Illinois Pancakes

breaking news

2011-11-18T09:30:00.001-06:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/celebrity-pancake-portraits_n_1088520.html
http://www.suntimes.com/8884685-417/la-grange-resident-creates-art-with-pancakes.html

Eggs Inc, Bolingbrook

2011-11-17T09:24:00.000-06:00

Eggs Inc.
278 South Weber Road
Bolingbrook, IL 60490

April 19, 2011

Eggs Inc. is a new restaurant which opened recently in Bolingbrook. Before this visit, I'd already tried it a couple of times, and each time I got the same thing: the Dancing Elvis. I mean, with a name like that, how can you not get it? Luckily it lives up to its name. It's banana bread french toast slathered in peanut butter sauce, with banana slices on top. I might have finally found something more decadent than my old favorite, the cinnamon swirl french toast from Mother's.

Eggs Inc. has a few other unique offerings as well, but in many respects it's a standard pancake house with farm-themed decor and the usual fare. Not that that's a bad thing. I like having some idea of what to expect when I walk into a restaurant. Somewhat more unexpected was the large decorative plastic egg on the wall. Though this restaurant is called Eggs Inc. and has more of an egg theme than anything, I'm not sure I've ever actually gotten eggs here. When I come back, maybe I'll try one of their omelets or their eggs Benedict. But it's hard to resist that Dancing Elvis.

mystery cakes

2011-04-26T15:46:00.000-05:00

Niko's Breakfast Club, Romeoville

2011-01-06T20:06:00.001-06:00

Niko's Breakfast Club
38 S Weber Rd
Romeoville, IL 60446

Autumn 2010

Groucho Marx once said, "I wouldn't want to be part of a club that would have me as a member." "I know they don't want me in the damn club / They even make me show ID to get inside of Sam's Club," Kanye West complained. Well at Niko's Breakfast Club, no membership is required! Maybe we could have asked to join anyway, and received a special "members only" menu or something. At least then they would have served me oatmeal instead of telling me they were all out for the day.

But anyway, Niko's is a good restaurant with a nice breakfast menu. Nothing that will change your life, but a welcome oasis in the desert of south suburban depression that is Romeoville. Last week, a man was crushed to death under three tons of granite at a Romeoville warehouse. What an awful way to die. And getting crushed by the granite must have been awful as well.

As you can see, Niko's kitchen is overwhelmed with a supply of cantaloupe, which they unload piece by piece with nearly every breakfast entree. Their pancakes are very good. During my visit, I ordered the orchard pancakes, which arrived with baked apples on top and a dusting of cinnamon. At least that's how I remember it. We started this entry several months ago and forgot about until today. Apologies to Niko himself if I've mischaracterized his pancakes. I do remember enjoying them quite a bit, for whatever it's worth.

Niko's, like so many breakfast restaurants, employs a design motif that evokes not so much a genuine nostalgia for our nation's agrarian past -- one that most of us who've barely set foot on an actual farm in our lives have never really experienced -- but a kind of yearning for the American Heimat that, deep in our collective subconscious, we're all beckoned to. Breakfast at Niko's (or Egg Harbor, or Southern Belle's, or even ) is an experience that surrounds the customer with touches of "country living," from antique signs to vintage kitchen appliances to whimsical rooster figurines, satisfying our urge to leave behind our fast-paced lifestyles and return to simpler times. If you like this sort of thing, boy oh boy, you're gonna love eating at Niko's.

Ayinsan here. Not too much to add, but among the restaurants we've visited, this is one I'm particularly fond of. Their menu boasts a lot of interesting breakfast offerings aside from the standard pancakes and waffles. Niko's pecan roll French toast, particularly, is quite good. Sweet and soft and pecan-y. I recommend their eggs Benedict, too. It's easy to ruin poached eggs--a little too runny or a little too firm, and it's no good--but Niko's are always that ideal combination of soft and chewy, and the hollandaise sauce is thick and rich. Nothing worse than watery hollandaise sauce, but you won't find that here.

Also, may I add that their portion sizes are gargantuan? I eat here and I'm full for the next eight hours...and I've got a pretty big appetite. Your eggs Benedict will arrive with a mountain of hash browns and slices of cantaloupe as big as the Cheshire cat's grin. And, as you can see above, they will spray practically an entire can's worth of whipped cream onto your pancakes. Greek restaurants seem to have a tradition of overstuffing their customers, and Niko's is no exception. Chances are you'll be needing a to go container.

there can be only one

2010-12-12T18:49:00.000-06:00

Maxfield's Pancake House, Schaumburg

2010-10-28T22:10:00.000-05:00

Maxfield's Pancake House
700 East Schaumburg Road
Schaumburg, IL 60194

July 29, 2010

Baker Memorial Church, St. Charles

2010-07-05T13:14:00.002-05:00

Baker Memorial Church
307 Cedar Ave.
St Charles, IL 60174

July 3, 2010

Very kind volunteers, delicious pancakes. I had seconds and probably could have had thirds, but had to leave for work. A five dollar cover charge gets you in the doors, don't miss out next year!

Honey Jam Cafe, Downers Grove

2010-06-19T00:16:00.001-05:00

Honey Jam Cafe
3000 Oak Grove Rd
Downers Grove, IL 60515

June 1, 8, and 15, 2010

As if the battle for suburban Chicago breakfast supremacy wasn't already crowded enough, here comes a new challenger! Or so it would appear, but the seemingly out of nowhere arrival of Honey Jam Cafe is actually a product of longtime Chicago restaurant royalty. The owners of nearly 40 Brown's Chicken & Pasta and almost 50 Portillo's restaurants have thrown their hat into the breakfast business, and their first restaurant is an astonishing debut. Honey Jam Cafe is one of the most unique and inviting breakfast restaurants that we've been to to date, boasting a mouth-watering menu and an inviting ambiance the likes of which we've never seen before.

It's actually easy to pass by Honey Jam without noticing it, as it sits on a stretch of Butterfield Road that's already crowded with restaurants, inconspicuously set back from the road next to a block of office buildings. The building itself is perhaps too classy and easy to mistake for a steakhouse or a Greek restaurant. Inside, on the other hand, Honey Jam brings together old-fashioned and modern designs and decor to create a mellow but warm and welcoming environment. I'm not going to describe it in detail suffice to say that it's really one of the nicest restaurants I've ever been in.

On my first visit I ordered blueberry pancakes. I might have enjoyed a little extra whipped cream than the dollop that was provided, but altogether they were pretty good. Our cherry-smoked bacon was some of the best bacon I've ever tasted. On our second visit, I went all in and ordered a baked "dutch baby" pancake. I've only had baked pancakes on a few special occasions before, and those were filled with apples and far too big for a single person to have on their own. Likewise, the Honey Jam menu suggests that these are "suitable for two," although the pancake I received was just right for one, and even left me a little hungry once I was finished. Soft, chewy, really a delight to savor. It was served with a nice dusting of powdered sugar and a bowl of lemons on the side, which I liberally squeezed all over my dish. At least I think that's what they were for. Their cheese blintzes were good; nothing to write home about but if you know of any that are, please let me know!

Altogether I was really impressed by this restaurant, am looking forward to going back yet again, and excited about the prospect of a new location opening in Batavia later this year. If you're reading this blog and have enjoyed any of the restaurants we've been to since the beginning, make it worth your while to visit Honey Jam for your next pancake fix. If you're still not convinced, watch this video, which also showcases some of Honey Jam's non-breakfast offerings.

Ayinsan here. This really is a great restaurant. Not really much I can say about it that Joe hasn't already covered. There's a fireplace inside, which you can sort of see in the above photo (though the flames aren't really visible) which is probably nice and cozy on a winter's afternoon. Well, actually you'd probably have to be sitting really close in order to feel any warmth, but still. A fireplace! Not something you see in a breakfast restaurant often, but it always adds that extra touch of class. The servers are always extremely friendly and quick, too. Even on busy days, we aren't kept waiting for long. Everyone here really goes all out to make it a great experience for the diners.

On my first visit I had the bananas foster waffle. Probably my favorite of all the entrees I tried here. Then again, I've never had a bananas foster anything that I didn't like. Their whipped cream is very sweet and rich, even if there's not a lot of it. On my second visit I had the strawberry cheesecake french toast, shown below. Also very tasty.

On my third visit I tried the Crazy Monkey waffle, which comes with peanut butter sauce, bananas, and chocolate chips. Pretty good, but the chocolate chips sort of overwhelmed the flavor of the peanut butter and bananas so it felt like I was just eating a chocolate chip waffle. If I ever order this again, I might request more peanut butter and less chocolate. It's really hard to get that balance of flavors just right, but when you do, the result is so worth it.

Tangerine, Naperville

2010-05-31T17:58:00.001-05:00

Tangerine Cafe
47 Chicago Avenue
Naperville, IL 60540

April 15, 2010

For as long as I can remember, I've enjoyed casually slandering Naperville as everything that's wrong with the Chicago suburbs, but truth be told I haven't taken much time to explore it or to see more of it than its most trackhoused and stripmalled side. Our visit to Tangerine brought us to the heart of downtown Naperville, which is a lot nicer than I remember it being, not to mention easy to get around. Tangerine is located next to a large parking garage, so parking was free and easy. Tangerine is easy to find, too. Just look for the Barnes & Noble on the corner and you'll spot a cheerful looking restaurant next door with lots of outdoor seating.

We chose to dine indoors on both of our visits, and when you see the inside of the restaurant yourself, you might choose to do the same. My only complaint was that it got a little noisy at times, but that's a petty criticism at best. I ordered the blueberry pancakes, listed on the menu as berry fresh pancakes. These were possibly the largest pancakes I've ever been served. It's been over a month since I tasted them but I remember enjoying them very much. If you like this sort of thing and have a big appetite, then this is definitely in your wheelhouse.

Ayinsan here. This is the cinnamon banana bun french toast: so sweet it doesn't even require syrup, and extremely tasty. I don't know what that creamy sauce they drizzle over it is, but I could drink it from a glass (okay, maybe not from a glass...but on french toast it's the bees knees.) I got this on my first visit here. Highly recommended.

