Brother’s Restaurant
4128 Geary Blvd
San Francisco, CA 94101
(415) 387-7991
If you’re looking for some cheap eats around lunchtime, the famous Brother’s Restaurant on Geary has a daily lunch special where you can get chicken, pork, or beef bulgogi (that’s Korean BBQ) for $7.95. That’s a little more than I usually pay for food but you have to remember that in general, Korean food is going to be more expensive than the real cheap eats which usually fall into the Chinese or Mexican food categories.
Note what $7.95 gets you:
- A sizzling platter of your BBQ order. This means you are not going to be cooking it yourself at the table, but I’m ok with that because it saves my clothes from getting completely soaked in the smell of charcoal.
- All those yummy side dishes that come with Korean food. When I’ve ordered this and business has been slow in the restaurant, I seem to get less side dishes. Or I was by myself and they didn’t think I could put all of those away (which I can).
- A little bowl of seaweed soup: I have been to this lunch special several times, and sometimes they seem to “forget” this, too.
- A bowl of that sweet cold barley soup for dessert. (Again, the slower the business, the more they seem to forget everything my $7.95 is supposed to get me.)
- I don’t think rice is included in the price. I know this is sacrilege but I usually minimize the rice intake in order to maximize the Korean BBQ intake.
Also impressive is that this special happens seven days a week, so if there’s no chance in hell you could ever hit this place on the weekday, you still can make it over on a lazy Sunday.