Brothers Kitchen

I called the phone number and some rude person answered sounded drunk and just told me he didnt have time to take my order … this place should be condemned!

Went here and order at fish and greens they didn’t have any greens wanted yams they didn’t have any so go the macaroni and cheese and that was stale tasting. They don’t have a kiosk for you to use your card so bring cash. I wouldn’t suggested eating here.

If I could give it 0 stars I would. I ordered online and they didnt come for 3 hours. The driver didnt have change and so I ended up having to give them a $ 10 tip. By that time I didnt care and just wanted my food. But once I got it I was horrified. The fruit salad was more mayo than actual fruit… the potato salad had raw potatoes… and the worst offender was the fried chicken… it literally tasted like I licked a kitchen floor and then I saw it… there was a long curly hair WRAPPED AROUND MY DRUMSTICK UNDERNEATH THE BATTER… How does that even happen? I will never, ever, ever order from them again.

Seriously?
I won’t even bother to write about the food or delivery experience. Any negative review is met with «it’s a Black Owned Business and you are trying to make it fail».
Listen up Brothers.
People do not care about the skin color of the owners or cooks. We want good food, delivered when promised. Do it well, and we’ll give you 5 stars. Screw it up, and we’ll give you 1. You can make excuses all day, but nobody is fooled.
You have serious problems at your restaurant. You can ignore them and play the race card, or you can man up and fix them. Want to be in business next year? Acknowledge the problems and fix them.
It really doesn’t matter how well you cook if all your customers are pissed off.

I wanted to make a surprise delivery to my guy’s workplace (he was hungry!) and this place was the only place in Oakland who delivered food in the mornings — cool!
So I ordered him the chicken n waffles and a smoothie online to be delivered to his work. I got a call very shortly from them explaining that they are out of strawberries (what comes on the waffles normally) and smoothies, but they would substitute with bananas and apple or cranberry juice, if that was okay with me. I agreed, and the order got delivered in about 30 minutes!
He loved the food, said the bananas were a nice touch (and he had to share, which means they have biiiiiiiig portions!).
My only deal is that I put in the special instructions that it was for him (including his name) because they didn’t have a seperate «name on card» box so I had to use mine. But they had called me saying that they were there and were told no one by my name was there. We straightened it out, but it was kind of like, umm do you jot read the special instructions?
Other than that, good food and prompt service!

Maybe I’ll have to take Virginia P’s advice and go into this place instead of doing delivery but that doesn’t mean they’ll have what I want.
Yes the people are very nice and most of the food is good, but they run out of everything and take forever to deliver. Last night I ordered at 9:50pm with
, didn’t get our food ’til 12:30am. Yes, almost 3 hours. The very nice people called me 2 or 3 times to tell me what they were out of and what they had left for substitutions. The driver called to tell me he was on his way and would be there in 10 minutes, an hour later he fessed up that he had 7 deliveries before mine and had to get gas too. Why not tell me up front?
Here’s a list of what I ordered compared to what I got last night/​this morning:
Juicy Bites Beef Burger: no hamburger in the house at all, not even a turkey burger, settled for chicken strips
Honey Carrot Pie: sounds good huh? maybe so but I would know as they didn’t have it, so got a little round German Choc Cake which was OK and made by another company
Red Velvet Cake: cute little round cake, delicious, perfect A+, made by another company
Peach Cobbler: so disappointed, got a Carmel Cake instead made by another company
The Billy Bob: When you order Chicken & Waffles wouldn’t you expect FRIED chicken? What I got was flat piece of chicken that looked like it would go on a sandwich but it tasted OK, Waffle OK but no syrup, grits good but no butter that I requested.
Side of Greens: nope, had to get black-​eyed peas which were just OK
Brother’s Omelet: yum with bacon and Swiss cheese, order Sourdough toast but it didn’t make it to my house
I really want to like this place and give it 4 or 5 stars but if you’re gonna stay open until 2:30am you have to get it together on inventory and delivery. Good luck!

