A Southern Start

What: Criolla Kitchen

Why: For some lip-smacking Southern and soul (comfort) food

Where: Castro district, San Francisco

Who: Master mind of Chef Randy Lewis, who opened the restaurant in 2002. Hailing from New Orleans, Chef Lewis describes his food as southern memoirs served up with Nor Cal sensibilities.

BayMonkey two cents: Soul food, as the name implies, warms the soul. It is comfort food in a sense that it conjures beautiful memories of lost moments in time, be it of a warm sunny childhood day or the aroma of ma's kitchen or of a home far away. Criolla Kitchen was the lunch destination of choice on a crisp SF afternoon after a quick read of the SF chronicle's "Inside scoop" and a review check on the ever reliable "yelp.com". The restaurant was an easy find and although there was a small queue of hungry people outside, we did manage to get seats pretty quickly.
Now, on to the food. We started off with the yummilicious Yam Yam tater tots (golden orange nuggets) served along with a creamy aoili sauce that had a nice kick to it! The tater tots were crunchy on the outside and melt in the mouth soft on the inside. Slightly sweet, yet savory, they whetted our appetite enought to graduate onto entrees.
Then came our order of rice and black beans with fried chicken with a side of grits. The rice and beans were perfectly cooked and meshed really well and the fried chicken was just about perfect (not too deep fried or soggy soft).
My favorite though were the grits (my intrigue with grits started with "My Cousin Vinny"). The teeny weeny southern belle in me likes nothing more than her grits done right and she was not disappointed at all! The grits were buttery mushy intercepted by the coarseness imparted by the corn, but not overloaded with cheese.
Finally we stopped with the yummy and flavorful shrimp po' boy sandwich. Generous swigs of iced tea sweetened with simple syrup (came on the side in a fanciful container) helped wash down this delicious meal. Bursting at the seams, we did not wait for dessert (bread pudding or pecan pie), but will come back again for more of this southern fare.
MONKEY METER
Overall impression:



Food:

Green quotient (vegetarian friendly): Some appetizers and most side orders are vegetarian, but much cannot be said of entrees. I have been told that there exists a unicorn-like-myth of a vegan soul food restaurant in Oakland, so I guess there is fairness in this universe, after all.

Interior/decor: Clever use of the small space with clean wooden tables, small-ish wooden chairs. Forks and knives were prefolded with paper towels in glass jars on the tables (a nice touch!). The line of bottles standing on the kitchen ledge brought back sweet memories of Brasa, another amazing chow haven, in Minneapolis.

Service: OK. Could have been better in the sense that part of our order was kind of forgotten and we had to remind the server lady (she did apologize profusely though).

For more information (address, reservation policy, price listing, more reviews for statistical fairness and any other nit-picking detail that your cranium needs to fill on), you have YELP.