When I came back a second time, I tried their Leaning Tower of Sweetness, stacks of french toast with fruit and Nutella spread in between slices. It was all right, though I didn't like it quite as much as my first meal. Maybe Nutella and french toast just aren't the best combination? Don't get me wrong, it was good, it just didn't dazzle me as much as I expected it to.

Overall, a really nice restaurant. My only complaint is the coffee. Both times when I came here, the coffee I ordered arrived lukewarm, and I had to send it back and ask for a fresh pot. And even fresh it's not that great. Granted, restaurant coffee is always kind of a gamble. After a pot has been sitting for more than ten minutes, the coffee tends to get a little gross, but I recognize that they can't just keep throwing out their old coffee every few minutes. Still, it should at least be hot when they serve it.

McDonald's, O'Hare International Airport

2010-03-23T14:58:00.000-05:00

McDonald's
O Hare International Airport, Terminal 1
Chicago, IL 60666

March 4, 2010

Sweet Maple Cafe, Chicago

2010-01-26T00:48:00.003-06:00

Sweet Maple Cafe
1339 West Taylor Street
Chicago, IL 60607-4706

January 12, 2009

We don't get a chance to go into "the city" as much as we'd like, but we're always looking for new restaurants to try when we do. Our exhaustive research for this usually consists of the painstaking process of typing "pancakes," "breakfast" and "Chicago" into Google, which usually yields a list of the usual suspects, most of which we've already investigated. This time, thanks to a glitch in Google's algorithms or a newly found combination of keywords on our side, we found Sweet Maple Cafe. Located on the west side, it's in a neighborhood we've never been to before but it was definitely worth the trip.

Sweet Maple Cafe isn't a big restaurant by any means, probably about half the size of most pancake houses we've been to, with room for about 40 or 50 customers to sit at a time. There isn't much of a waiting area, and forget about sitting down while you're waiting to be called for your table. There was a bit of a wait during our early Tuesday afternoon visit, but once we were seated the service was just fine. The menu is available on Sweet Maple's website.

I ordered the blueberry pancakes. Nothing fancy here, no handfuls of blueberries heaped on top, not even any whipped cream. But if the pancakes are in lacking appetizing visuals, they more than make up for it in each mouth-watering bite. These were the perfect consistency, chewy and sweet, everything coming together just right. Just sublime. I felt like the snobby and bitter food critic in Ratatouille during the climactic scene. A life-changing breakfast.

Some of the paint on the walls is peeled off and the floor is somewhat unfinished. If this bothers you then go back to IHOP and never leave Naperville again. Also, there's ample free parking in the lot across the street. You might have to enter it down an alley on the west side but it's really quite convenient.

Ayinsan here. When we arrived at Sweet Maple Cafe, there was a line extending almost out the door. In spite of this, we didn't have to wait very long. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes at the most.

While we were waiting for breakfast, I got a hot chocolate. Not my usual breakfast fare, but I was really hungry and needed something to take the edge off. Really good stuff. Smooth and creamy, sweet without being too sweet. For breakfast, I got a pancake meal.

The pancakes were some of the fluffiest and most delicious I've ever had. I once reluctantly awarded Cracker Barrel the honor of having my favorite pancakes (I say reluctantly because it's not even really a breakfast place, just a chain restaurant with a gift shop that hypnotizes me into buying things I don't need), but I'm pretty sure that Sweet Maple's pancakes are better than the Barrel's. And of course, they serve it with real maple syrup...but I expected that. I mean, if someone were to open a restaurant called Sweet Maple Cafe and NOT serve real maple syrup, well...I just wouldn't know what to say to them. I might just shake my head remorsefully.

Pancakes, eggs, sausage--all were above par. And the service was excellent. Enthusiastically recommended.

Mother's Pancake House & Restaurant, Aurora

2009-11-30T00:38:00.001-06:00

Mother's Pancake House & Restaurant
459 N Randall Rd
Aurora, IL 60506

November 23, 2009

We've already reviewed the original Mother's on Galena Blvd -- over three years ago when we were just starting this blog -- so this entry on their newest location will be extremely brief. I don't remember exactly when they opened their new restaurant on Randall Road, but I think it's been open for nearly a year. I don't know what took us so long to drop by, but now that we have, I don't know if we'll be going back to their original location again! That's most certainly an endorsement, albeit the sort of one that the owners probably didn't bargain for.

I ordered the pumpkin pancakes, which may or may not still be available beyond Thanksgiving, now that Christmas and all its seasonal-themed foods are upon us. These were very good. The pumpkin taste is very deep and rich, and the artificial sweetness that's so common in this dish elsewhere was nowhere to be found. The light dusting of cinnamon sugar (?) on top was a nice touch. What will I get next time? I have no idea, though I'm sure that the menu is identical to the one at their sister location, where I've never found myself for lack of tempting choices.

Ayinsan here. I got my usual favorite--Cinnamon roll French toast. It's just as tasty here as it is in the other location, served with cinnamon butter and cream cheese frosting. I don't really want to think about how many calories are in this, but it's absolutely delicious.

Overall, this restaurant is a bit more attractive than the other. Our server was friendly and came back to our booth several times to ask if there was anything else we needed.

We were given rolls, which you don't always get with breakfast--once, at the other location, someone started to give us a basket and then actually tried to take it away when they realized we were getting pancakes. As if I'd ever turn down a refined carbohydrate. Toast with my French toast? A muffin with my waffle? Why, sure! Then I'll eat that little orange-slice on my plate so I can feel like I've had a serving of fruit along with my mountain of various breads.

In all the time we've been doing this blog, there have been only a couple incidents where someone noticed and commented on our camera...but when they do, it's always with a touch of nervousness, as if they think we're here to sell their corporate secrets to a rival breakfast chain. In this case, the hostess asked about it when we came in. Playfully: "Sooo, I notice you have a camera..." Then, with a slight edge of suspicion creeping into her voice: "What is it for?" Relax, we're not government spies, we just run a pancake blog.

Eggsperience, Naperville

2009-09-30T23:59:00.002-05:00

Eggsperience
2727 W 75th St
Naperville, IL 60540

September 3 and 28, 2009

The first time we went to Eggsperience, we had a bit of difficulty finding it...in part because we couldn't remember what it was called. We kept thinking the name was "Eggsceptional" or "Eggstraordinary" or something like that. The actual name is much more unassuming. It's not suggesting you're going to have an "eggceptional" experience there, simply an "eggsperience"...that is, some sort of experience involving eggs. They aren't implying that it will necessarily be great.

Overall, in fact, this was a mixed experience for me. This could be due in part to the surroundings, which are vaguely depressing--a cluster of expensive stores (Whole Foods, World Market, et cetera) just sort of sitting out in the middle of nowhere in a parking lot the size of the Sahara Desert, bordered by empty fields and a subdivision filled with McMansions. These huge buildings loom over you as if to symbolize the helplessness of the individual in a world of powerful super-corporations. Of course, that's not the restaurant's fault, but it's hard not to be influenced by stuff like that, even if it's just on a subconscious level.

On my first visit there I got the banana pancakes. While palatable, these were nothing to write home about. They were pretty much what you'd expect from a place like this. Though it's been a couple weeks since our first visit there, I seem to recall the pancakes being rather dry and bready. In the world of breakfast restaurants, there's a wide spectrum of pancakes: some are chewy, some are crispy, some are exceptionally moist and fluffy. These were just sort of like flat, sweet pieces of bread with banana slices. But if that's your thing, maybe you'll like them.

My second visit was a bit better. I got the blueberry waffle--a big Belgium waffle which comes topped with a generous helping of fresh blueberries (seriously, they don't skimp), along with some blueberry syrup. They call it compote, but I generally think of compote as being thicker. This was liquid...not that I'm knocking it, you understand. It was pretty good.

I ordered a side of bacon with it as well, and their bacon is definitely above average. Thick, neither too crisp nor too fatty, with a nice smoky flavor.

Despite the fact that we've been here twice now and despite the fact that it's called "Eggsperience," I've never actually tried their eggs. Maybe it's kind of silly to review their restaurant without even tasting their namesake, but what can I say? I just wasn't in the mood for eggs during either of our visits there.

This really isn't a bad restaurant. The waffle I got was certainly tasty, and there were a few other items on their menu that looked intriguing... though unfortunately, Eggsperience falls into the all-too-common category of restaurants that give their entrees silly-sounding names like "Yummy in Your Tummy French Toast." Maybe some people can say that with a straight face and not feel the least bit embarrassed. I'm not one of those people. I mean, that's almost as bad as IHOP's notorious "Rooti Tooti Fresh and Fruity."

Joe here. Our visits to Eggsperience were both on weekdays and in the early afternoon, not the busiest time for most restaurants and Eggsperience was no exception. We were quickly seated each time. The service was quick and the staff was friendly. I had coffee on one occasion and found it satisfying.

On our first visit I ordered the Triple Crown Waffle. A single Belgian waffle with heapings of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries on top. Wholesome, very good, not disappointing. On my second visit I was struck by the urge to try their potato pancakes. It's probably been almost three years since I last ordered these anywhere. Prior to that, I don't even remember the last time I had them at all. What I'm trying to say is this isn't a dish I'm very familiar with, so take my opinions on them with a grain of salt. That said, I really wasn't a big fan of these. I was given a generous serving of four, and while the first was satisfying and pleasing in its creamy texture and rich flavors, the second and third were just too much for me. Once I used up my sour cream and applesauce, I'd had my fill and couldn't even begin to tackle the last one on the plate. I guess I better stick to waffles and "normal" pancakes from now on.