Yes, good fried chicken.
Now, I will second _​all_​the other 1-​star reviewers, especially for the 2 – 3 delivery orders we placed to get our 1 order of «food.»
My wife and I had a baby and used mealtrain to request meals from friends and family. A relative ordered us a meal via
. An hour before delivery I get a call saying their driver didn’t show and they were canceling our order.
And yet, our relatives persisted the following week to try and feed us and our 2 week old child from Brothers Kitchen in Oakland.
.
called us at 2:40 saying they called Brothers 3 times w/​no answer for a 3pm delivery.
. We called Brothers at 3:30: no order received. Asked for manager; none on site.
. Manager called me. Explained they failed to renew their fax service so weren’t getting orders from
. Not sure why they weren’t answering phones. Re-​placed order. Also said they were out of turkey chops and peach cobbler: pork chops and chocolate cake OK? Fine. Remember these items.
. Manager promised to call me with updated delivery time. Did not. I called and confirmed a 5:15 delivery… not too late… also not 3pm.
. Called Brothers at 5:15 to check up: driver just left.
. Get a call from driver at 5:20: will arrive at 5:30 — 5:35. Perfect.
. Call driver at 5:45: he’s outside. Takes another 7 minutes to get our food. Explains delay was because he was stopped by an unmarked cop car; I didn’t ask why.
Now for the food! Mmm (again, for the chicken). Also, how did we get 1 piece of chicken when we didn’t order any? Remember those turkey chops, now pork chops? They turned into the soggiest greasy nachos I’ve ever seen: inedible. At least we had our peach cobbler, I mean cake, I mean… oh: no cake.
This is not a business. They do not «deliver.» If you want good fried chicken, I would imagine you could go there and spend an afternoon on site, with low expectations.

This place is absolutely disgusting. Came here with some friends in the morning. The cook kept complaining that his wife wasn’t there to take orders and clearly looked hung over and didn’t want to be there.
Ordered the Belgian waffles. I don’t know what made them «Belgian»… Apart from him handling the waffles with his bare hands after pouring the waffle mix from a cup he got in the back that looked like it had been sitting out for days.
They didn’t come with whipped cream or strawberries or any of that. The only thing they came with was very melted butter that had a tiny dead fly in it served on a dish that still had a piece of lettuce attached and a plastic fork.
This place is a shit-​hole and would be shut down immediately if any health inspectors checked up on it. It’s not even that cheap for ghetto food. It has absolutely nothing going for it.

I see all the negative reviewers on here ordered on Grubhub or seamless, or couldn’t get their ass out of the house for two seconds to go experience this place. Yes, it’s in West Oakland. OOOoooOOO Scaaaaaaaary. But by crikey is their fried chicken worth it! Oh lawd, I was skeptical at first. My friends had all recommended the po’ boys (which are still delish), but I was reeling from day drinking and needed my fried food fix. I got a fried chicken plate with mac ‘n cheese and corn bread. MY MOUTH WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.
1. The people working there are extremely nice and suggest the best things to cram in your cram hole.
2. The fried chicken MELTS off the bone and in to your face. EAT IT.
3. Brother (Ken) some times hangs out outside and you can challenge him to waffle-​offs. Awesome.
4. BEST.MAC.EVAR.
5. Well-​priced for how friggin’ tasty it it.
Everything was excellent. I love this place. The corn bread was kind of dry. Boo hoo.

My coworkers and I ordered at 11:45am via eat24… Two hours into our wait we got a call telling us that they didn’t have ribs. More waiting. When our order was delivered at 3pm they didn’t get our order right: no sides, no drinks, and in one case a completely different item. I’m disappointed at the service and the food was subpar.
When I phoned the restaurant the lady said she would remake our order and send it free of charge — as of now, I haven’t heard back about that order…
I wish I could say something positive but I can’t. I would recommend trying a different place.

What exactly is going on here? I would not just walk away from this place, but RUN.
I ordered from this place using Grub Hub, and initially thought this was some new hip BBQ joint. It was a mistake not to read the reviews before ordering, but I was hungry and I was rushing to get my order in. I received a phone call 15 minutes before my order was due to arrive and the girl on the phone [rude, smacking gum, yelling at other coworkers in my ear, completely incapable of multi-​tasking or I don’t know, just TASKING] told me that they didn’t have any greens. Um. Ok. Fortunately, the greens were for a smoothie they offered so I said, just bring me any smoothie. Any smoothie at all. Just. Bring. Food.
Tick tock. After that weird phone call I decided to read the reviews and would you know it, I realized this was a ramshackle sh*t box that I had driven past on San Pablo avenue not a week earlier. I remember looking at it like, welp, there’s a health code violation. I was mortified I’d ordered from there. So, I called the place 30 minutes after my food was due to arrive, to check on the progress of things.
Dude Answers.
Me: Hi, I ordered some food online, is it coming?
Dude: [Interrupting] What is your name ma’am?
Me: Jaime
Dude: [Yelling to chick I talked to earlier] Jaime?
Chick in the background, but so clear it was like she was on the line with us: [In a Shaniqua neck roll kind of voice] JAIME’S JUST GONNA HAVE TO BE PATIENT.
Dude: So, you’re over by Lake Merritt? Yah, it’s gonna be probably, another 30 minutes. Is that ok?
Me: [Stunned. Shocked. Cannot speak. Is that OK?!?]
Chick in the background: [yelling out times she feels like maybe she might want to deliver my food] 9:30. 10. [it was 8:30 at this point]
Dude: ma’am? Is that ok?
Me:[Still stunned. cannot speak.]
Dude: hangs up.
!!!
I immediately jumped in my car and went to trader joes and started shoving free samples in my mouth. I drove home and decided, ok, now that I have some form of sustenance, let’s see how this plays out. I wait another hour, and decide to call again. It rings and rings and rings until I get an answering machine. It’s 11 p.m. so I figure they’re closed and I’m not getting any dinner. I decide it’s time to call Grub Hub and file a formal [laughable, hilarious] complaint. Indeed the lovely customer service gal had a good chuckle over this shenanigan and decided to refund my bill in full. Weirdly though, she mentions this place is open until 3 a.m. I don’t even know. Who serves bbq in the ghetto of Oakland until 3 a.m. I’m all for late night chicken and waffles, but I don’t even like going to that part of town during the day, let alone getting out of my car at night at 3 a.m. to eat at an establishment that is barely standing. The people around there that would actually hang around there, probably aren’t buying food.
I have a feeling, that the reality of this place, is that no one actually wants to make you your food, let alone get in a car and drive it to you. Maybe this place is just a cover for some other shady operation and the food business is not really their deal. Do not walk, RUN AWAY.

