Brenda's French Soul Food - San Francisco

Greetings! It has been a long while since I updated the blog. The eating and cooking has not stopped but documenting the food has slowed down. Long story short, changes happened to my schedule and the portion control diet is not faring well. Take for example, my trip to Brenda's French Soul Food in San Francisco.

I met up with Sherry, who has a beautiful blog that she doesn't share to the world *ahem*, for a popular brunch place in San Francisco. We discussed how brunch as a concept is really popular in large cities like SF and NY most likely due to the population of young city dwellers. In suburban San Jose most people spend their weekends at home with family or on outings so the market for a good brunch restaurant is not in high demand. What a pity because if brunch was always as good as Brenda's I would like to have it locally too.

($2.75) Sweet watermelon house tea. Judging by the name, this could have been a hit or miss. Luckily it was a huge hit. It tastes like sweet iced tea with shreds of dried watermelon at the bottom. I've been rummaging Pinterest like crazy looking for a satisfactory recipe.

($8.00) Crawfish beignet. Much larger than your usual dessert beignets and filled with a creamy gooey crawfish and cheddar center, surrounded by fluffy beignet dough, then the icing on the cake was the thick layer of cayenne and I'm sure there was paprika too on top. These alone are worth a visit to Brenda's.

($12.00) Shrimp and grits. This was pretty delicious also but I'm not a huge fan of grits, especially when its mixed in with mucho cheese. A few bites of cheesy goodness is enjoyable but a whole bowl isn't as manageable. The portion was large too.

($11.00) Hangtown fry. This was basically an omelet with crispy fried oysters, scallions, and bacon and a side of potatoes and a biscuit. Like the shrimp and grits, too much of this proved to be tiresome. The first 1/3 of the omelet was delicious with the crispy oyster providing a nice salty crunch and the bacon delivering its usual fatty goodness. After that first third, the magic wore off and all I could think of was oil and fat and a big hunk of the same taste.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

I highly recommend Brenda's for the watermelon tea and the beignets. The other dishes were great too. The portions are large and perhaps if I wasn't walking around the city all day, I would have taken everything in a to go box and eaten smaller portions later. The large portions probably wore off the initial excitement from the first few bites of each dish because intense flavors need to be taken slowly especially if it's too rich, creamy, or oily. This was one example of how I couldn't manage my portion control or my eating schedule. I was walking around SF the entire day so I couldn't carry too many snacks other than trail mix. Brunch was my only meal before dinner so I overate to ensure I wouldn't get hungry later. Yup...the portion control diet is going down the pooper as the month draws to a close.

Brenda's on Yelp