Brenda's French Soul Food

652 Polk St
San Francisco, CA 94102

Occasion: Brunch for 4 over great conversation and delicious food.  This is one of our favorite brunch places in the city!! You need to try their watermelon iced teas (comes with free refills). 07.21.12

Banana Foster French Toast 

Super decadant, filling and delicious.  They're very generous with the portions here and it's definitely more than enough for four of us girls to share.

Beignet Flight Plain, Chocolate, Apple and Crawfish 

Since the other three have never been here before, we all decided to get the flight.  I've never tried anything other than their crawfish beignet because it's probably my favorite thing to get there! After trying it for my first time, I've ordered it every time ever since.  It was a good change to get a variety to share with everyone.  The plain one is simple, but still good.  The apple was surprisingly really good and reminded me of apple pie.  Chocolate was way too rich and was able to have a bite of that.  The cheesy stuffed crawfish beignet did not disappoint and is still my favorite

Catfish Poboy 

Just mediocre and did not stand out that much. Perhaps I was really full already.

Baby Blues BBQ

3149 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

Occasion: Belated Bday Dinner with bAbiE Tiff/ catch up session=] I wanted to try everything, so we got the BLUE DEVIL PLATTER!! YUMMO!

In our platter the meats we ordered were: Texas style beef ribs, pulled pork, 1/4 chicken and baby back ribs. 

Since Tiff doesn't eat beef we only ordered one beef item.  Everything from texas is really bigger, hence the name "TEXAS STYLE" beef ribs.  The meat was full of flavor and very tender. It was delicious and addicting.  Too bad meat itself is really filling other wise I could have eaten more.  The pulled pork was a bit dissappointing, as it was on the blander side in taste and it wasn't as tender as I'd thought it to be.  I got to try the chicken and thought it was decent, but nothing special.  Baby back ribs were decent, but the corn bread was memorable. I love cornbread!

Corn

This ws one of the three of our sides.  I love corn so I had to order it.  Originally I thought they only give half a cob, but they give a whole cob. That's a generous portion!

Mashed Potatoes

Love my spuds, so I had to order that as well!  I thought it was good, but not the best I've ever had.  There were just so much food on the table...it's hard to really appreciate everything.

Mac and Cheese

Tiff wanted it and it was one of the highlights on yelp, so we just had to get it.  I tried it, but was quite dissappointed.  It wasn't cheesy enough, nor was it too tasty.  It was just mediocre.

All the different sauces in order from least spicy to the spiciest

I'm SASSY!!! LOL! That's the sauce that I used most of the night. I tried the BBQ too...a bit more spicy and less sweet with a smokier flavor.

Farmerbrown's Little Skillet

360 Ritch St
San Francisco, CA 94107


Occasion: Saturday Lunch!

Chicken and a waffle

I loved how it was served very hot and warm. That assured me that it was made fresh. The waffle was huge and very fluffy. I like this waffle better than roscoe's down south, but Ilike the chicken down south more than I did up here. The chicken is a bit on the dry side! Wish we had gravy to dip the chicken in, that would have helped ease the dryness of it. I think it's pretty damn good and worth coming back to. One waffle and one chicken can easily fill you up!
Oh I forgot to mention, it's on the BIG EAT SF 2010: #4 Fried chicken and waffles at Little Skillet.

Roscoe's House of Chicken & Waffles- Long Beach

730 E. Broadway
Long Beach, CA 90802

Occasion: Lunch before we leave socal!

Arnold Palmer
I love ordering this. Lemonade with iced tea. Very refreshing especially with all this unhealthy fried chicken.

#2 Chicken(with gravy on the side) and Waffles (not pictured)
Chicken breast was moist, which I liked. I usually don't like ordering chicken breast because it tends to be on the dry side, but not this breast. This usually comes with the gravy smothered, but we asked for it on the side, which I liked better. That way we can dip the chicken into the sauce and smother as much as we'd like.

Mac and Cheese
I got to try a bit of this. I didn't think it was that great. It was kind of dry. I usually have a problem with the mac and cheese being too cheesy, but this one was too dry. I've had better.

Country Boy
3 pieces of chicken wings and a waffle.

I ordered this because it's smaller than the #1 and #2. Our waiter suggested I order this, since there's only one waffle and smaller chicken pieces. I loved the waffle drenched in their syrup. There was nothing special about the waffle,but it just tasted original and simple. After a bite of savory chicken I'd switch to a bite of the waffle that's been drenched in syrup. Sweet, savory, sweet, savory...it went back and forth like that.

Brenda's French Soul Food

652 Polk St

San Francisco, CA 94102

Occasion: Bday brunch!

Beignets

Crawfish, with cayenne, scallions and cheddar

with a glass of their home made watermelon ice tea!