I think I've had just about all I can take of life in the suburbs. Sitting in traffic, waiting for stoplight after stoplight, driving past giant store after giant store, each a symbolic eyesore of how compartmentalized our lives have become. I drive through a sickening glut of this every day on Randall Road through Batavia, Geneva, and St. Charles, but that strip doesn't hold a candle to the congested stretch of Route 59 in Naperville between On The Border and The Home Depot. I've frequented the Baker's Square there, shopped at the mall, and really want to visit the new Hollywood Palms movie theater sometime soon, so I'll be the first to admit that I'm just as much of a little Eichmann as anyone else in the cars next to me. But what a wretched and depressing "community" this is. I guess Eggsperience is fortunate to be located on the southern edge of it, maybe even catching some good vibes from the Whole Foods across the parking lot, but altogether I just don't know if I can bring myself to pass through this gauntlet of big box chain stores and gimmick restaurants (R.I.P. Pizza to the People) to get to it once again without losing my mind.

Richard Walker's Pancake House, Schaumburg

2009-07-29T12:13:00.004-05:00

Richard Walker's Pancake House
1300 N Roselle Rd
Schaumburg, IL 60195-3646

July 18 and 21, 2009

Richard Walker's Pancake House boasts three locations nationwide, two of which, fortunately enough, can be found in Illinois. With restaurants in Schaumburg and Crystal Lake, Richard Walker's remains a north suburban institution. Based on word of mouth alone, there's no reason to believe that the microchain couldn't open more locations across our fine Midwestern agglomeration. But I suppose there's something to be said for avoiding the temptations of oversaturating the market and inadvertently soiling one's own brand name. Focusing on a handful of restaurants is probably better for both the customers and the employees, anyway.

The first branch of Richard Walker's opened in 1989 in Schaumburg, where we finally visited last week for the first time. The restaurant itself sits in a rather unassuming strip mall, occupied by a sports bar, a flower shop, a used CD store, and a Planned Parenthood Express (surely the subject of the same "do they offer drive-thru abortions?" jokes every day). There's a small outdoor seating area near the entrance, well-occupied by customers during both of our visits. Inside the foyer you're greeted by pleasant classical music, and the staff was quick to greet and seat us as we walked in. The interior is lavish and clean, adorned by typical pancake house decor (mirrors, fake plants along the ceilings, stained glass) but also 19th century paintings, adding a touch of class to your meal.

The menus at Richard Walker's have a sprawling, fold-out design, somewhat visually imposing in its sizable presentation of items. It's quite possible that their selection is quite comparable in size to most other breakfast restaurants but the flip-style menu just feels bigger than most book-style ones you'll find at other restaurants. On my first visit I ordered freshly squeezed orange juice (some of the best I've had anywhere) and the blueberry and sour cream crepes.

My crepes were tender, warm, some of the best I've had in quite some time. The cup of fruit compote was a little on the small side but this was only compared to the heaps and mounds of toppings that many restaurants drown their dishes in; the serving size was more than enough to satisfy. Its description on the menu ("Juicy Blueberries Mixed with Sour Cream and a Dash of Triple Sec makes this a Berry Delight, Sprinkled with Powdered Sugar and a Side of Blueberry Compote") is tempting enough, matched only by its presentation on the plate, as you can see. As we were leaving, a curious customer at the next table over stopped me to ask me just what it was that I'd ordered.

Our first visit nearly lived up to the expectations we'd had for it. I say nearly because during the three years that we've been running this blog, no restaurant has received recommendations as enthusiastic as the ones we've received for Richard Walker's. So it's an understatement to say that we had high hopes going in, perhaps too high to be satisfied by a single visit. And besides, there were too many other things on the menu we wanted to try, so we returned three days later for another early afternoon breakfast. Hopefully three years of surveying the local pancake scene would have refined our palates and left us in a better position than most to evaluate the offerings and the experience of this respected restaurant. I can't speak for my better half but personally, I really don't know if my epicurian sensibilities have matured at all since I was making Pilsbury pancakes in the microwave as a middle schooler.

On my second trip, I ordered the 49ers flap jacks. Due to the name I was expecting some kind of old-fashioned pancakes, made with buttermilk or grits or other "hearty" ingredients that our hard-working ancestors relied on for sustenance as they tirelessly panned and dug for gold in the shadows of the Sierra Navadas. In reality, these kind of pancakes are nothing like that. I'll defer to Wikipedia for the clearest description of flapjacks (flap jacks, FLP JKS, etc.) I can find:

There you have it, a well-known breakfast favourite for centuries that I'm only beginning to understand. The texture on these was very interesting: a crispy layer ala Swedish pancakes, the chewy stretchiness of crepes, but the satisfying bulk of a normal pancake. Quite an interesting twist on something I thought I knew inside out.

I think we got our money's worth on both of our visits. Despite the lengths they go to to provide a premium breakfast and an attractive atmosphere, their prices seem comparable to most breakfast restaurants. Then again, unlike "gourmet" hamburgers, hot dogs, or pizza, there seems to be a limit that people will pay for common breakfast foods, no matter how well they're prepared. At any rate, we enjoyed our time at Richard Walker's and will certainly return in the future. But don't take our word for it. Check out their website and see it for yourself. Now if only their webmaster would proofread the title bar. Richard Walker's Pankcake House? I guess no one really needs proofreaders anymore.

Ayinsan here. On my first visit to Richard Walker's I got the banana pecan pancakes. Actually, I think the menu called them flapjacks, which is odd considering that they're not anything like the flapjacks shown above. They're really just pancakes. But they were delicious. Probably among the best pancakes I've ever had. And I approve of their generous use of powdered sugar. Most pancake restaurants will just give you a little grudging sprinkle, but it looks like these pancakes have been sitting under a tiny snowstorm. Or perhaps a snowman sneezed all over them. No, the snowstorm metaphor is probably better.

The bananas were fresh and chewy, which is also very important. Nothing ruins a good plate of pancakes like an overripe, mushy banana. And the pecans...well, it's hard to screw up pecans, I guess. But these ones were fine. Service, needless to say, was excellent. Richard Walker's lives up to its reputation. On both occasions, we were seated right away, and our servers were quick, attentive and polite.

On our second visit, I decided to try something non-pancake, so I got the pecan waffle. Yum. Not much to say about it: it's a waffle and it's got pecans (both on top and baked inside). But it was quite tasty. What else to say about Richard Walker's? Well, there's an interesting painting on the wall of a woman walking through a field with a scythe. I'm not the sort of person who usually pays that much attention to wall-art in a restaurant, but somehow this captivated me. What is she doing with that scythe? Is she just off to cut some corn stalks, or whatever it is you're supposed to do with a scythe? Or does she have some more sinister purpose for it? Only you, the viewer, can decide.

Egg Harbor, Geneva

2009-07-09T15:42:00.002-05:00

Egg Harbor
477 South 3rd Street
Geneva, IL 60134

June 25, 2009

When we went to Egg Harbor in St. Charles, Swedish Days was in full swing, meaning there were rides and craft fairs all over the place and the streets were packed with people who seemed to believe that "having the right of way" means "having a magical, invisible force-field that protects you from all harm." As such, we had to navigate around roving packs of fair-goers, all blissfully unaware of my car's presence.

Once we got there, however, there was plenty of free parking in the vicinity. The restaurant entrance is kind of tucked away in a little alcove, easy to miss, but once you get inside, the atmosphere is friendly and cheerful. It was pretty busy, but we were seated right away and our waitress came within a few minutes. She was quite competent, even if she did mistakenly address us as "ladies"...a simple slip of the tongue for which she apologized profusely. But it does bring up an interesting point. Servers will often address a mixed-gender group as "guys," as in, "What can I get for you guys?" But the reverse doesn't seem to be true.

I got the blueberry pancakes with eggs and bacon. Good stuff, though nothing mind-blowing. The eggs and bacon were pretty standard fare, the pancakes were a notch above standard. And they came with a little side of blueberry compote. I love compote, even if it's probably one of the least appetizing words in the English language.

Joe here. I've been to Egg Harbor at least a half dozen times in the past two years thanks to my parents, who've slowly but surely drifted away from their regular residency at Colonial Cafe (where they were monthly, sometimes weekly regulars throughout the late 90s and into the first half of this decade) to new digs at the Geneva EH location. Nothing against Colonial, I'm sure. I think they just needed a new scene. This happens to all of us and it's nothing to be afraid of.

Nestled away in a classy, upscale shopping centre (the lavishly-named Dodson Place) on Third Street near the Geneva Metra station, Egg Harbor brings you closer to Geneva's haut monde where you can shop for anything from fine wines and silk undergarments to $500 baby strollers. In this setting you might expect the dishes at Egg Harbor to be just as fittingly costly but the prices aren't unreasonable, which is to say that breakfast at Egg Harbor is going to be just as expensive as it is anywhere else these days.

The dining room is spacious and sunny, with lots of windows and a high ceiling. There's a patio outside, though I've never seen anyone using it. The atmosphere is inviting, a modern twist on the "country kitchen" vibe that lots of restaurants stick to. A warning to all alektorophobes: there are paintings, figurines, and various effigies of chickens all over the walls and shelves, so you may to steer clear. There are colored pencils at each table, but I don't think you'll get any paper unless you come with a few kids in town. I suppose you could ask for some, or just bring your own if you prefer. Better still, bring along some paints and a small canvas if you really want to pass the time until your food arrives. I never leave home without my watercolors and a telescopic easel. Should you go this route, the spaces between the tables are just wide enough for to set up everything you need. Just don't wash your brushes in the restroom sinks. You wouldn't want to take advantage of their hospitality, after all.

One thing I've always appreciated about Egg Harbor is the friendly service. This starts as soon as you walk in the door, though on busier mornings the lobby can get very crowded (and loud), so don't take offense if you're not greeted right away. The staff is always eager to please and willing to get you whatever you need. My family usually makes a few requests for extra water and/or coffee whenever we visit, and they're almost always quick to grant them with a smile. The servers are cheerful and polite. I don't even mind being mistaken for a woman by any of them; two years and counting at my current receptionist job and there's nothing anyone can say to further emasculate me. Five days a week, I'm just one of the girls! Why not go ahead and make it all seven?

