I spent close to a decade in the South, and after experience all that Southern food and hospitality, I really enjoy Southern cooking (and the warm, kind heart people). So I like to go try out some restaurants that serves Southern cooking wherever I go. In San Francisco, I managed to find another Southern cooking restaurant, The Front Porch. I heard they have some pretty awesome fried chicken.

We arrived right before they opened in the afternoon, and we waited outside with few other people who also arrived a bit too early. It was easy to spot with their nice big sign, and they had some benches so we had no issue waiting around for few minutes. They got cute metal decoration by the benches with wooden fences, bringing out the Southern feel.

 

They have some outside seating with nice wooden tables and chairs, they looked very lovely. During the warmer months, I am sure it will be a nice spot to have lunch/dinner.

 

Inside was rather dark, as it extended long towards the back of the building, and they only have windows at the front of the restaurant. They have a bar right at the front, and many tables and chairs to entertain good amount of crowds. We sat all the way at the back of the restaurant by the kitchen. It is especially darker back there, creating the certain mood with lit candles and dim lights.

 

We could see the kitchen pretty good, I always thing it is good to have a kitchen that is open to the rest of the restaurant. I think it makes the kitchen staff more “honest” while preparing the dishes, the customers can have more trust towards them naturally. They had some interesting labels on their bottles of condiments and water… They do have character and personality for sure.

We got some complimentary cornbread, it was not too big, but it was nice. I like cornbread so I was happy to get them rather than regular bread or rolls. The cornbread here were not really memorable, nothing special…

We started off with Crawfish Hush Puppies with Spicy Remoulade ($9). I am not a big crawfish fan, but this one was pretty good. It had small chunks of crawfish, moist, and had a nice kick to it. And they were pretty big hush puppies. The remoulade was pretty good also, creamy with enough spiciness, it added that extra flavor to the hush puppies.

Then we moved onto their Baked Mac & Cheese ($8). It came in the small cast iron pan, which I always like in both presentation and keeping the food super hot. In this case, it also helped all the cheese to be very cheesy longer. It had nice amount of cheese on the shell pasta, which also got all that cheese in the inside of the shell as well, making the pasta more cheesy and yummy.

For the main dish, we got Fried Chicken: 4 pcs ($18.50), which comes with chicken with garlic mashers & gravy, ham hock collards. When it was delivered to out table, we were surprised to see pop corn on there, very interesting. It had some kind of seasoning on it, pretty good addition to the rest of the food. The chicken was nice size, juicy, and moist. Collards was more bitter than I like, and mashed potato was creamy with just a hint of garlic. Overall, chicken was excellent, and the rest of a-ok.

Their menu was very pricey, I think the chicken we ordered was the cheapest item they had. Maybe it is average in that neighborhood, but we felt like it was a bit too high. The food was good, and service was ok. It was not the best fried chicken I ever had, but it was good and I enjoyed it. I am not sure if I would go back for dinner, but maybe for brunch when their price is more reasonable and they do have interesting brunch menu as well.

The Front Porch – 65A 29th St, San Francisco, CA 94110