Judy's Cafe - A must eat place in San Francisco

Eating at this restaurant was not on our game plan at all. The idea was to go to China town and guess what? We were LOST with our GPS yelling,”keep to the left”, “turn left”, “please make a legal turn”…Hello we are in San Francisco where the streets are mostly one way. We ended turning onto Chestnut Street and we were definitely not disappointed.

I was magnanimous to let Rajesh choose the restaurant, there were a bee line of them. I first thought it was a big mistake coz my stomach was growling and it looked like we were walking towards the residential area, we then turned around and looked at the menu cards in a few restaurants... Nah! We were not impressed. We then stepped in to Judy’s Café, we were handed the menu card and the man told us,” we own no microwaves, everything is made from scratch” Those words were magic to our ears, we were SOLD! The menu card says,” Oversized portions will challenge the hearty eater” and they are right. We had a whole lot of left overs.

The restaurant is small, and we sat by the window. Being the weekend before Christmas, the streets were buzzing with activity. The walls were filled with interesting photos of famous personalities who have visited the restaurant. Tiny as it may seem, it was filled with a lot of help. The manager, Devika came by to enquire if this was our first time and explained that most of the ingredients are organic and since they cook only after they receive the order it may take a little time depending on what we order.. The menu was divided in to Omelets, sweet inspirations, egg breakfast, and sandwiches, soup & salads and beverages of course.

My eyes and heart were set on sweet inspirations….I ordered Sourdough French toast – sourdough French bread grilled in butter and sprinkled with powdered sugar and topped with bananas and served with a generous amount of warm syrup on the side. It was to die for. Rajesh ordered the Huevo Grande – Scrambled eggs covered with cheese, salsa, sour cream, homefried potatoes and nine grain toast. He savored every morsel of it. The only thing different I would next time is, order one tea rather than two, since it is two whole pots of tea that we could not finish.

For both of us, it was a feast. I watched the owner having his lunch there and that makes me comfortable. After his lunch, the owner came by as I had a question about who is who standing with him in the pictures. Charles has visited India and we think he knows a lot more about Hinduism then we do ;)

We noticed that there seemed to be a lot of regulars, almost every customer who walked in knew the manager and the owner. The home fried potatoes is a secret recipe of theirs, I know it had some herbs in it. I am going to keep going back to try and replicate the recipe….

I am so glad we missed our way to China Town :)

Verdict: Great place to visit.
Service: excellent, you cannot ask for anything better.
Price: It is on the expensive side, but we pay a price when you want nothing but the best, right?
Worth a second visit: Definitely.
Hours: open 365 days, Monday to Friday: 7:45 am to 2:15pm, Saturday, Sunday & all holidays: 7:45 am to 3:00pm
Address: 2268 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94123 (415) 922-4588