Only in Berkeley

The Berkeley Thai Temple Brunch is one of those Berkeley things that is just so Berkeley everyone should experience it once. It's also the sort of mass noise and confusion I generally stay as far away from as possible. The breakfast, really more of a lunch is held at a Thai temple in Berkeley and all the proceeds go to supporting the temple. It's all held in the temple's yard under a few tents for cooking and a few with tables for eating. The first thing you have to do is change your money into tokens, $1 for $1 token. Though the token line seemed long it moved fairly quickly. Then one has to figure out how to get something to eat. Apparently there is one line for vegetarian curries and such, another for meat, another for noodle soup, another for sticky rice. You pay with the tokens when you get your food 5 tokens for one dish, six for two etc. As my friend who had been there before stood in the soup line I thought maybe I'd get the curry so we could try different things. But when I got to the line for the curry there was literally no end in sight, it wrapped around the building and who knows where. There was just no way I could stand in a line that long for a plate of food, so we both ended up with noodle soup which was an excellent choice. Luckily the line for the wonderful mango sticky rice was relatively short and a great way to complete the meal. It may have been the first sunny Sunday in months brought out swarms of people but my impression is the Thai Breakfast is usually this way. I'll certainly go again, next time knowing much better what I'm getting into. Once I sat down happily eating my food it was fun watching the buzz of hungry people. The setup puts one in a quandary, go hungry and be grumpy while standing in line or go after having eaten breakfast and not enjoy the food quite so much?