BRUNCH AT THE THAI TEMPLE IN BERKELEY

There's a local brunch here in the East Bay that's well known - it's at the Thai Temple in Berkeley and it takes place every Sunday. I'd heard rumors of it, but had never been, so one Sunday, we finally went with our friend Brian. It's kinda confusing if you've never been before and haven't read up on it before hand, but luckily, I'd done so, and Brian had also been there before. Basically, there are food booths and tables set up on a concrete patio adjacent to the Thai temple. It's actually pretty busy and crowded, so it's a good idea to show up early. The day we went it was raining, so I think there were less people than usual.

The first thing you have to do when you arrive is get in line to trade cash for tokens. I think there might be some rule about ppl handling cash, so they use tokens instead. 1 token = $1 and all the food is priced in terms of tokens. Don't worry, if you get too many tokens you can trade them in and get your money back. Then you can look around and check out all the stations to decide what you wanna eat. After I did some scoping, I settled on getting a rice plate with 2 toppings - yellow chicken curry and a chicken leg. I think this cost 6 tokens. :

The food here is decent. It's not super cheap by any means, but it's pretty tasty. And the money goes to a good cause. The other nice thing is that there's a lot of variety, so you can try new things. Here's Tom's plate. He also got 2 choices with pork and pad thai.

I also got a box of veggie spring rolls and in this photo, you can see a box with mango sticky rice. I think both were 5 tokens. I liked the spring rolls and on a later trip I had the mango sticky rice, which was also really good:
And here's a plate of coconut desserts that Brian got. One's fried, the other's steamed. I liked the fried one more, but it's really only good if it's piping hot.

We've actually already been back once since our first visit. It's a great place to meet up with friends, just as long as you can find seat for everyone. And like I said, it's pretty decently priced and an opportunity to eat good food for a good cause.