Unfortunately the delivery horror stories are true. We ordered through
for delivery to my job. We put through the order at 12:20 and the estimated delivery time on the website was longer than usual, 60 – 75 minutes. I called the restaurant and checked on our order just before 2:00 since no one had shown up and got an answering machine. I contacted Eat24 and got a call from the restaurant at 2:00 saying that our food was out the door.
At almost 2:30 I got a call from the delivery driver. She was on the wrong side of Emeryville. Shortly after that, I got another call from the restaurant, asking if the driver had shown up because she had left behind our sides.
It was about 3:00 when our food got to our building. The driver apologized profusely, letting me know that she had forgotten her GPS and gotten lost. She told me that there were sodas in her car (she had parked by the wrong building and proceeded on foot), but at that point I knew that my coworkers were as hungry as I was and were probably lined up along our office windows staring down at us like vultures on a rooftop so I told her to pass.
The food was okay. We’re not a picky group… we tend to like anything that we can get delivered. The people who ordered po boys said that they were bland. The ginger salads are cabbage… thank goodness, because any lettuce salad probably wouldn’t have survived the trip, but it might be good information for someone thinking of ordering the salad. The wings were pretty good, the fried chicken was reported to be salty, and the mac and cheese was bland. Nothing was BAD. And of course everything was cold after an hour inside the delivery car. Luckily the only sides that seemed to have been left behind were the side salads, so not too big a loss, but it’s a little concerning that there was no effort to offer a discount or make the situation right in some way. That says to me that this is not an appalling, out of the ordinary experience.
The people we dealt with were all lovely, friendly people. The food would have been better I’m sure if we’d had it fresh. I would love to see them on one of those restaurant rescue shows, because from our experience it seems that they are just lacking organizational skills.

Do not order food from here. I tried to order delivery last night. And tell me why the driver called me saying that I gave him the wrong address. I felt bad and apologized but after I looked at the address I provided online to drop off and it was actually correct. I wait another hour then call the restaurant to find out they cancelled my order and and said they «issued a full refund». This is totally unacceptable I didn’t give the wrong address or was even notified they cancelled my order.

I can’t comment on the food, because they never delivered it. I can say that this was by far the worst delivery customer service I have ever encountered. I know people can have bad days, but really. I placed the order on Friday for delivery on Monday night. 10 minutes after it should have been delivered I called to check on the order. The woman on the phone, couldn’t even tell me if she had the order, let alone if it was out for delivery. Rather than apologizing and offering to research the issue — she yelled — I mean SCREAMED at me and hung up on me.
I called the third party vendor I had placed the order through. The third party vendor contacted them, but after 10 minutes on hold were still unsure if the order was out for delivery or at the shop. I called the third party vendor back 20 minutes later to find out that the order had been totally lost AND Brother’s kitchen WAS NOT sending a replacement order because the owner was unavailable. Really?
45 minutes later and I have no food and have to place another order.
I have worked in a lot of restaurants — high and low end — and if you loose someone’s order, you fix it. You put in again as a rush order and comp them the meal or a portion of. That’s pretty standard. They even do it at jamba juice.
If you receive a complaint that your employee is rude, you apologize to the customer.
I place orders for my organization state wide — 5 –200 people depending on the meeting. I try to order delivery from local places when I can. I try to support new business when I can, but I places like this make it hard to support to little guys. Really sad.

