Brown Sugar Kitchen San Francisco

**Hmmm, seems the original iteration of this place has now officially closed in Oakland. Though I figure she will be popping up with something else soon. My guess is the place probably was losing money and getting in the way of another project she has going to help increase her chef-lebrity-ness above and beyond her OWN cooking show. Guess we will see in 3…2…1…**

While all these other blogs trot out their end of year bests and worst and whatever to fill up space and keep content rolling during the the final days of the holidays, I’m saying f**k that. I am going full steam ahead covering the last vestiges of spots I ate at pre-2020 madness. This time I have a real treat and covering a spot that opened with tons of fanfare and then POOF! It closed its San Francisco location—and COVID ain’t to blame for this one.

I’m talking about Brown Sugar Kitchen. That bastion of Southern cooking which established a foothold in the wilds of West Oakland and gained fame for fried chicken, waffles, cornbread and all that fun stuff. And also brought rising fame to chef owner Tanya Holland. There is no disputing her chefness and culinary training which she has brought to bare on Southern staples—even though she was raised in upstate New York by Southern born parents. The restaurant was pretty much a hit from the get go and was always on my radar, but for whatever reason, I just never got over to Oakland to try it. HA! Who and I kidding. I didn’t get there because of general laziness and over there-ness. We in SF suffer from that a bit.

Of course, imagine my delight when I saw she was expanding her burgeoning empire and opening an outpost at the Ferry Building. How handy! I can just saunter down there on any random day now and try it. Score! Then you know, life just seemed to get in my way, along with all the other stuff I was going through. Then before you know it, I see the Ferry Building location is going to close. Like what! It hasn’t even been a year there yet and it’s closing?! Without much reasoning too. This is all going down at the start of 2020 so they can’t blame COVID for this one. With such notice I finally got my gumption up to get by not once, but twice before they closed to see what all the fuss was about.

At this point the spot is closed so who cares right? I imagine if you make your way over to Oakland just to get them on take-out it could work, though probably gonna be somewhat different than something you get from an outpost featuring food not done by the original chef or cooks. Recipes are the same sure, but do they really taste the same? Maybe, guess we won’t ever know. It is kind of like when a chef opens a place and then uses its popularity for further endeavors or to be more a famous chef-lebrity than to actually work in the restaurants anymore which sometimes suffer or more often close. I call it the “Elizabeth Falkner Syndrome”. She of the big splash Citizen Cake in SF where a cookie about the size of a fifty cent piece would set you back $3 or $4. And this was the 90s, before it became de rigueur to do so. Then she parlayed it into seeming endless spots on Top Chef, Iron Chef, Chopped, etc. If there was a food competition or more importantly a television camera to film it—she was there. Not soon after her ghosting of her own place, it suffered then closed. Being famous was more important than actual cooking. Not to she isn’t the only one as reality cooking tv is littered with this type of chef-lebrity. Seems chef Holland may be on such a course but I’ll get to that later. Anyway, here’s the food as I had it.

Straight up when I got there I had my mind set on the chicken and waffles they are supposedly known for but was told they were not doing them here anymore. Close to shutdown and they’ve already pared down the menu. Bummer, but I’m here and still hungry so let’s channel my pissiness in a fried chicken sandwich. I like good sandwich, though not necessarily a $12 sandwich. Anything over $10 is usually the bane of my existence as I have endlessly railed against and will forgo such a rant at this time. At least it wasn’t a small thing. Somewhere between bun size and hoagie roll. And it was definitely two pieces or parts of a chicken fried on there.

It mentioned slaw, which you can see and honestly I was expecting cabbage (which even the menu says it is) but I will swear up and down the slaw was shredded lettuce not cabbage. It even looks like lettuce in the pick. The texture was not hard and crispy but kind of soft and crispy—it was lettuce. Which is an interesting twist so why not own it? Don’t say it is cabbage when it is not. Love the lettuce. Embrace the lettuce. We all need a little lettuce in our life and on our sandwiches for crunch and water and less of the gas to be caused by cabbage. Just sayin’. There was some “spicy” aioli on there, prob could have use more since the slaw wasn’t mayo based, more like light touch of vinegar and parsley flakes. There was just a lot of bread/breading going on here.

I do so enjoy a good fried chicken sandwich as we all know from my constant search for one and this was…..good enough if not memorable enough. Chicken was crispy and not burnt and the bun was toasted though maybe some butter on it? Southern food people—butter is a condiment!! It was fine. It’ll do. It wasn’t terrible enough to toss it out, because if I hate something, I’ll do that. I ate it cause I paid $12 for it.

Since my $12 sandwich did not come with any sides I plopped down another $4 for a small cup of mac and cheese. Yes, this was my carb loading day. It was hot, it was cheesy, it was creamy, it was lacking in some flavor. Fortunately there was some black pepper to help out. And that is about all I got to say about this. Let’s move on to my second vision a couple weeks later.

Visit number two, still no waffles, still don’t understand why. The place is famous for fried chicken so I’m sticking with what they do for once. I get the two piece combo—dark. Since I’d already had the mac and cheese and the “slaw” I went with the mashed yams and the cornbread. Yeah, cornbread is usually a given side (like hushpuppies) with a meat and two but here it counted a side. Well, at least it was big. This is what $18 will get you in SF. Surprising things about all this: cornbread was a tad dry, that was all the butter you got—see complaint above—and they were charging if I wanted more, the mashed yams were not sweet but spicy, the wing was as big as the leg and the thigh it was attached to. Not sure what my expectations were, but definitely not this. Dry and spicy were not forefront in my mind or taste buds. All in all, eh, seems to be so many other places in SF doing this same type thing, just better.

Is that why the spot closed? They couldn’t guarantee consistency of original? Or maybe it was to just scale back as Chef Holland made a play for fame? Could be the spot was bleeding money since they had already put out what I’m guessing was a big sum to abandon their West Oakland location for a pricey, larger place in downtown Oakland. Restaurant build outs aren’t cheap. Especially not in the Bay Area. Gotta cut the underperforming fat in order to conserve funds. Plus she’d made an appearance on Top Chef, Iron Chef, another all-stars Top Chef and currently, Oprah has given her a show on OWN. Are we seeing another burgeoning chef-lebrity brightening their star and leaving past accomplishments to underlings to run? While I doubt(?) Brown Sugar Kitchen will permanently close, given the current pandemic climate, I can’t say I would be surprised should that come to pass as a “reason” why she might give up the goat and lean into the tv fame. Just my opinion.

Ultimately I guess, one has to do what they gotta do and find what works for them. While I can’t say the food above worked for me from the now closed outpost, maybe if you venture to the splashy new downtown Oakland location for some take-out, you might find a better experience. Though if you choose to, might wanna get by sooner than later (like me) as you never how people will handle the fame game. Will they want more of the new and less of the old or be able to juggle both. We will have to see.