I ordered the basic pancake combo, complete with three delicious cakes, sausage links, and poached eggs, which I almost never order even though they're probably my favorite kind of eggs. Altogether, a satisfying but not overfilling breakfast. If you want to stuff yourself until you burst, you've come to the wrong place. "Chew your food!" my grandmother would have yelled at you. "Taste it!" We rolled our eyes at her old-fashioned ways but as time passed I've grown to understand the true meaning of her words. Had she already discovered the truth?

There are fifteen different Egg Harbor locations. Which one is right for you? Try them all and find out!

Randall's Pancake House & Restaurant, South Elgin

2009-06-14T15:56:00.001-05:00

Randall's Pancake House & Restaurant
305 Randall Road
South Elgin, IL 60177

June 9, 2009

Longtime readers of this blog might note a sorry lack of coverage devoted to pancake houses of the northern and northwest suburbs of Chicago. This isn't a deliberate shunning on our part, but an unfortunate sacrifice we've had to make due to rising gas prices over the past two years. At four dollars a gallon, it's a little hard to justify making an hour's drive just to get breakfast. I don't know about anyone else, but spending $40 on a tank of gas is enough to make me lose my appetite, anyway. With summer now upon us, it's even less likely that we'll venture much further north past route 64/North Avenue (let alone into the uncharted wilds of anything as far up as Lake County) just to try a new restaurant. There are a few that have been highly recommended to us several times, but that lie just out of our reach for the time being. We'll get to them someday, probably in much colder months than these.

For now, we were able to check out Randall's Pancake House in South Elgin, which might not qualify as a northern suburb but is a little off the beaten path for us. True to its name, Randall's is on Randall Road and on a stretch of it that's been pretty well developed over the past 5 years. I remember when it was all fields as far as the eye could see! Now there's a Super Target, an Outback Steakhouse and houses as far as the eye can see (on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the Culver's has been there since pioneer times). Randall's blends into the strip mall on the east side of the road pretty inconspicuously, so look for Gyorr Avenue just south of the train tracks. "Strip mall" has become such a pejorative and loaded term, but I don't know any better way to describe a bunch of stores connected to each other in front of a big parking lot. Sorry!

I indulged in the berry blast pancakes. That's blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, plus whipped cream. All topping some seriously thick and fluffy cakes. Fruity pancakes? Whipped cream? That's kids stuff, right? Not anymore. This is real breakfast for adults, and anyone who underestimates what they're getting into is in for a big surprise. These were good, maybe not the best I've ever had but that's fine. There's a lot to choose from on their menu, the back page of which answers all all the questions you were too embarassed to ask. Breakfast looks like it's available anytime, but you'll need to take your late-night cravings elsewhere. They close at 3:00 on weekdays.

Ayinsan here. Randall's is a pretty nice place, overall. One of the drawbacks of going to a good pancake restaurant is that afterward, there isn't a whole lot to say about it except "it was good." The most interesting entries I've written are probably the ones where I've had something to complain about, but in this case, I really can't think of a single negative. Well, okay, the bathroom had a fake plant in the corner and I find fake plants kind of tacky in general, but overall it was still a good bathroom--cranberry-painted walls, nice mirror with a frame of bronze leaves, plenty of toilet paper, and a clean floor (very important). Anyway...

I got the banana chocolate chip pancakes, which come with warm, gooey chocolate chips both on top and baked into the pancake itself, along with fluffy tufts of whipped cream. Mmm-mmm. The banana slices were fresh and chewy, which is important. Nothing ruins a good pancake experience like mushy overripe bananas, but these were perfect. They give you quite a generous helping of pancakes, too. I usually have no trouble finishing a meal at a restaurant, but this time I had to take about a third of my pancakes home as leftovers.

I also got a side-order of sausages, which were delightfully plump and flavorful. I just reread that sentence and the phrase "plump and flavorful" sounds ridiculous to me, but really, it's the most apt description I can think of.

Silver Dollars, Yorkville

2009-04-03T12:48:00.022-05:00

Silver Dollars Restaurant
102 E. Stagecoach Trail
Yorkville, IL 60560

April 2, 2009

Since the place is called Silver Dollars, we sort of assumed it was a pancake restaurant. Luckily, we were not disappointed.

Silver Dollars looks rather unassuming, with its sober dark green awnings and simple exterior. So I was kind of surprised when we stepped inside. Not that the interior is incredibly lavish or anything, but it's a few notches above what I expected. Clean, with nice decor. There's a TV above the brick fireplace at one end of the dining room, which I could have done without, really--while I'm trying to have a nice breakfast, I don't need to be watching a basketball game or hearing yet another news report about the impending financial meltdown of our country. There seems to be a growing trend of putting TVs in these kind of family restaurants, which seems to be part of a larger trend in our society of having TVs everywhere, from grocery stores to gyms. Apparently, we as a society have been conditioned to the point where we can no longer just talk to each other or sit in contemplative silence, we need a high-def screen with colorful moving images to hypnotize us into a glazed-eyed stupor.

Okay, that's not entirely fair. I learned something from the TV in Silver Dollars--that Guiding Light, a long-running soap opera, is going off the air in September after more than 70 years of radio and television broadcasts. Actually, I could have happily gone the rest of my life without knowing that. But I digress.

Aside from the aforementioned TV, I really have nothing to complain about. I ordered the Winter in Italy French toast, which came heaped with roasted apples, raisins and walnuts and drizzled with caramel sauce. Mmm. Not really sure what it has to do with winter or Italy, but it was sure tasty. The menu boasted several other unique creations, like cheesecake French toast. I'm not even a big fan of cheesecake, but if I ever come back here I'll probably try that just to see what it's like. No blintzes or crepes, which I usually expect to find in restaurants like these, but the wide variety of pancake and french toast offerings made up for it. And yes, they serve breakfast all day, though their breakfast menu is kind of tacked onto the end of their "lunch and dinner" menu.

One further note--this place has fantastic bread. That we even got a bread basket before our meal is a point in their favor, since some breakfast places won't do that, but their breadsticks are really above-par: warm, soft and chewy, with a light buttery garlic flavoring. Almost like the sort of thing you'd get in an Italian restaurant.

Good breakfast place, overall.

Joe here. I've passed Silver Dollars a handful of times in the past on countless different ventures through southern Yorkville, a trip I don't have much reason to make anymore these days. I never gave it much notice before; it's become as much a part of the local landscape as any of the surrounding woods or fields that dot the still-quiet areas of fast-growing Kendall County, so perhaps it's easy to miss. But for locals, it's probably a well-known landmark and a kind of public square that people visit as much to dine at as they do to simply to meet up and shoot the breeze. Upon our visit, I think we were the only customers who weren't stopping in simply to "have a meal." The clientele was decidedly on the older side and seemed engaged in a variety of friendly banter and gossip, but unlike other restaurants where this is prevalent, they all seemed like friendly and pleasant folks that I'd love to share a dining room with again someday.

Perhaps my expectations of Silver Dollars were colored by reading this article, which cites an unknown source suggesting that Silver Dollars has been open for more than 40 years. It's easy to buy into the idyllic, Rockwellian scene that the article paints, but I have to wonder how much of it is true. The business cards available at the front counter, along with the restaurant's website, proudly proclaim that it was established in 1996. I'm tempted to investigate this matter further, but some small-town mysteries are better left unsolved.

Considering the name of the restaurant, it's easy to assume that breakfast would naturally be Silver Dollars' exclusive niche. However, our initial visit provided several impressions to the contrary. The breakfast selections only take up a single page of their complete menu, otherwise packed with the usual lunch and dinner offerings. As featured on their website, there's a lot of traditional Polish dishes available as well. A large salad bar is prominently set up near the entrance, probably not offered during morning hours but well-stocked during our afternoon visit.

I ordered the silver dollar pancakes. This is about as basic of a dish as you can possibly get anywhere but I always like to order items that resemble the name of the restaurant, if possible. If the namesake dish of a restaurant isn't excellent, it's probably a good sign that it's not worth revisiting. Thankfully, these tiny pancakes were extra tasty. Check out these bubbles on the b-side; most cooks would find these undesirable, if only for appearance's sake, but these nooks and crannies added a pleasant texture to an otherwise predictable dish. The "winter in Italy" French toast was a succulent treat. Our bacon was crispy and lean. Altogether, an excellent meal.

With one coffee, our total came to $18.17, certainly a good value for what we were served. I imagine things get a little more hectic in the morning, but our afternoon visit was relaxed and laid back, probably the best time for anyone to try Silver Dollars for the first time. Recommended.

Kiwanis Club of Aurora, 59th Annual Pancake Day

2009-03-23T15:10:00.020-05:00

Kiwanis Club of Aurora
Aurora Central Catholic High School
1255 N. Edgelawn Dr.
Aurora, IL 60506

March 21, 2008

Closing in on its sexagennial anniversary, the annual Kiwanis Club of Aurora's pancake breakfast looks as lively and vibrant as ever! And by that, I mean it was just as good as it was last year. That's really all I can personally compare it to. Prominently advertised throughout the city, you really had no excuse to miss out this time around! Thousands upon thousands of steaming-hot jacks were flapped (as seen in these photos from last year) and all the money went to a good cause. Or at least I'm assuming it did. Contact these people if you want to find out for sure.

We were two of the last patrons through the door before the last call at 12:30, so we bought our golden tickets and quickly made our way to the serving area. We were lucky enough to receive (what we were told were) the final sausage links of the day. We would have been issued a grand total of four to split between us instead were given of a mere three. Our protests were preemptively silenced by an extra plate of pancakes swiftly handed our way. Of course, you can always go back for seconds (which we later did anyway) but it was nice to have a few more to chew on before begging for yet another helping. Very good pancakes, certainly not cooked to a gourmet standard, but the mess hall turntable griddle infused them with a friendly flavor that brought back memories of eating in church camp canteens as a young boy and a sense of community and "connectedness" with my fellow campers/neighbors/man that I didn't know existed outside of testimonials on Erowid.org.

