Never have been one for lavish and well-appointed Sunday brunches, I must admit. OK…I’ve never really been all that impressed by lavish and well appointed meals at any hour of any day, as it happens. Frankly, in most “nice” restaurants, the “ambience” so overwhelms the food that I find it pretty difficult to enjoy either. The good news is that this makes me a really cheap date…
So on this fine Sunday morning, I was feeling very self-satisfied with my decision not to venture out to the neighborhood bars on Saturday night. Maybe it suggests a certain maturity when one realizes that fifteen bucks might better be spent on a good meal and a nice used book than on five beers. Or maybe I’m just leading a boring life these days.
Anyway, I dragged my non-hungover self to Art’s Soul Kitchen on Church near Duboce for a lunch of pork chops, collard greens, and black-eyed peas. This is such a great place. It’s nothing but a hole in the wall with cheap tablecloths, bad art prints, and a hand-painted window sign. There is no “atmosphere” to speak of…only a friendly crowd of people and absolutely incredible food.
I think the people are what makes the place, especially given the neighborhood. It’s almost possible to forget that the Castro is but blocks away. On this particular Sunday, Art’s was filled with well-dressed Western Addition families who just got out of church, a male-male couple who would have looked very out of place at Cafe Flore, and a few tables of completely unremarkable individuals of varying ages, classes, and ethnicities. No one seemed to be looking for a “dining experience”; everyone just seemed to want to eat.
As the small dining room was packed and there was a line, I opted for a takeout. I walked upto Aardvark Books for a few minutes while waiting.
Along the way I passed Boston Market, the ubiquitous franchise which tries to do “home cooking” but ends up with something slightly less enticing than a Banquet Frozen Dinner. There was, as usual, a long line waiting for swill from a tube. Boston market attempts to create images of hearth, heart, and soul through an ad campaign. The attempt is not successful.
I crossed the street and looked in the window at Chow, an lackluster over-priced eatery which offers its own version of “home cooking”, though the average mom wouldn’t recognize most of this fare. Chow attempts to create images of hearth, heart, and soul through pretentious decor and cute entree names and by putting strange and unnecessary ingredients in the peas. Their attempt is even less successful than at Boston Market.
Places like Art’s don’t have to try to create an image. They have something the franchises and soulless trendy bistros can never really have: reality and personality. Of course it helps that the food is simple, unpretentious, and more about flavor than “presentation”. But even if they could master the food, Boston Market and Chow could never match the feeling you get when you take your first bite of a pork chop or salmon croquette at Art’s.
Maybe it’s because you can’t get a latte at Art’s.
Maybe it’s due to the feeling that you’re not contributing to the corporate greed of a Boston Market.
Or maybe it’s because it’s hard to make collard greens look like anything other than collard greens, and Chow just can’t stand this bit of reality.