Brenda's French Soul Food

Had heard the hype, had seen the massive lines, happened to have an early morning appointment at City Hall one random Friday morning and decided to give Brenda's a whirl. I ordered the Crawfish Beignets - and all of them were not cooked all the way through!! The restaurant wasn't busy so its not like they needed to push the food out fast (i.e. before it was done). Also the dough of the beignet was extremely dense and greasy. Couldn't even manage to eat one. My husband had the shrimp and grits and he couldn't finish it either. I have never before heard him say "too much cheese and bacon" but there it was - to much cheese in the grits and bacon in the tomato sauce on the shrimp. Then to top it all off, our server took away two almost full plates of food and didn't even so much as ask why. All in all I found the place to be disappointing and overrated.

We tried the beignet flight and it was fantastic. Brenda's is small and quaint inside. We also received excellent service and excellent food!

Thank you for the most amazing food! Love the biscuits Love the gumbo Loved it.

The breakfast/brunch was fantastic. We arrived in SF on 22 October 2007 and was scheduled to leave on 29 Oct. We only stumbled onto Brenda's on the last three days, and we were there every day for the last three days. Perhaps that shows how much we loved Brenda's cooking. Her place is very easy to miss, as the frontage is very simple, but look for the California Culinary Institute, and Brenda's will be somewhere opposite. The guys from that college seems to love her place too, so you can say that guys who are going to cook for a career approves of her cooking. We didn't know that she was a CHEF, but as we were in SF for our son Nicholas to experience the culinary scene- he is going into internship after finishing his culinary course at the Singapore Hotel Culinary school-we make it a point to collect the menu, with the chef signing on the menu. So Brenda, thanks for taking a bit of your time to sign and give us a momento, even when you were so busy at that time. Nicholas told me that the two places that had the most impact in SF on the culinary scene is Boulevard and Brenda's. Boulevard is very good, compared to Singapore's "My Humble House", but there is no comparision in Singapore to anything like Brenda's. We loved all the things we had, even the "mixed up" beignets-Brenda's, Libbie and our secret., plus the so soft and fluffy pancakes, and the Water Melon tea in the cute glass container. Final word: We loved wht was dished out at Brenda's and we really regret that we did not have the time to sample more or all of her cooking. Recommended: All her beignets, pancakes, the huge cup of Cafe au lait. No wonder her place was packed even though she opened only a month ago.