Best eaten when fresh and hot while the cheese is melted. My first time ever having one of these and it is definitely something to rave about. I loved everything from the dough to the filling to the cayenne garnish. Each bite was an absolute delight. Due to the starchy pastry bread and the cheese, this alone was really filling. Watermelon ice tea was very original and refreshing. I loved how we got free refills. I am a fan of this!! I swear this should be on the 7X7 BIG EAT SF instead of the sandwich. But then again, who am I to speak, I haven't even tried the Shrimp Po Boy. Next time!

French toast with buttery toasted pecan sauce
I'm a french toast type of girl and this french toast did my stomach good. It is so worth it to add the buttery toasted pecan sauce. It's only $1.00 more and trust me you won't regret it. French toast was amazing, but after devouring the beignet, it was hard to finish my french toast. French toast is my thing and I definitely loved the toasted pecan sauce. It was rich, sweet and buttery.

Fried Oyster with bacon and potato has scramble of some sort with an english muffin

It's not my type of breakfast dish, but it was ok. I was happy with the french toast and the beignets. This is just too rich of a meal for me as my first meal of the day. I like eggs and potatoes, but I am not too fond of fried oysters and bacon. Just too much for breakfast.

1300 on Fillmore

1300 Fillmore St
San Francisco, CA 94115

Occasion: Catch up session with the bestest!

Complimentary Cornbread

From what I can remember, it came with home made jam too; which was very good. I love cornbread. I love the texture, i love the sweetness. i just love it. This one was extra buttery and was warm when it came out. I totally wanted to ask for more. I just love it when a restaurant has delicious starters breads. Having cornbread was really fitting for this soul food restaurant. I was expecting a basket of bread, and was happy to find cornbread instead.

Sage Roasted Butternut Squash-apple Soup with Maple Syrup Creme Friache
Jenny really wanted to order this and I wanted to give it a try. Jenny's had better and I felt indifferent about it. It was extrordinary, I only had a few spoonful. I like my soups to be savory...wasn't really expecting it to have a little sweet aftertaste. Definitely not my favorite dish that night.Grilled pears, arugula
chevre goat cheese, pomegranate, 12 year aged balsamic vinegar
Loved the fresh taste of the grilled pears. Light little salad with a variety of flavors. You've got a soft sweet pear, with little pomegranate seeds, the distinct flavor of arugula and little chunks of bleu cheese. All with a drizzle of their balsamic vinaigrette. Absolutely delicious! Loved how everything complimented well with each other.

Macaroni N' White Cheddar Cheese
Jenny loves her mac n cheese and so she really wanted it. It was GOOOD! I don't really like that vevetta type of mac n cheese. I like it when it's not too cheesy or rich and this is exactly what it was. Totally worth the try!

Black Skillet Fried Chicken
Buttermilk whipped potatoes, pan gravy

We got a piece of chicken breast and a thigh. Both of which were very moist and juicy. I usually hate white meat because it tends to be dry. But nope. Not this one. It's just a classier version of some soul food places, also not as oily, which I like. The thing with fried anything is that you end up consuming a half a cup of oil, but luckily I did not feel that way with the fried chicken here. If you do decide to order this, do so in the beginning because it takes about 20 minutes to prepare. Mashed potatoes and biscuit were amazing.

Surf N' Turf
Oven-Roast Divers Scallop-Foie, pulled beef short rib, sweet potato-bacon mousseline

We both love scallop so we ordered this. Loved the tender scallop that melted in my mouth. The pulled beef short rib sounded really delicious, but it didn't really execute for me. But the sweet potato-bacon mousseline was delicious! There's a bit of sweet mixed with bacon bits, what a great combination!

Pear Creme Brulee with almond crescent cookies

Yup we still had room for dessert. So delicious and unique. There were little chunks of pear in the creme brulee which made it more enjoyable. Different, but still tasty. We both enjoyed it. Pear flavor wasn't too strong, it was subtle and we could still taste the egginess of the creme brulee.

Hard Knox Cafe

2448 Clement St
San Francisco, CA 94121

Occasion: Michael Vo returns for vacation from Iraq and he wanted to have dinner with some of his favorite girls, of course I just happen to be one of them. This was two weeks after we came back from our Vegas trip and the girls just had so much to talk about. Poor Mike, he had to deal with all that estrogen =P

Fried Chicken (3 pieces)

with macroni and potatoe salad sides along with two cornbread muffins

This is so worth it. For $10-$11 I got all this. You can order three pieces of fried chicken, however you like it; either wings, drumsticks or thighs. I chose to get 3 pieces of thigh!! I normally don't care for mac and cheese, but because I was eating at a soul food restaurant I felt that I SHOULD just get it. I'm glad I did because it was very good; not too cheesy and not too thick. I couldn't decide on mysecond side so I asked our waiter to give me a spoonful of the potato salad to try. It was SOOO goood!! Oh and their complimentary corn bread muffins that came along with your meal, is absolutely delicious!!! So good and so worth the money...but so bad for your health =/