As we were finishing our meal, staff began collecting all the empty Styrofoam plates and cups left behind by previous diners and folding up the unoccupied tables and chairs. They went to work on our area, clearing away all the seating around us until we nearly had the front half of the room to ourselves, and hovered over us as we ate, eagerly plucking each individual napkin or butter packet away from us the moment it appeared we were finished with it. This was a surreal experience, to say the least, the stuff of high-concept music videos. Aside from this, it was a satisfying meal and we soon left the gymnasium feeling quite content.

There was a raffle for a gift basket but I turned down the offer to purchase a ticket for it. I'm kind of regretting it and wondering what could have been if I'd tried my luck. I guess there's always next year.

Coco Berry Cafe, Aurora

2009-01-28T13:54:00.020-06:00

Coco Berry Cafe
4250 Fox Valley Center Drive
Aurora, IL 60504

January 27, 2008

We spotted this place the last time we went out to the Fox Valley Mall and decided to give it a try. We had some difficulty finding it again, because all we remembered was that it was near the entrance to one of the large department stores, but it was worth the trouble. Coco Berry is much classier than it looks on the outside. Really spacious, clean and bright. There was a host waiting to seat us when we walked in the door, and we didn't have to wait more than a minute or two for the waitress. Of course, it was early afternoon on a Tuesday and there were only a couple other customers in the restaurant. I imagine it's a little busier on a weekend.

I got the cinnamon roll french toast and a side order of sausages. Very tasty. Not quite as good as Mother's cinnamon roll french toast, but I have yet to find anything to compete with that. There were lots of other interesting things on the menu too, so I'll probably come back here to try some of their other entrees.

Joe here. I'm not sure just how long the Coco Berry Cafe has been open for business. I noticed it for the first time just before Christmas, and an encouraging profile appeared in the Beacon News a few weeks later. The name alone promises a sweet refuge from the frigid winter cold, a cozy and decadent oasis of hot and steamy treats. Look closer and you'll find more than just comfort food. Coco Berry Cafe offers much more.

To get the most out of our experience, we probably should have ordered some of their cocoa. Our server suggested some, or a latte, but we passed for common coffee. I'd venture to guess that their signature beverages are worth trying; there's a big coffee bar with tall in the front of the restaurant made just for their consumption. The picture I have of it is the only one I was able to take of the interior of the restaurant. The seating areas are large and spacious but not very photogenic and would require a wide angle lens to properly capture.

I ordered the wildberry pancakes. Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and sliced strawberries top off five (count 'em, five) satisfying and fluffy pancakes. There's a lot here, so much that I shouldn't complain that there wasn't any fruit baked into the pancakes themselves. You'll find lots of variations on this dish from pancake house to pancake house. At Coco Berry Cafe, the emphasis seems to be on freshness and subtlety, not on drowning their cakes in fruit sauce to win over the taste buds of sugar-addicted customers. But perhaps there are plenty of examples to the contrary that I haven't sampled yet.

Though the prices are a little on the high end and the ambiance felt a little on sterile side (probably less so depending on where you're seated/how busy the restaurant is), I enjoyed our visit to the Coco Berry Cafe. In the sea of chain restaurants that orbit the Fox Valley Mall (sorry "Westfield Shoppingtown"), Coco Berry brings a welcome personal touch.

Jam n Jelly Cafe, Darien

2009-01-19T22:05:00.007-06:00

Jam n Jelly Cafe
7511 Lemont Rd
Darien, IL 60561

January 6 and 13, 2009

It's been nearly a year since Shea Cafe closed its doors, leaving the location at 7511 Lemont Road waiting for a new tenant. We anticipated something dull and useless like a loan office or a mattress showroom. What we got was... another restaurant, the third there in almost three years. It's a mystery why Lemont Street Cafe and Shea Cafe closed. As regular connoisseurs of their breakfast and lunches, we're pretty confident that it wasn't because of the quality of their food. But this sets the bar pretty high for Jam n Jelly. Just to stay in business, it reasons to assume, they'll have to somehow top their predecessors' efforts in almost every way. Will they succeed? Only time will tell.

Our first visits to JnJ gave us reasons to be optimistic. The restaurant has been renovated yet again, with a new pallate of gentle colors on the walls and pleasant decor hanging here and there. All the windows make sure that your meal is spent in pleasant (but never overwhelming) sunlight. Some of the servers (and possibly other staff) from Shea Cafe are back, bringing the same friendly service that we enjoyed before. Altogether, this is a comfortable and inviting place to spend a meal's time. Really don't know how I feel about the all-80's radio station that was playing on the overhead speakers during both of our visits, but at least it wasn't the horrible Jack-FM.

On the menu you'll find everything from traditional favorites to decadent breakfast treats that within less than a fortnight, surely ruined scores of healthy New Year's resolutions. One of the tamest of these are the PB&J cakes, covered in grape jelly and peanut butter chips. If you love peanut butter and jelly, you'll love these. Personally, after a few bites I'd really had enough, but this has more to do with unpleasant elementary school-age associations I still hold between brown bag lunches and chronic childhood headaches, not because of any failures on the part of the fine cooks.

On my second visit a week later I ordered a plate of blueberry pancakes. Certainly not as adventurous of an entree but pretty good by my own standards. Plenty of blueberries cooked into the pancakes, along with a blueberry topping and a cup of warm, whipped butter. No surprises here, but that's just fine.

Overall, dining a Jam n Jelly Cafe is a wholly pleasant experience, with a great atmosphere and creative entrees that will leave you satisfied. I've yet to sample any of their more traditional breakfasts, but it's safe to say that we'll be going back to do so sometime in the near future. If Jam n Jelly shares the same unfortunate fate as its predecessors, then it's probably safe to blame the building itself on a continued lack of success, not the businesses inside it.

Ayinsan here. I was rather excited to see a new pancake house opening in the location of the now-extinct Shea Cafe...which was formerly Lemont Street Cafe, which was formerly another breakfast place whose name I can't remember (The Egg and I, or something quirky like that). Here's hoping this one lasts. Fourth time's the charm. Right?

This restaurant has a very good, breakfasty-sounding name, which is usually a good sign. Makes it seem more like a true pancake house as opposed to a family restaurant that just happens to serve pancakes round the clock...and real pancake houses tend to offer a better selection of breakfast foods. Sure enough, Jam and Jelly's menu has a lot to choose from, offering such creative options as PB&J pancakes, S'mores pancakes, turtle pancakes (Peanuts and caramel on a pancake? You bet!), banana bread french toast, and many more.

True to their name, they also have a selection of jams and jellies for sale, including some unusual options. Jalapeno jam? Worth a try, I suppose.

On my first visit here I ordered the banana bread french toast, which was quite decadent. I had a few bites of Joe's PB&J pancakes as well. The first two bites were absolutely delicious. After the third or fourth bite, it was almost too much sweetness. For me, that's really saying something. I'm a terrible sugar junkie. I'd probably chug maple syrup straight from the bottle and eat bowls of buttercream frosting with a spoon if not for the knowledge that such habits would soon turn me into an orb-shaped jelly creature with the arteries of a ninety-year-old. Even so, I'm not sure I could finish a plate of PB&J pancakes on my own. The sudden spike in my blood sugar would probably cause all my neurons to spontaneously combust or something. It's very sweet--a stack of pancakes slathered with warm grape jelly and peanut butter chips.

On my next visit, I tried the Have Somore Cakes (S'mores pancakes) along with some eggs, sausage links and bacon. The eggs and sausage were both above average, but the bacon was rather dry. As for the S'mores pancakes? Well, if you've ever had chocolate chip pancakes, they're rather like that, but garnished with mini-marshmallows and crumbled graham crackers. Pretty good, but not the mind-blowing experience I was expecting. Personally, if I were making S'mores pancakes, I'd cook the marshmallows right into the pancakes so they melted and mixed with the chocolate into a gooey sludge of delight.

In any case, this is a good place to visit if you're feeling adventurous and want something a little different than the ol' pancakes, bacon and eggs combo...though they have the old favorites, too, along with a variety of lunch and dinner options. I'll definitely be coming back here.

Golden House Restaurant & Pancake House, Chicago

2008-11-28T23:30:00.019-06:00

Golden House
4744 N Broadway St
Chicago, IL 60640

November 25, 2008

The Golden House Pancake House & Restaurant has probably never been graced the elite heights of any critics' lists of best breakfast restaurants in Chicago, usually reserved for such prominent names as Ann Sather or Lou Mitchell. By comparison, there's nothing fancy or assuming about Golden House. It's a restaurant from another era, real names no gimmicks. But does it live up to its name?

Definitely not. Or at least that's the first impression you'll get, as you walk in and find yourself surrounded with shiny booths padded with... ruby red-colored vinyl. No solid gold tables anywhere! The deception continues as you're given your menu, featuring this misleading illustration on its cover. Perhaps the breakfast at Golden House reminded the artist of pancakes at their grandparents' summer home in what would appear to be the Wisconsin Dells, or perhaps Eau Claire or Rice Lake.

I ordered a plate of silver dollar pancakes, offered in servings of ten or fifteen, though I'm sure you could ask for different quantities if you really wanted to. These were definitely satisfying, better than many other restaurants' take on the classic dish, but perhaps unsurprisingly, nothing too special. My coffee was hot and fresh, which they probably deserve credit for given that there were almost no other customers sitting down when we arrived; not much of an incentive for them to keep brewing fresh pots, but brew on they did.

The Golden House is located next door to the Riviera Theater, which I've only been to twice. First, to see Wilco in 2000, which was a pretty great show. Mercury Rev opened, Wilco played most of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and, while being surrounded by young hipsters and greying WXRT listeners, I still enjoyed myself without any sense of self-consciousness. About a year later I saw Paul Oakenfold on the horrid Bunkka tour and was so bored and utterly depressed by the whole show that I left long before it had ended. I probably went straight for the red line to begin my journey home but could have salvaged something out of the evening if I'd only looked to see what was next door.

