Dining with monks: Sunday brunch at Berkeley's Wat Mongkolratanaram Thai Temple
When you think of Sunday brunch, the first thing that comes to mind is not likely dining with Thai monks in Berkeley. Yet for Berkeley residents -- and tourists who are in the know -- Sunday brunch at Wat Mongkolratanaram Thai Temple is a hot ticket. And has been for well over two decades.
My wife, Therese, and I caught wind of the so quintessentially Berkeley brunch phenomena that we were determined to experience it for ourselves. First, let me try to explain what is meant by "quintessentially Berkeley" when describing Berkeley's food scene. Berkeley has a long-established reputation for a creative, eclectic, cultural, and very international approach to food that embraces and represents the city's diverse population and progressive values.
Wat Mongkolratanaram brunch falls firmly into the cultural and international food camp, serving authentic and extremely delicious Thai food every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. – or until it sells out, which it apparently often does.
Imagining we would be sitting down with monks cross-legged on the floor, Therese and I donned our most respectable, but still very comfortable pants and headed to the temple. The temple is located in a quiet Berkeley residential neighborhood – one that tried to shut the brunch affair down in 2009 over noise and food odor complaints. Fortunately, the city and Berkeley university students rallied overwhelming support for the temple, and, with some restrictions, the Sunday brunch was allowed to continue. Still, I could see why the neighbors might have been a bit upset when we drove around to find parking. Parking is difficult to locate since anyone attending the brunch must find a space on the street -- the same as any resident who lives here. There are now "no parking" and “don’t block the sidewalk” sandwich boards at several locations to minimize problems.
We managed to secure a parking space not far away (in part because we were early, an advisable tactic). From our street parking, it was a short wander up to and through the temple gate and into a sort of street-fair setup with various booths lining the backyard serving different Thai food options. Think curries, soups, papaya salad, mango sticky rice and more. And we quickly realized there really was no eating with the monks as they were inside the temple doing their monk thing. An army of volunteers did the cooking and serving. Which makes sense since the brunch is a sort of weekly fundraiser to support the monks' living costs at the Berkeley temple.
Seating is family style at long tables set up in the back and, trust me, you want to get here early. By 11 in the morning -- only an hour after the brunch kicked off -- the lines were long and many of the tables were already full.
There is a system for paying and fetching that can feel a bit confusing, if you are not used to it. First, this is a cash-only establishment, but you can't spend your cash at the food booths. As we quickly discovered, the first thing to do is get in line at a tent that sells tokens. For the two of us, we found that $30 for various colored tokens (each color representing 1, 5, or 10 token denominations) was sufficient — $20 would have worked, too, but we splurged on the mango sticky rice for dessert. And if you have any tokens left over (which we didn't) simply return the unused tokens to the same booth to get cash back.
Tokens in hand, we headed over to the food tents to scout out the various options, meat, vegetarian, curry, salad, dessert. There were just so many delicious options I found it hard to decide. And it was very clear many folks knew exactly what they were doing as lines began forming at the more popular selections. Assuming the veteran brunch goers must know what they were doing, I got in a longish line that said "meat." As I watched plates and bowls of food being served, I learned one thing very quickly -- portions are HUGE! I decided on the papaya salad and a chicken curry and for me it was love at first bite. Therese had a huge steaming bowl of beef noodle soup – there were beef bones in the pot too and apparently regulars come prepared with bags to take the bones home to Rover. I couldn't have wiped the smile off Therese's face if I tried.
And from the looks of the smiles, laughter and frequent "oh this is so good" comments emanating from the tables around us, just about everyone thinks the food is delicious too. I also learned, as I was gazing around at other brunch guests, that many bring their own resealable containers for leftovers. Which is so smart and also so very Berkeley! As I already mentioned, the portions are huge! Our mango sticky rice dessert was thankfully already packaged in a to-go container, but I would have been very happy taking home some of my salad and curry, too, if I’d containers to put food in. Next time!
Bellies very full, we headed for the exit, but not before peeking inside the temple where the monks were still doing monk things. We learned that the temple has been here for 40 years, after moving from South San Francisco. There are five monks, and one has been in Berkeley for all 40 years. In a sort of partnership between the Thai and U.S. embassies, the temple serves as a cultural bridge for the Thai community, offering educational events, teaching Thai language classes, and more.
The Wat Mongkolratanaram Thai Temple, at 1911 Russell Street, is a Berkeley gem. We know we'll be showing up to next time we visit Berkeley ... this time with to-go containers tucked into our bags.
— Story by Michael Hodgson