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Adventures in Dining

Eat, Play, Love

      The first thing you notice is the smell of food: a mixture of curry and spices that entices from blocks away. The second is that everyone seems to be heading in the same direction: to Wat Mongkolratanaram, a Thai Buddhist Temple, on Russell Street in South Berkeley.
      “Is that a real temple?” my 7-year-old son Gus asks. I’m sure he’s thinking of his Lego Indiana Jones Temple of Doom set, as he knows nothing otherwise about temples, but I tell him yes, this is a real temple where Buddhist monks live. It’s actually a renovated Victorian, but with gold and green dragons flanking the outside stairs, Gus is convinced that something exciting is going on. And indeed, on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., a giant communal feast and fund-raiser to benefit the temple and its cultural programs, is held in the backyard.
     The temple does no advertising, so most people who find out about the brunch do so through word of mouth. It was my friend Ondine and her son Elijah who first told me about it. And it’s here we meet one rainy Sunday, along with what looks like at least a hundred other people. Large picnic tables are set up outdoors behind the temple, where pilgrims of all ages are gathered to eat and talk. Volunteers, mostly Thai men and women, cook and serve Thai food as part of “making merit,” or doing good deeds to benefit the temple and the several monks who live there.
      First stop is the token booth, where we exchange $30 dollars for 30 large, silver tokens, which my son and Elijah find “cooler than real money” — and harder to part with. These tokens are then “donated” to buy food. At various stations, friendly servers offer generous portions of food, with donations ranging from three to seven tokens.
     There are separate lines for vegetarians and meat eaters and, for seven tokens, you can get a combination of three entrees: pad thai, spicy green beans, curries of all kinds — yellow chicken, red beef, vegetarian pumpkin. Other stations serve beef noodle soup (pho), fried chicken, fish cakes, spring rolls, green papaya salad (som tam), and the not-to-be-missed sweet rice and mango, as well as other desserts, such as fried taro.
     It’s good to come early, as the food lines can be long. Gus — whose diet consists almost entirely of pasta with butter and who’s never met a vegetable he likes — devoured an entire plate of pad thai, something I’ve never seen him do. Though we’d ordered it for him at restaurants before, my husband and I have never actually been able to convince him to eat it.
      Elijah declared the mango sticky rice his favorite: chunks of ripe mango, over a bed of sweet white and red rice, with pieces of coconut custard. What’s not to like? And, after a few bites of very large shrimp spring rolls, the kids went off to play in the garden behind the tables. Ondine and I made our way through the various curries, and the spicy papaya salad, and still had plenty of food left over.
      No one seemed to mind kids running around. In fact, the entire atmosphere was warm, friendly and embracing of families. We met Tristan Naramore with his wife, Bup, who is Thai, and their two children, Pim (9) and Mimi (4), who’ve been coming for decades — mostly for the food.
     Gus and Elijah, having had enough of the garden, headed up a set of stairs that led to the second floor temple or wat. They knew enough to take off their shoes to enter the large carpeted room, but not enough to prevent themselves from touching the burnt orange robe of one of the monks. He didn’t seem to mind. .
     At the top of the room, was a giant gold Buddha, which the monk gently advised us to bow three times before. The boys were intrigued by all the gold on the walls, and the monk did not seem to mind when they inspected the altar and decorations. It was Pim’s birthday, and in Thai tradition, it’s customary to visit a temple on your birthday and make an offering or get a blessing from the monk. So the monk offered to chant for us.
     The monk chanted in Pali, an ancient religious language derived from Sanksrit, as we sat lotus-positioned on the floor. At one point, he dipped a stick in water, giving us a “shower” as Gus said. Afterwards, the monk handed out colorful threaded bracelets to all the kids as an additional blessing.
     The ceremony over, we said our thanks and goodbye, feeling peaceful and strangely moved.
      “What was your favorite part?” I asked Gus. “The praying,” he replied without hesitation. “I wish we could come back here more often,” he added. Eat. Play. Love. It’s hard to think of a better brunch to satisfy your stomach and your soul. Nor one that could turn a reluctant eater into an adventurous one.
     Wat Mongkolratanaram, Sunday brunch 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., 1911 Russell St., Berkeley, (510) 849-3419, watmongkolberkeley.com.