemed to be ending, so the food options were again quite unfortunate. And the decor of Theta’s house was… interesting. The best way to describe it is as a Big Bear mountain lodge gone slightly wrong — big wooden timbers everywhere, and the rooms’ decors seemed a little less put together than the other houses.

The main highlight of Theta’s house was the enormous patio in the inner courtyard where a bunch of people were hanging out. It seemed that maybe once upon a time there was a pool there, but it had since been paved over. We’re advocating for a hot tub in the Theta house, that’d be epic.

Ariv chilling in the Theta house (this was the only picture we took lol)

Alpha Delta Pi, ΑΔΠ (ADPi) — February 21st:

Emboldened by our success with walking into Theta, Ariv and I decided to try our luck again and head over to the ADPi house right down the street.

And OH MY GOODNESS, was it a huge success! The food was actually the most delicious breakfast I’ve ever had at UCLA. I’m just going to let Ariv describe how amazing it was:

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The food was delicious (oh my god that overnight chia was unbelievable), everyone was super nice and friendly, very LA-like house, and a great unifying theme across the decor.

Also, shoutout to Ashley for giving us a tour ~20 seconds after meeting us (and hi by the way!) and to the super friendly house mom for chatting with us, too. Plus, we ran into some friends that we knew who were also brunching there — a fantastic experience overall!

(I must also comment that their front porch had a “staircase to nowhere”, which Ariv and I found quite funny)

(Also hi Anna! We saw you on the wall in one of the pictures, it was definitely unexpected but awesome)

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Chi Omega, ΧΩ (ChiO) — February 28th:

Our fifth brunch was ChiO, which meant that by this point, we were sorority brunching experts.

After the fantastic ADPi brunch, the food at ChiO was quite underwhelming — we did get there late so the only food available was a “frittata and some grapes scattered around” (quote courtesy: Alex), but the “frittata was mid” and the grapes weren’t fresh.

However, “they had hot sauce, though. Points for that.” Thanks, Alex!

I also have to note that everyone in ChiO was very nice, and we had a couple of great conversations while eating the aforementioned grapes. We chatted about skiing and my beloved BART in the Bay, before singing Happy Birthday in Russian to one of the girls in the house. Friendliest, most chill people so far, along with one of my favorite voice memos from Nathan (at his first brunch of the quest):

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And to the SigChi guys that we met on Hilgard outside ChiO, hello! That was a GENIUS pancake-on-the-drink invention you had 🧠

Alpha Phi, ΑΦ (APhi) — March 7th:

APhi was the next house that we went to, and was honestly one of my favorites. Josie, my friend and mentee from my consulting club, is in APhi, and showed us all around the house before treating us to a lovely conversation in the dining room.

It was actually such a great time. So much lore. So much gossip!

The other sorority girls we met in APhi were quite friendly, too, and the pastel pink decor was nicely done throughout the house. This was the most wholesome house we visited, and such a lovely time throughout. Thank you, Josie :)

Delta Gamma, ΔΓ (DG) — March 14th:

March 14th was the Friday of Week 10, so we had to hit the last four sorority brunches before the quarter ended. And since I was graduating this quarter, it was my last chance to finish up all of the different houses. The stakes were high, and we were on a mission!

DG was the first house we hit that morning, and it was pretty crazy. For starters, I saw five different people I knew getting brunch there too (including someone I gave a campus tour to the previous year, wtf are the chances), which was completely unexpected.

But let me tell you, the brunch itself was quite horrific. For starters, the coffee was cold (cold!), the food was this weird, stale pizza, and the tables were greasy and sticky. Oh my goodness.

I also have to comment on the plates — there was a stack of paper plates right next to the stack of nice, ceramic ones, and I foolishly grabbed a ceramic one despite everyone else grabbing the paper ones. Fast forward to ten minutes later, I realize there’s no dishwasher or bin to put my dirty ceramic plate in, which is how I found myself washing dishes in the DG sink on a Friday morning. What the actual fuck

There were a few redeeming qualities, however, most notably the nice seaside decor and the amazing piano in the living room. All in all, though, DG probably ranks at the bottom of the totem pole for me so far in terms of the brunch itself.

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Alpha Chi Omega, ΑΧΩ (AChiO) — March 14th:

Coming off of our disappointing DG brunch, we headed up the Row to check out the northernmost sorority we hadn’t visited so far — AChiO. We unfortunately didn’t know anyone in that sorority and the front door was behind a gated courtyard, so we had no option but to ring the doorbell and hope for the best.

Out walked Grace, who was extremely confused as to what was happening but eventually let us in when we explained what we were doing. There weren’t really any other guys at this brunch, so everyone (especially the house mom) was extremely confused as to why 6 dudes just pulled up talking about some “anthropological study”.

Fortunately, we were granted access to the AChiO sanctuary, and had the loveliest time there! It was the coziest of the houses we had been to by far, and everyone was very welcoming and intrigued about our mission. A number of them even subscribed to this blog to read the final product (hey y’all!), we were carefully escorted around the downstairs common spaces and brunch zones, and we even sang happy birthday to Page (Paige?) studying at the main kitchen table (we literally met her at that brunch).

Fortunately, the food was delicious, especially after coming from DG. The berries and pancakes in particular were amazing, and we respectfully descended upon the food like hungry vultures. We took some pictures with the main AChiO sign, chatted some more with Grace, and called it a day.

Honestly, I was surprised by how easily we got into the house by being honest about our mission. Thank you so much Grace and AChiO for your hospitality :)

(also have to give a shoutout to the bagels in the fridge, that was hilarious)

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