Brown Sugar Kitchen 2.0

Delighted to report that our dear friend Tanya Holland has opened a Brown Sugar Kitchen in the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Tanya has long wanted to expand her popular breakfast and brunch hub—opened for more than a decade—which had diners lined up outside the door of the original BSK in West Oakland for modern soul food and comfort classics.

New to Tanya’s food? Her signature tastes: buttermilk fried chicken; cornmeal waffles (with brown sugar butter and apple cider syrup); and cheddar cheese grits are simply a delicious way to start the day. She also developed a rep for smoked chicken and shrimp gumbo, pulled pork sandwiches, and blackened catfish po’boys.

Wait—there’s more. This counter-service San Francisco location, open from 7 am to 7 pm, debuted before the launch of her flagship, 85-seat BSK restaurant in Oakland’s Uptown neighborhood, which opened February 20 and—a first—serves dinner too.

Tanya, who competed on the last season of Top Chef, has said she wants Brown Sugar Kitchen to become the Shake Shack of soul food. She is set to open a Brown Sugar Kitchen in Oakland’s International Airport and may have a presence at the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center in Mission Bay. Her food is also featured on the menu at the Oakland Floodcraft Taproom inside the Whole Foods by Lake Merritt.

Stay tuned for when we’ll have BSK in the regular rotation on our San Francisco Ferry Building and Farmers Market Food Tour and Oakland Uptown Food & Drinks Tour tours.

Update: In January 2020, Tanya’s Ferry Building location closed (wah!). But a month later, in good news for Oakland, she announced she will partner with the Oakland Museum of California on a soul food cafe. Town Fare by Tanya Holland is slated to open in August.