“Get dressed. I need pancakes!”
It was pretty clear that Megan was craving one of her favorite restaurants, The Original Pancake House, and it was my job to get her there.
A little back-story may be in order here, as it gives a pretty good idea of why they’re so damn tasty, and why both Megan and I dig this place so much.
The Original Pancake House was founded in Portland, Oregon in 1953 by Les Highet and Erma Hueneke. They collected pancake and breakfast recipes from all over the world before opening their little restaurant, and not much has changed since 1953 – the recipes are still the same. Every pancake is made from scratch with basic ingredients, and boy-oh-boy do the have a list of pancakes. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
The Salt lake City location (there are over 100 franchises worldwide) is located on 2100 South and 790 east, and is open from 6am until 2pm. Yes, they close at 2:00pm every day, so don’t plan on any late-night IHOP-style eating. This is better by far, anyway.
We arrived at around 12:30, near the end of their business day, and were seated promptly. If you arrive anytime before noon, expect a bit of a wait on weekdays but especially on weekends.
I’ve never found the service to be all that good. My drink – be it water, coffee or juice – is rarely refilled until I ask, and the wait staff is somewhat less than attentive. In my opinion, though, the quality of the food more than makes up for this consistent problem.
Now I’ll tell you straight up, they’ve got the best blueberry pancakes I’ve ever had, and that’s usually what Megan orders. I’m more of an eggs benedict kind of guy, and theirs is excellent. The eggs are always perfectly poached, and their hollandaise sauce is made from scratch each day, so they have limited availability of this item.
In addition to the stand-by order of blueberry pancakes (and the short-stack of buttermilk pancakes that comes with pretty much anything you order), they’ve got a long list of different types and flavors of pancakes available. In fact, one whole page of their large menu is devoted to just pancakes. Coconut? Yep. chocolate chip? Yep. Apple? They’re legendary here. Sourdough? Buckwheat? Swedish? Dutch? Yes, yes, yes, and hell yes! Pretty much any kind of pancake you can imagine, they’ve got.
Although it’ll take your food awhile to be served (making pancakes from scratch takes time, be patient!), when your pancakes arrive, they’re everything you could ever want in a pancake – light, fluffy, flavorful – these pancakes are perfect every time. The bacon and sausage side orders are exactly what I look for in my breakfast meats as well. the sausage is perfectly seasoned with just a little bit of spice to it (links or patties) and the bacon is a real thick-cut and not just some marginally-thicker-than-the-cheap-ass-shit-you-buy-at-the-grocery-store “thick-cut” wannabe bacon. And the coffee is one of my favorites to drink black (it’s also one of Megan’s favorites, although she adds cream) – it’s rich and smooth and tastes just like Ward Cleaver would like it to.
If you’re an omelette fan, you better come hungry – each omelette is made with 3 extra-large eggs and takes up pretty much the whole damn plate. They’re big, and just as flavorful as you would expect them to be, loaded with cheese, peppers, onions and meat. They’ve got several choices on the menu, but you can pretty much tell them what you want in your omelette and they’re happy to make it.
The atmosphere isn’t classic 50′s like the food, but that’s okay. They’ve got an outside patio for dining during the warmer months, which seems to be popular. I’m not an “eat my food outside” kind of guy, so I’ve never been out there, but there’s always a crowd.
If you dig on pancakes (and breakfast food in particular), The Original Pancake House is the gold standard. The service pretty much sucks, but the food is worth the small sacrifice of having to track down your server and ask for a refill.
