Upward Trends: Southern Style Brunch Staples

The Boxing Room's Brunch Offerings

Having rarely travelled below the Mason/Dixon line, I won't claim to be an authority on southern cuisine. Recently, however, it feels like you don't need to leave Yankee territory to get a yourself a helping of southern staples — you just need to go to brunch.

Zero Zero's Chicken & Waffles

In San Francisco there seems to be an ever growing abundance of menus serving up the almost unholy signature southern dish: fried chicken and waffles. From fancy brunches to street-side service, you can get a crispy waffle smothered by even crispier chicken.

Top choices for a fixing of fried chicken & waffles in San Francisco are:

• Zero Zero, they cover your waffles in a layer of butter and syrup to get the perfect balance of savory and sweet.
• Farmer Browns Little Skillet —they will do you right, with a distinctly sweet waffle and the crispiest of chicken.
• Citizen Band — does refined diner better than anyone, and their fried chicken is no exception.
• Good Foods Catering — A regular at the Window SF,  Good Foods makes chicken & waffles with some soul.
• Town Hall — The fanciest entry on the list, brunch at Town Hall is a must-try. Regulars will know that the only thing that could make their fried chicken better is a helping of waffles.

Farmer Browns: Fancy Soul Food

But make no mistake, chicken & waffles isn't the only southern flavor popping up around San Francisco. More than just southern and soul inspired, The Boxing Room and Brenda's French Soul Food have menus wholly devoted to bringing New Orleans cuisine to San Francisco (you won't find chicken & waffles on either of their menus).

Both Boxing & Brenda's serve up a good number of brunch dishes featuring crawfish, catfish and grits. If you're feeling adventurous, you'll regularly spot alligator on Boxing Room's menu too.

I'm keeping my eye out for the growing number of shrimp & grits dishes around San Francisco (a personal favorite of mine), so I may be following up with another southern post soon. And with that, I'll leave you with a tantalizing look at Serpentine's biscuits & gravy.

Serpentine's Biscuits & Gravy

Mixing Business with Pleasure: The Brunch Blog Makes a Video

Without giving too much away about my real life, I can readily admit to having a job. Being gainfully employed mean I don't get to spend as much time as I would like brunching and writing about brunch, but sometimes my worlds collide.

Last week I set out to better understand the world of video creation. A few simple facts made me perfect self experiment:

• I'm not a film maker
• I don't harbor any secret dreams to be a YouTube superstar 
• I have a blog completely unrelated to work with lots of pictures

The goal was to see if I could create a compelling video for my blog using only the resources I had on hand: my iPhone and the internet. I used some free online video creation services and this is what I came up with...

If anyone has any thoughts, other services, suggestions or otherwise shoot me an email at jesskateo@gmail.com or leave a comment.

Many thanks.

Upward Trends: The Brunch Pop-Up

There have been several awful trends that have come out of the last few years. The return of 80s neon. High-waisted pants. Large, square glasses frames. Denim hot pants. The food world has had better luck with trends in the same time period including kale, local foods, slow-food, brussels sprouts. Obviously my personal favorite trend has been the rise in brunch offerings.

More specifically, there has been a rise in a certain type of brunch offerings: Pop-ups. What is a pop-up? A pop-up is when a guest chef essentially takes over the kitchen of a restaurant. Chefs serve up what they do best, but with the flexibility to have fun and deviate from what's on their own menu. Pop-ups are run by a spectrum of chefs: catering kings, food-truckers, fine-dining darlings, rising-stars, and old-guard stalwarts.

Some spots in San Francisco have institutionalized pop-ups, by hosting weekly visiting chefs. Pop-up venues you can reliably expect to see a brunch pop-up include:

Dear Mom, which regularly hosts guest chefs for it's Sunday brunch. Frequent favorites include Fogcutter and Seoul Patch Korea.

Dear Mom

The Window SF, soon to be the latest iteration of Coffee Bar, is currently all pop-ups all the time. They serve up brunch Saturday and Sunday. Frequent favorites include Good Foods Catering and Bayou by the Bay.

Good Food Catering at The Window SF

Parada 22, turns into a Haight satellite location for the Mission's famous Boogaloo's brunch on Saturday & Sundays.

Yield Wine Bar, lets BMSF take over its kitchen to serve up Hair of the Dogpatch brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.

BMSF at Yield Wine Bar

Here's a few non-brunch San Francisco pop-ups on my radar:

• LihoLiho Yacht Club pop-up is run by Ravi Kapur, formerly executive chef at Prospect.  You can find him serving up a prix-fixe menu at Citizens Band.
• Rice Paper Scissors, bring Vietnamese street food to the streets of San Francisco (sometimes literally to the street). Click through to their website to see where they'll be popping up next.
• HayaHon is serving up Japanese food at the former Mercury Lounge on 12th & Folsom.