Monk Food

I think I have a thing for restaurants with the word "Monk" in the name. Jesse and I used to love this restaurant when we first moved to San Francisco called Cafe Monk. It was one of our first experiences with fancy food in San Francisco and I believe the restaurant was ahead of its time. It served organic and free range produce and meat which was not such a big thing back in 2000. At the time the big thing was dot coms and unfortunately the South of Market neighborhood was not the vibrant ever-expanding neighborhood it is now. It was sort of sad, scary and odd. My friend lived in a pod (exactly how you picture it) South of Market so we would visit him often and I think that is how we found the place. Nonetheless, it went totally bankrupt and closed in 2002(along with the dot coms).

I have a new restaurant I love with the word Monk in it and that is Monk's Kettle. Only a foodie and urbanite would put up with the hour and a half wait on a Saturday night, but we had drinks at the bar across the street so the time went by fairly quickly. The food is amazing and the selection of beers is astounding! They have a beer called "Let's go Shopping" (Jesse tried this one) and I had "Reality Czech."   Their wine list is not bad either. Some of our favorites dishes were the Mac and Cheese appetizer with bacon. I took a second to consider adding bacon to this one and my fellow dinners practically screamed "with bacon!" at the poor waitress. We also shared a tasty salad. I had the flank steak with blue cheese aioli and fries. These fries are so good and salty even D didn't add salt (she loves salt). I highly recommend this restaurant and I think if you can Bart over there right after work on a Wednesday the wait is probably not so atrocious.  I will definitely go back and hopefully these monks will survive the next major economic catastrophe....oh shoot.