Ayinsan here. No real complaints about Golden House restaurant and pancake house (not to be confused with Golden Nugget, another Chicago pancake house). There's nothing about it that really stands out at first glance, but it delivers the goods--the pancakes, that is. You won't find crepes or blintzes or anything too hoity-toity here. Just the old stand-bys: pancakes, waffles, french toast, all with optional fruit. The fruit specials have peculiar alliterative names like "adorable apple pancakes" and "beautiful blueberry waffles." Putting fruit on your breakfast does not merely add another flavor, see, it turns your breakfast into a work of art so lovely that you won't want to eat it: instead, you will cover it with a coat of varnish to preserve its beauty and put it on a marble stand in your foyer for all the world to admire. Anyway...

I ordered the country breakfast. I'm pretty sure that's what it was called, anyway. It's a standard breakfast combo with three pancakes, eggs and sausage.

The pancakes were quite tasty, chewy and dense the way I like them. Some people probably prefer the lighter, fluffier pancakes, and those certainly have their appeal, but in my opinion, nothing tops that chewy consistency. The eggs were passable (shown below with some non-Tobasco-brand hot sauce on them) and the sausage was a few notches above passable. They may look a bit scrawny, but they were quite tender and flavorful. No gristle. Always a good thing.

Unlike many such places, the waitress/waiter doesn't deliver the check to your table, you pay at the front counter. I didn't expect this, so I spent several minutes trying awkwardly to catch our waitress's eye and give her some indication that we were ready. At first I couldn't figure out why she was just standing behind the counter staring back at us expectantly. Really, this set-up makes more sense. It's just less common.

Overall, not a whole lot to say, except that if you're in the area and looking for a good, dependable breakfast place that will deliver the old favorites, stop into Golden House restaurant.

tragedy strikes, pt. 2

2008-11-20T16:49:00.006-06:00

It's been more than a year since we visited Gigi's in Naperville, a nice enough little restaurant that we probably would have returned to if it wasn't located in the bowels of southern Naperville, accessible only through a tortuously stoplight-ridden drive that we'd rather not experience again. For rather unfortunate reasons, however, it's a choice we may no longer have the opportunity to make.

On the evening of October 30, an explosion ripped through Gigi's Pancake House & Restaurant, critically burning two employees and causing extensive damage to the building. Read all about it here:

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/10/2-burned-in-naperville-restaurant-explosion.html
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1250973,naperville-explosion-fire-102908.article
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=246722

The authors of this blog would never claim to be the foremost experts on pancakes in Illinois, or the inside source on all restaurant gossip in the Chicago suburbs. Nevertheless, there's no excuse for us to take three whole weeks to cover a story like this. That said, the past three weeks have given investigators ample time to survey the damage and their findings, just released this week, have shed new light on what first appeared to be a freak accident.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6519248
http://mobile.chicagotribune.com/news.jsp?key=187991&rc=top2

This isn't a detailed or final report, and it might be some time before we know just what happened that night. This isn't the first time that local pancake house has exploded. Will there be more to come?

Colonial Cafe, Aurora

2008-09-19T16:48:00.014-05:00

Colonial Cafe
1961 West Galena
Aurora, IL 60506

September 18, 2008

No, that sign isn't fake. One-cent pancakes? Believe it! Colonial has run this promotion before to celebrate some of their locations' anniversaries in 2007. It was a little unclear what the cause was this time around at their Aurora location, but I didn't pause to ask our server. We were too hungry and they were too busy.

Of course, there's always a catch. You can't take advantage of the one-cent pancake offer unless you buy a beverage, so don't expect to walk out with a bill under ten cents. We bought some coffee and juice, and what the heck, some bacon too! It's easy to agree to such suggestions when your main course is free, even though it helps bring an almost-free breakfast up in price to a mere great deal instead. I'm sure that's part of their plan, and probably why they're doing it at more locations in the coming months.

Ayinsan here.

Not much to say about the pancakes themselves. They're good, but not mind-blowing, comparable to pancakes you might get at IHOP or the like. But hey, they were a penny, so I'm not complaining. They even came with their own little cup of syrup, though our waitress also brought us a traditional glass syrup container, so we weren't limited to the cup.

Colonial's always good for some reliable comfort food. Hopefully in the future we'll get a chance to try some of their more adventurous breakfast items, but you can't go wrong with buttermilk pancakes.

Southern Belle's, Oswego

2008-09-10T20:22:00.019-05:00

Southern Belle's
1158 Douglas Rd
Oswego, IL 60543

September 9, 2008

Do you find the stylish and postmodern motifs of today's pancake houses a little too cold and impersonal? Do you ever wish you could go back to a simpler time, when men and women would start their day with a hearty breakfast before working in the fields? When giant chickens, taller than a fence, roamed our farms and laid a half-dozen eggs a day? When Weiner-mobiles towed covered wagons full of fresh vegetables down to the farmer's market at Venice Beach? If so, Southern Belle's might be the restaurant for you.

It may not have a fireplace or a porch full of rocking chairs like Cracker Barrel, but Southern Belle's adds their own touches to evoke the charm its namesake implies. If the waitresses working during our visit were any indication, all the servers wear overalls as part of their uniform. Whether this is done to enhance the restaurant's working class ethic, or to evoke pleasant nostalgia of the Depression-era Dust Bowl, I'm not sure. I couldn't find the men's or the women's restrooms, just ones meant for "dudes" and "belles," so if you fall in either one of those categories, you're in luck.

You'll find a good selection of pancakes on their menu. I ordered the strawberry pancakes, which looked like an ordinarily-sized serving but proved extremely filling. I couldn't even clean my plate! Not sure how I felt about the strawberry topping they generously applied, though. I'd have been just fine with plain strawberries and nothing more.

Halfway through our meal I finally gave in and ordered some coffee. This was getting close to 1:00 in the afternoon, long past the breakfast hours and any kind of lunchtime rush they may have had. In fact, there were only two or three other tables with customers at the time, besides the two of us. I know this situation really isn't condusive to a busy and fresh coffeepot, so I'm not going to hold it against them or anything. That said, my coffee wasn't very good. Bitter, maybe a little burned? I should have trusted my instincts before ordering any. Aside from our recent trip to Mapleberry, lately I haven't been able to find a good cup of coffee almost anywhere.

Ayinsan here. Southern Belle's won fifth place in "best breakfast overall" in a newspaper-run contest and first place for "best new breakfast," but the sign in the window simply says, "Thank you for voting us best restaurant." Kind of misleading, but nonetheless, Southern Belle's is worth visiting.

Probably the first thing you'll notice upon entering is the decor. Lots of objects hanging from the ceiling, including a Radio Flyer wagon, an Oscar-Meyer Weiner-mobile, and a giant box of Frosted Flakes. Why these particular items? One can only wonder.

I got the banana crepes, which are always a bit of a gamble. Sometimes they're great, sometimes there's just not much to them, depending on where you go. I asked the waitress what else was in the crepes, aside from bananas. She went in the kitchen to inquire and told me they were filled with a "sweet mixture." That didn't clarify it much, but I went ahead and ordered the crepes. They were pretty good, though if there really was a "sweet mixture" inside them, I couldn't detect it. It seemed to be just bananas...but despite that, they were quite filling. The bananas were fresh (not overripe or yucky and bruised) and the crepe shells were chewy and sweet.

Mapleberry Pancake House, Carol Stream

2008-08-27T16:33:00.015-05:00

Mapleberry Pancake House
1276 Kuhn Road
Carol Stream, IL 60188

August 26, 2008

I often idealize the common features of so many American pancake houses -- the dim lighting, brass fixtures, and faded upholstery of booths and chairs, worn out from decades of diners dragging their behinds across them every day -- as being a common and comforting motif that's as natural as the forces of nature. That said, sometimes you want a change of pace, something a little newer, a little brighter, a little bit less like your favorite old sweatshirt, so to speak.

If this feels familiar and you're in the western suburbs, the Mapleberry Pancake House might be just what you're looking for. It's just two years old but deserves a niche of its own in the busy, Pancake-House-Royal-Rumble that is Dupage County.

With a name like Mapleberry, I figured I had to get some kind of fruit pancake during my visit. I ordered the blueberry pancake with whipped cream, very satisfying but not oppressively filling, either. They're not breaking any new ground here but they definitely deliver the goods. The coffee I had was pretty good, too. Like IHOP, you get your own pot delivered to the table. No more waiting for refills, which was probably a blessing since our area's waitress seemed to disappear from the room completely during the last 10 minutes of our stay. But we had no pressing needs so I can't really complain.

Ayinsan here. I ordered the cinnamon swirl french toast with scrambled eggs and sausage. The french toast was pretty good...not as good as Mother's, but then, I have yet to see anyone top Mother's in the cinnamon french toast department. They were generous with the eggs, which were fluffy and quite tasty. The sausage was a bit bland, but passable.

Overall, no complaints, really. The ambiance was nice, the bathrooms were clean, the place was quiet and peaceful and we were served very quickly. I don't even have any sardonic comments to make. Well, one small thing. When I asked for water, we were given a pitcher but no water glasses so I had to drink ice water out of my coffee cup. I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but it felt a bit strange. I could have taken one of the water glasses from the empty table to our immediate right, I suppose. Oh well.

We went on a Tuesday. Judging by other reviews of this restaurant, it tends to become packed on the weekends and service suffers, but I can't verify that personally.

Harner's Bakery and Restaurant, Aurora

2008-08-03T20:56:00.011-05:00

Harner's Bakery and Restaurant
10 W. State Street
North Aurora, IL 60542

August 1, 2008

Earlier this year, The Kane County Chronicle polled its readers to find the best breakfast restaurants in the area. The results are no longer posted on the paper's website, but we have them saved right here. They're at the bottom of the page after a nice profile on the Blueberry Hill restaurant in Aurora.

Deservedly, Mother's took the top spot for best breakfast, beating out multi-location votes for Colonial, Egg Harbour, and some place in Oswego called Southern Belle's. The award for best pancakes also went to Mother's, who topped Colonial, IHOP, and Nikarry's. It's affirming to our sense of taste that our fondness for Mother's is shared by so many, and not just rooted in the convenient fact that it's just a few minutes' walk from here.