Usually I don’t go against the reviewers with Unilocal but I’m so glad I went with my instincts on this one! I signed up just to post a positive review on one of the best fried chicken places in Oakland. The only thing I will agree with the negative comments is in regards to the phone breaking up… all the other stuff is simply not true!
We ordered the 8-​piece family meal with greens, mac n cheese, fries and black eyed beans. The person on the other end of the phone was friendly and helpful as well as our delivery person being super nice. Our food arrived within an hour, everything was hot and super yummy. I’m starting to think these negative comments were written by competitors or super sensitive, picky people who shouldn’t even eat in public!!! I can’t wait to try more from this place and maybe someday in the future they will start serving fried pork chops!!!

i went to brothers and they weren’t nice to me. i really felt like they just wanted me to leave. and how could that be? who wouldn’t want a crazy yid with a jewfro in their soul food restaurant?
when i asked them how the greens were done the guy told me «cooked.» and he gave me the wrinkle brow. i thought maybe he was having a bad day but he took 2 calls while i was waiting for my order and he was much happier to talk to whoever that was. even though there was only 1 other lady there my chicken took about an hour. and the chicken was sitting in the frying basket for about 45 minutes of that hour. all they had to do aside from that was put some macaroni and cheese and some rice and beans in the box and i would’ve been out the door. some other guy came in and the guy behind the counter wouldn’t even take his order. the customer says «are you taking orders» and they guy just turns his head towards him and goes «yeah.» the customer walked out and the guy looks at me like ‘what’s his problem.‘
when i did get my food the guy gives me kind of a smile and says something about sorry for the wait. he gave me an extra piece of chicken which was nice. to be honest i was thinking about just walking out before i got my food, but it got so outlandish. it was kind of like a saturday night live skit. i was kind of wondering what was going to happen.
the food was ok. the chicken wasn’t that cold. the rice and beans were kind of bland. i wanted to order some cake. the cake looked nice. but he just rang me up and didn’t give me a chance. i figured i should just keep my mouth shut at this point.
brothers is right by my house and i was so looking forward to trying a bunch of the really nice things on their menu. they have these nice all natural healthy juices that looked really good. but ya know, it felt like it was only supposed to look like a restaurant and if you go in there and try to get some food they’ll get mad at you.

More like really bad. 60 min max was supposedly the delivery time but it took over 1.5 hours. I ordered a burger with turkey bacon for an additional charge and there was no turkey bacon when it arrived. The catfish chowder was a scary experience because it wasnt stated in the menu that it would come with sea horse tails. At first it looked like worms where in the soup and if I would have know about them i wouldn’t have ordered it. The wings are tasty.
Worst part of all this is the lack of professionalism. soul food doesn’t = sour service! I called the place and initially the call was clear but when I began to complain about the lateness of the order, the only thing the girl on the other line could do was cut me off saying «whaa! whaa! hello!!» I asked to speak to the manager and the girl tried switching her voice… then finally the call was taken up by some one els. Same thing «whaa, whaa, hello! «I asked about some sort of discount and her response was «ok no problem, I’ll let bruh bruh know» when the delivery arrived I learned that i have been «had» and there was no discount. Decent food really nasty service = a whole lot of regret

This place is not worth it.
Gaudy behavior by the manager over the phone. Placed an order online around 12:30 am, as they are open until 2:45am. Received a phone call 30minutes later, with some kid telling me over a broken connection, that they don’t have something.
The manager can be heard asserting that he will rescue the situation and take over the call!
Hey, I am the manager, Dickiss, and unfortunately we are out of everything you ordered.
Oh?
But since I am such a cool guy, I am going to give you something else instead, that you didnt order, and more of it!
Okay fine, we are hungry and already paid online.
I ask if I can still get at least one thing that I had wanted, since he hadn’t touched on that product, just the mac and cheese and chicken breast, he said again with the cool guy thing, since he was «suchacoolguy» i could get my waffle.
you are a chicken and waffle shop. how do you not have chicken, or rather, why stay open until 2:45am?
Do not order the cobbler, it comes cold and solid, and if you heat it, it gets watery and turns to goop.
The food we got was crap.
Soo we ordered pizza. Thanksssss

I love this place! Chef is generous with portions and ready to exchange a joke or two with every order. Food is tasty and prices are good. Best part is the menu is part soul food part Burmese! Some crazy combinations can be had here for sure.

Brothers Kitchen isn’t just burgers, breakfast and soul food. Burmese Kitchen is also in da house! yep. that food truck guy is here weekdays
menu: soul food, breakfast, burgers, and selected burmese entrees:
eats: tea leaf salad (7.50)
–roasted peanuts, sesame seeds, tomato, tea leaf (looked and tasted like lettuce), green pesto-​looking glob (fermented tea leaves), oils, fried almonds, fried (small) nuts. all this is mixed together to form salty, pungent salad.
–interesting taste unlike caeser, chinese chicken salad.
–unsure if this is authentic or not.
–lots of crunch from the nuts.
leftovers:
–po boys (7.5) available here too
–friendly service, nice people
–some food truck related event (s) planned for every weekend.
–lots of parking available.