Away at college, pining for Thai Temple’s Sunday brunch

January 12, 2011 7:00 am by Guest contributor

Lila eating at the Thai Temple, Berkeley.

By Anna Mindess

After her first three and a half months away at college in Canada, our daughter Lila was thrilled to be home on break. Besides seeing us and hanging out with her friends, Lila had a definite agenda: work her way through a bucket list of Berkeley eateries.

During our weekly fall Skype chats, between updates on her exciting new life, Lila would sigh, “But I miss the food at home.” (I didn’t take it personally that she wasn’t referring to my cooking.)

Once back in the East Bay, off she sprinted to her old hang-outs: Barney’s, Cactus Taqueria,Yogurtland, Picante, Khana Peena, Fred’s for a chicken sandwich and Cheeseboard for their inimitable pizza. This series of sacred journeys is probably replicated by countless Berkeley High graduates home on winter break to refuel themselves with the flavors they have been craving.

Lila was scheduled to fly back to Vancouver on a Monday, which worked out perfectly, because the last place on her list is only “open” on Sunday. It’s not a restaurant, but as Lila puts it, “a bundle of bustling Berkeleyites and hung-over hipsters waiting in friendly lines to get their food fix.”

Brunch at the Thai Temple is a Berkeley institution; a “secret site” that, by now, is known to thousands. For almost 20 years, The Thai Buddhist Temple has been hosting this fabulous weekly feast from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (despite some resistance from neighbors who understandably may get a bit peeved when 200-600 hungry patrons descend on their otherwise quiet Russell Street.)

Mango sticky rice.

Temple members cook up and serve a dizzying array of dishes, a mini-version of Bangkok’s street food scene. Breakfast foods in Thailand do not constitute a separate category and the most typical morning dishes — soup, noodles and curried rice plates – are all available here plus sweets and irresistible $1 Thai iced tea.

At the Thai Temple brunch, money exchange is part of the ritual as the first line you stand in is to exchange your bucks for tokens, which you then use as donations (to pay) for your selections. Prices are very reasonable; $10 worth of tokens will fill you up with the possibility of leftovers to take home. Some patrons bring their own containers to take their Thai delectables home straight away.

The crowd is young and old, in comfortable rumpled clothes, looking like they collectively just woke up. The mood is casual and convivial, though fans can get a little cranky if the place is crowded. Enticing smells wafting over while you stand in line serve to amp up the hunger level. Grab a seat at outside tables shaded by blue and white striped awnings, or if it’s sunny, sprawl on the grass or hunch on the curb.

Thai temple tokens.

Lila’s favorites are the beef noodle soup and the fresh mango with custard and sticky rice. The hot soup is wonderfully warming on a chilly morning and satisfies with sliced beef, beef balls, celery, green onion and cilantro, garnished with dried cabbage and garlic oil and your choice of three widths of rice noodles.

The mango rice combines black and white sticky rice with sweet, comforting coconut cream and an egg-y coconut custard topped by large chunks of fresh mango.

After bumping into a dozen people she knew — another draw of Thai Temple brunches — Lila asked me to buy one more container of sticky rice and mango to go. She ate it for an early breakfast on Monday morning before catching her flight back to British Columbia, savoring the sweetness of home for as long as she could.

Anna Mindess is a freelance writer and sign language interpreter who lives in Berkeley. This article was first published on her food blog East Bay Ethnic Eats.

6 Comments

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  • Guest

    Man… rich people have SO many problems. So many decisions for white college students to make… just HOW do they deal with it all??? I’m glad I barely have enough money to make ends meet, and can’t actually afford to eat at restaurants, or go to Canada.

    Anyway, keep writing about those rich people. They are so fascinating. This blog is like the Street Spirit for Rich People. Hipster college students who have never experienced suffering, clueless writers like Michael Chabon, and rich gourmand Alice Waters are basically the three main topics of your blog. I was sort of being facetious at first, but then went back and started counting how many times these three topics came up and realized the assessment is accurate.

