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.