Intern Ailene Sankur refs the Brunch Battle of the Bay: Mama vs. Mama.
This culinary clash takes place between two cross-bay heavyweights—brunch staples with a maternal instinct to make sure you get your most important meal of the day: the one at noon that takes away the shakes. Oakland’s Mama’s Royal Café is a hipster enclave in the Temescal District while San Francisco’s Mama’s is a bougie North Beach eatery. Both are cash-only neighborhood favorites (I’ve said it before–the less a restaurant wants to convenience you, the better it probably is.) Let the fight begin!
Round 1—The Line
Both Mama’s Royal Café and Mama’s are, apparently, worth waiting for. The wait at Mama’s is known to take over an hour, while I’ve never waited over thirty minutes at Mama’s Royal. Both restaurants operate on the “turn and burn” philosophy: moving people in and out quickly to turn over the tables. At Mama’s Royal, sign up on the clipboard, grab a mug from the pile and pour yourself coffee. Then lounge in the front–with the ironically acid-washed-skinny-jean clad hipsters–smoke a cigarette and wait for someone to yell your name. At Mama’s, you wait in a line sans coffee–unless someone holds your place in line so you can run to Caffe Roma two blocks away–sandwiched between an ex-Cal frat boy/junior assistant something or other talking on his cell about how wasted he was last night and two impossibly thin and good-looking parents with impossibly “precocious” children. Either way, bring the paper!
Winner: Mama’s Royal Café. Come on, Mom would never make anyone wait outside without offering them a hot beverage.