If the afterlife serves anything like the menu at Brenda's Meat & Three, I may have to renounce my unbelief. Brenda Buenviaje and company have transformed the former Blue Jay Café on Divisadero into a place where biscuits are essentially mandatory and portion control never rears its ugly head. It might be the only place in San Francisco where you can order a fried bologna sandwich.
The third of a planned four eateries by Brenda Buenviaje — the others being the original Brenda's French Soul Food on Polk Street, Libby Jane Café down the block from it, and the forthcoming Brenda's Original Po' Boys — Brenda's Meat & Three expands its reach to the entire American South. New Orleans, as ever, remains the anchor.
There's only a bit of overlap between the two restaurants; the Hangtown Fry's oysters show up in a Delta scramble, for instance. Anyone who unfailingly orders the beignet flight at Brenda's mother ship might want to check out the "CALAS!" here. (Calas are rice fritters with a fascinating history.) Other wins abound: A plate of ham steak with "red eye" gravy that comes with eggs, grits or hash, and toast or a cream biscuit still manages to be less than $12. And the sausage gravy that accompanied the one-eyed jack biscuits and gravy (plus a chicken-fried chicken steak) is positively transcendent, a must for dipping fries in as well.
As for that fried bologna sandwich, it's basically Canadian bacon with pickles and pimento cheese, and, in the words of a dining companion, "you probably have to grow up with it to love it." But I took to it immediately. Even though I was already stuffed, my Clean Plate Club membership was never in jeopardy.
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