Also on the list for best breakfast and best pancakes was a restaurant we'd never heard of before. Harner's in North Aurora (not Aurora, as its residents probably love to remind everyone) is nestled next to the Fox River, pretty well cut off from us by road construction on I-88 and Oak Street, but it was still worth the detour to check out.

You'll be tempted by the treats in the bakery as you walk through the door, and you'll probably make plans to pick some up after you finish eating. We would have done this ourselves if we didn't have errands to run, and if it wasn't one of the hottest days of the year. Leaving a box of cinnamon rolls or cupcakes in the car on a 90 degree day just wouldn't have been the best idea. Still, we browsed in the bakery for a while before being seated. Harner's has two distinct dining rooms, the first having a bar to sit at and some ceiling fans, the second having an added-on feel of a room addition but with a nice view of the Fox River and the Fox River Trail. We were seated in this second room, which was adorned with a brick fireplace and decorated with taxidermy. Can you find the jackalope?

You'll find a limited selection of pancakes on their breakfast menu, but the prices are reasonable. I went with the standard order of three pancakes and came away satisfied but unamazed. Pretty good, but the fourth-best pancakes in all of Kane County? I just don't know. I imagine that most of Harner's loyal customers keep coming back for the atmosphere and the camaraderie, or at least that's the impression I got from the photo collages that line the walls next to the doors to the (spacious) restrooms.

Ayinsan here. Harner's is not just a breakfast place. It's a bakery, too. You walk in and are greeted with a huge glass display case filled with cookies, donuts, cakes and cinnamon rolls. Some of the cookies have cute animals faces, which I imagine would be fun to bite in half. There was a plate of free samples atop the display case. I tried one--some sort of shortbread nut cookie, I think. Pretty good. I wish I lived close to a place like this, so I could just walk in every morning and buy a nice, hot cinnamon roll. Of course, it's a good bet that I wouldn't be able to restrain myself. I wouldn't stop at one cinnamon roll. I'd stuff my face with frosting-laden confections until I lay helpless, bloated and groaning on the floor.

We were seated in a room with wood-paneled walls and lots of windows, providing a nice view of the surrounding scenery. Harner's is tucked next to a little wooded area near the river, so you actually see trees and water through the windows, rather than looking out at a gas station parking lot or a convenience store.

The waitress brought us a bread basket almost as soon as we sat down. Along with the standard rolls, there were some little pieces of nut-bread, very dense and sweet, almost like cake. We didn't have to wait long for our food. Really, the whole experience would have been quite pleasant, except we were sitting next to a table filled with really loud people. I immediately felt a twinge of dread when I looked at the table next to ours and saw a baby in a high-chair, but really, the baby wasn't too bad. Aside from one or two shrieks, it mostly stayed quiet. The woman sitting across from it, however, had a terribly annoying, high-pitched, nasally laugh, like a duck choking on a kazoo. And she laughed a lot. And of course the adults at the table kept poking the baby and egging it on, trying to get some kind of oh-so-precious reaction out of it. The few times the baby did laugh or shriek was mainly because Choking-Duck-Laugh-Woman and her giggling friend wouldn't leave it alone.

Eventually, the group left, leaving us to enjoy our meal in peace. For a change of pace, I got the biscuits and gravy with scrambled eggs. The menu gives you the option of ordering either a full or half order. I really could have gotten the half order, but my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. I couldn't finish them.

I tried some of Joe's pancakes. They were delicious, chewy, dense and sweet. If I come back here at some point (which I probably will) I'm definitely ordering the pancakes.

Cracker Barrel, Romeoville

2008-06-08T23:45:00.018-05:00

Cracker Barrel
1295 Lakeview Drive
Romeoville IL 60446

June 12, 2008

I'm just going to come right out and say it. Cracker Barrel has the best pancakes I've ever tasted. I really wish I could award that distinction to some underappreciated, off-the-beaten-trail pancake house and not a national chain already raking in big bucks, but the simple truth is that I really, really like Cracker Barrel's pancakes.

Don't get me wrong, there are some very close seconds out there. Manor's pancakes and Honey's pancakes are both very tasty, and I recommend them. But Cracker Barrel pancakes have a certain texture I've never encountered anywhere else, light and crispy on the outside, tender and chewy on the inside. And they serve them with real maple syrup. I don't know exactly what they do to make them so flavorful. Fry them in pure butter or something, probably.

I got the Momma's Pancake Breakfast, which also comes with (unremarkable) eggs and sausage/bacon.

When you're waiting for your food, you can play the little game they have on all the tables. It's a wooden triangle with holes in it, and all the holes but one are filled with little plastic pegs. You have to "jump" over the pegs to remove them. The object of the goal is to end up with only one peg left. It's a cute little time-waster, but it's always bad on my self-esteem because it includes a little intelligence test: If you end up with one peg you're a "genius." Two and you're "purty smart." Three and you're "just plain dumb," and four and you're an "ig-nor-a-moose." I always seem to end up with three. No matter how meticulously I plan ahead, those plastic pegs outsmart me every time, and I can hear their malevolent little voices laughing inside my head. "You're just plain dumb!" they chant. My rage wells inside me like a tide of molten lava, but then the food arrives, placating the savage beast within.

Cracker Barrel also has a gift shop, filled with decorative wooden plaques bearing homespun cliches, garden ornaments, stuffed animals, scented candles and candy...in other words, stuff you could never possibly need, but somehow just being surrounded by a wonderland of unnecessary stuff makes you want to pull out your wallet, open it, and say, "Take it. Take all my money. I must have your things." For many visits, I resisted the evil, magical pull of the Cracker Barrel gift shop, but today I caved in and got a quarter pound of fudge.

Joe here. This was the fourth time I'd been to Cracker Barrel, but the first time I'd ever ordered breakfast at one. I'm always tempted by their "old fashioned" meals -- chicken n' dumplins, open-faced sandwiches -- which are about as traditional as meals get but somehow still feel strange and exotic to me. I've never seen anyone under 50 order a blue plate special or anything like these dishes in any other restaurant. Doing so myself gives me the same feeling I get when I go out for Chinese food, authentic Mexican food, or sushi.

I never would have guessed it, but Cracker Barrel has worked pretty hard to establish themselves as a breakfast force to be reckoned with. Their menu boasts of their profane consumption of the world's maple syrup supply, currently at 6%. Each order of pancakes comes with an individually-bottled serving, warmed and ready to pour. I'm sure than 99% of these bottles head straight for the landfill once their life on the plate is through. Kind of a waste, but it's a personal touch that keeps the customers coming back in, I'm sure.

Good pancakes, nothing earth shattering but great texture and presentation. Very filling. Worth coming back for, though you can get these in 40 other states, not just Illinois. Eggs and sausage were passable, though not as good as the hotcakes.

Surprisingly hilarious read here. Still don't know what "Cracker Barrel" means, always conjured up images of cheese and crackers for me as a kid, which I still can't get over every time I see that cheddar-colored logo.

tragedy strikes

2008-05-26T21:57:00.017-05:00

A lot has happened since we last wrote about the Lemont Street Cafe. Shortly after our original entry, LSC underwent a name change and the final phase of a nice remodeling, rechristening itself as the Shea Cafe. I don't know the story behind the name change, or if Shea was pronounced as "Shay" (rhymes with clay) or "She-ah" (rhymes with diarrhea). I'm leaning more towards the former, since it also rhymes with cafe and there was a sparse collection of baseball memorabilia in a display case by the register.

Anyway, the name change didn't bring about sweeping changes (though in rereading our original review, I can say with confidence the service really did seem to improve over the following year and a half, though it was never particularly bad to begin with). It was still the same good food and friendly atmosphere. You were always made to feel welcome, and you could tell that the owners loved their work and were truly appreciative whenever you walked through the doors. The Lemont Street Cafe/Shea Cafe was always one of our favorite spots for breakfast and lunch, a fact that wouldn't be clear to me until well after we'd written our original review and kept coming back for more.

Despite being one of our favorites, we spent a few months away from Shea exploring other restaurants in the area, always confident that we'd be able to return whenever we'd like. Imagine our shock and disappointment when we drove by more than a month ago to find this note taped to the inside of the door. I only hope that everyone there is back on their feet somewhere else by now. What a pity that restaurants run by passionate people can't make it here anymore, while others content to just go through the motions every day get to stay in business.

Ayinsan here. Around the same time Shea Cafe closed its doors, Spring View--another nice restaurant--shut down. Not sure what the "All New This Fall" message means. Will it be the same restaurant under new ownership? Will it be someplace completely new? The sign offers no clues, but apparently there will be something in this location come Fall. I have to wonder what will happen to the koi in the meantime. I hope they're okay. We've only been to Spring View a couple times, but I liked the place. I was sorry to see it go.

As if the combined loss of Shea Cafe and Spring View weren't enough, the Baker Square in St. Charles recently closed its doors as well. Okay, so it's not quite the same. After all, there are plenty of other Baker Squares in the area, so it's not like a unique restaurant has vanished forever from the face of the Earth. Still, I always liked the one in St. Charles. It always seemed a little cleaner, a little nicer.

Why are so many restaurants going out of business? Probably the sagging economy is to blame, at least in part...but I guess the real question is, why do so many crappy restaurants remain in business while the good ones die out? It's a mystery for the ages.

Honey, Glen Ellyn

2008-05-13T23:44:00.015-05:00

Honey
499 N Main St
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137

May 12, 2008

It's hard to review Honey objectively. It took us a long time to get there, and then we had to drive around awhile longer looking for parking. So by the time we arrived, we were over-hungry and kind of irritable, and there was some construction going on right outside the window, so we had to listen to someone jackhammering through the entire meal. Of course, none of this is the restaurant's fault, but all of it combined to make the experience less pleasant than it could have been.

Honey is similar to Orange in the overall appearance and decor, and even the type of plates. The interior has a clean, open, well-lit look. Maybe my experiences at Orange colored my perceptions of this restaurant, but I expected to find a lot of different, exotic breakfast dishes here. However, the menu is pretty basic. There are plenty of egg dishes, but only a handful of carbohydrate-based breakfast entrees, and I happen to like carbohydrates for breakfast. There were pancakes, french toast (which was unavailable because they were out of bread), pan-fried oatmeal cakes, and one or two other things I can't remember now. I ordered the plain buttermilk pancakes, which were delicious, and a side of bacon. Considering how expensive said bacon was (at least three dollars, I think) I was disappointed at how scrawny the pieces were. They were sliced so thin, they were almost transparent.