  • N

    Guest,
    Maybe you can become a citizen journalist for Berkeleyside (see post from previous day) and be a part of the solution to the problem you complain about!

  • http://www.tktaylor.com Tracey Taylor

    Guest: You clearly don’t read Berkeleyside regularly, otherwise you would know that we have a wide remit in terms of what we cover, be it hard news, politics, land use issues, food, culture and education. The only constant is that it must be about Berkeley.

    To give you a flavor of what you are missing, here are a few stories we published in the past few months, none of which mentioned Michael Chabon or “hipster rich people”:

    -Notorious Berkeley drug house house
    (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/11/16/notorious-berkeley-drug-house-sold/)
    -Did bicycle web site contribute to cyclist’s death? (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/07/05/did-bicycle-web-site-contribute-to-cyclists-death/)
    -North Berkeley sees rash of armed robberies
    (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/11/29/north-berkeley-crime/)
    -City of Berkeley sued over Mitch Kapor’s home (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/05/28/group-takes-berkeley-to-court-over-mitch-kapor-home/)
    -Berkeley teachers receive $185,000 in BPEF grants (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/11/23/bpef-announces-230-classroom-grants/)
    -Election 2010: Liveblogging the results
    (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/11/02/election-2010-liveblogging-the-results/)
    -Berkeley High student dies after shooting
    (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/11/05/berkely-high-freshman-dies/)
    -Berkeley couple buy Mr Mopp’s store
    (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/10/15/berkeley-couple-buys-mr-mopps-toy-store/)
    -Berkeleyside guide: understanding Measures H & I (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/10/13/understanding-measures-h-and-i/)
    -Pools majority falls short: closures expected
    (http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/06/09/pools-majority-falls-short/)

  • Dan Alpert

    Guest, I was impressed by and have mixed feelings about your comments. Your comments reflect the reality of our city (and society) pretty well. There are alot of haves and alot of have-nots. And not just economically. There are those with or without economic well-being, romantic success, job success, feelings of self-worth, intelligence, and a host of other areas where we find ourselves separated from those with more or less than we have.

    While I can understand your disconnect at reading such articles, I don’t think that Berkeleyside (or the broader world) should be constrained from reporting what a particular segment of the population is experiencing. I guess my first hope would be that we find ways as a society of increasing the lot of the have-nots, but I am not so idealistic to believe that all the various areas where some have and some do not will turn into a fully level playing field.

    Though it might just not be possible to accomplish, if you can read these articles and not feel injured by those who report from their viewpoint as haves, you would feel much better (at least maybe just shaking your head thinking “must be nice!”). If you can’t do that, and I wouldn’t blame you a bit if it were not possible, then just don’t read these articles.

  • Oakland fellow

    I was not impressed by “Guest.” “He” had plenty of time at 8am this morning to hang out with a computer and be snarky. I hardly think Berkleyside’s cultural reporting is contributing to “his” problems.

    Go start a garden, or do something nice for your neighbors, or create something useful, or write something authentic and meaningful about your suffering.

    Don’t spend your weekday mornings trashing the Thai Temple and the people who eat there, or making racial, generational, or classist generalizations.

  • Elaine Parrish

    “Guest,” you wrote: “So many decisions for white college students to make….”

    How uninformed are your assumptions! Just because someone is white doesn’t necessarily mean she’s privileged.

    It could be that this girl is going to college in Canada because her parents can’t afford to send her to a private university. (Canadian universities are incredibly cheap, compared to those in the U.S.) You may notice that she’s not home for the holidays from Princeton or Brown.

    Moreover, plenty of white people have been objects of discrimination. Jews are white, and yet millions of them were murdered during World War II. This girl may be lucky simply to have been born.

    Finally, “Guest”, if you really can’t afford to eat out in a restaurant, the Thai Temple might just be your best choice for delicious, affordable cuisine!