Joe had the pan-seared oatmeal, which is something I've never encountered before: Oatmeal baked into big, solid triangle-shaped pieces and topped with dried apples, apricots and other assorted dried fruits. Possibly the largest amount of fiber ever packed into a single entree. If you need to--ahem--get the ol' pipes unclogged, this might be just the thing.

In front there's a little cafe type thing where they sell coffee and desserts. I got a vanilla bean cupcake, which I had later, and it was possibly the most intensely vanilla-flavored thing I've ever had. Don't get me wrong, it was good, but I couldn't eat more than a bite or two of it at a time. Maybe if we ever come back here, I'll try the red velvet or the chocolate flavored cupcakes.

Joe here. I'm not even sure I want to review Honey right now but since the chances of us returning there under better conditions any time soon are pretty slim, we'd better just make the best out of what we have. Honey sits in the middle of downtown Glen Ellyn, a pretty nice area that I've never been to before last week. I know, lots of suburbs like to flaunt their downtown authenticity these days -- usually with overpriced condos and banners on lightposts ("Visit historic downtown _____! Theatres! Shoppes! Parkes!") -- in hopes of establishing their street cred, or something. But really, this was a nice town from what we saw. We drove around for a few minutes trying to find unmetered parking spots, but should have saved ourselves the trouble since the one we settled for only cost ten cents per hour.

Our first impressions of Honey reminded us immediately of Orange in Chicago. The clean and cozy dining room was warm and inviting, but in a modern and minimal style that's a big break from the traditional family restaurant setup. The creative cuisine looked very Orange-ish too. No wonder; Honey's menu was designed by an (ex-?) Orange chef. We'd forgotten our camera on our trip to Orange and had to grab a cheap disposable one at the last minute instead. What a shame, since Orange's decor and beautifully-presented food was among the most photo-worthy we've ever seen. The same goes for Honey, so we made sure to bring the digital camera along and took lots of photos. However, tragedy struck again as I deleted almost all of them by mistake! You'll find some fine substitutions here, though.

I ordered the pan-seared oatmeal, which arrived in hefty little triangles decorated in dried fruits and drizzled in honey. It was truly a sight to see. How I wish I could show it to you! A little of this went a long way, and I was forced to box up the leftovers for later. I tried some of Ayinsan's pancakes and they were absolutely amazing. Smooth like velvet, lightly kissed with a touch of honey that gave them a sweet finish, and really unlike any pancakes I've ever had before. I only wish I was in better shape to appreciate them! I wasn't feeling my best that afternoon, and the effects of long drive along with the pounding jackhammer on the sidewalk just outside of the window we were sitting by -- I wouldn't think you could run a jackhammer on a piece of concrete only a few square feet wide for so long, but apparently you can make the experience last for more than an hour if you really want to -- were only further dulling my senses and distracting me from what otherwise may have been one of the best restaurants we've ever been to.

I can't blame Honey for what was a less-than-pleasant dining experience. I'd love to return soon, hopefully under better conditions all around, just to see if it's really good enough to be "the suburban Orange," or maybe even something better altogether. Maybe we didn't completely agree about Honey, but I know we'd agree that finding restaurants like this that are willing to try new things with old traditions sure makes writing this blog a hell of a lot more interesting.

Matty's Pancake House, Willowbrook

2008-04-24T00:30:00.006-05:00

Matty's Restaurant & Pancake House
10S642 Route 83
Willowbrook, IL 60527

April 15, 2008

Matty's is one of those places that has been in business forever, and will probably stay in business until the end of time, even though it doesn't get a lot of customers. Walking in, you can just tell that the few old people there are the same old people who have been having breakfast there every day since 1972.

It's also very easy to miss. Maybe it was the needlessly confusing directions we got off of Google Maps (I don't think their definition of a "slight left" is the same as mine), but we drove past this restaurant twice. It's a fairly big building, and right by the roadside, so I can't really explain why we failed to see it when we were actively looking for it. Maybe the restaurant owners don't want to be overwhelmed with customers, so they have some sort of high-tech, psychic cloaking device around their building, designed to deflect the attention of passers-by. Like the Shadow, Matty's Pancake House has the power to cloud the minds of men.

We walked in to see a small dining room with standard pancake-house decor. Do you know why faux-stained glass is so popular in pancake houses? Me neither, but I have to admit there is something oddly soothing about it. Maybe just because it reaffirms my preconceptions about pancake houses. If there's one thing in this world I can count on, it's the presence of that faux-stained glass with some kind of floral design.

Despite the tired aura of the place, service was remarkably quick. We ordered, I got up to use the restroom, and when I got back, our food was already there. I ordered a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. Pretty good. About what you'd expect, which pretty much sums up the whole experience.

Joe here. This was my first time visiting Matty's, and definitely my last. I'm not sure I've ever paid to put myself through such an unpleasant half hour as this. What a horribly depressing place this was. The food wasn't bad but I'd gladly trade the entire experience for a box of stale Eggos and a hotplate.

Yahoo has Matty's listed as "Matty's Family Restaurant," which is kind of like listing the Yearning for Zion ranch as a Mormon church or Bad Newz Kennels as a pet shop. If I had kids, I'd sooner take them to Hooters in the middle a frat outing or to Buffalo Wild Wings while UFC 84 plays on the big screen. Matty's might look like a pancake house, but walking through its doors isn't unlike stumbling into the basement bar of your local VFW as a table of vets swap stories about how many gooks they killed back in 'Nam. I have a picture of the greasy slobs we were seated next to during our meal -- asking for a different table really wouldn't have removed us from their presence by more than an extra ten feet -- but I get the feeling that they were either mobsters or ex-cops, so I'm not going to post it here.

I swear every day, almost on the hour and often in public, so I can't judge anyone else if they do the same. But when you're in a restaurant having a conversation loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, you'd expect the owner to step in and do something about it, right? Nah, these were his bros. If they wanted to shout about "that cocksucker down at the VA" who stuck them too hard with the needle the last time they went to get their shots, or refer to "that son of a bitch" in every other sentence, that was just fine. Hell, he was sitting down with them, goading them on along with the serving staff. I almost lost my brunch when they started grabbing the waitresses by the wrists, pulling them close and groping them from behind. I can't pinpoint why I found this so revolting without revealing my deepest prejudices about class and my worst fears about aging. Regardless, it was a harrowing display that makes me cringe in light of so many of my favorite restaurants closing as of late. Why not this one instead?

I'm still trying to figure out why fifty cents was tacked onto our bill after it had been printed. Judging by the confused and semi-disgusted reaction I got from the owner when I went to pay at the register, it's not unimaginable to assume that it could be some kind of special fee they have for customers paying with debit cards. Maybe he considers them a nuisance? It took him a few minutes and multiple swipes to figure out how to process it. If anyone else has any other ideas about this -- other than it being a tax for elitist jackasses like me -- I'd like to know.

I know times are tough right now. Gas is more expensive than ever, good jobs are hard to find, and everyone is looking for ways to save their money. Unfortunately, for many families that's going to mean eating out less often than they're used to. I'd hate to recommend this, but in the case of Matty's I sincerely hope that their customers reconsider their continued patronage of this sketchy operation. Making pancakes with your loved ones at home is more fun, anyway. Make breakfast special today and pass by this dump at all costs.

Golden Acres Restaurant, Sugar Grove

2008-03-24T21:45:00.026-05:00

Golden Acres Restaurant
5S094 State Route 47
Sugar Grove, IL 60554

March 20, 2008

According to my parents, the Golden Acres Restaurant has been open since before I was even born. Based on watching most of the customers that I've seen there on each of my visits, this doesn't seem surprising. It's the closest restaurant to Waubonsee Community College, which borders it directly to the west just across route 64 47, but as far as I can tell, it's never been a hangout spot for students (as if such destinations exist for community college students at all). I know there was talk of it closing a few years ago, but as far as I can tell, it's always been open. I could have sworn that its full name was "Candy's Golden Acres." Maybe it still is?

You won't find much beyond traditional pancakes and waffles at Golden Acres. The selection is pretty basic, but the prices are reasonable. Without much to choose from, I just ordered some pancakes. But still, which to choose from? There's the "short stack" for $3.65, or the Golden Pancakes for $3.95. What's the difference? Who cares! They're called Golden Pancakes, and I had to find out why. Sadly, they failed to live up to their awe-inspiring name. But however could they?

Not much more to say about Golden Acres. If you want a restaurant with a roadside diner vibe (only without the smoking cooks or biker gangs) and cheap food, you've come to the right place. Just be sure to bring cash.

Ayinsan here. One of the nice things about this blog is that it gives us a reason to visit pancake houses that are kind of off the beaten path, and this is about as far off the path as they come. Surrounded by fields and trees, this is pretty much the only building in sight (except for maybe a grain silo).

We'd been here once before, awhile back, and my memories of it were pretty accurate. Small, mostly empty (though that could have been the time of day--we came in around early afternoon) and peaceful. I got pigs in a blanket. Yum.

All things considered, it's a nice little place, but their selection is rather limited. They have a few breakfast combos, of varying sizes, called, in descending order: "for dad," "for mom," and "for children." Cute, but it places the customers in an awkward position if they want to order one of these combos, but don't fit the description. I mean, I'm not a mom so I'd feel a little weird ordering the "for mom" combo, and even weirder ordering the "for dad" combo.

Kiwanis Club of Aurora, 58th Annual Pancake Day

2008-03-17T11:18:00.002-05:00

Kiwanis Club of Aurora
Aurora Central Catholic High School
1255 N. Edgelawn Dr.
Aurora, IL 60506

March 15, 2008

I was coming home from work late on Friday night when I saw this banner staked outside of the fire station. I really had no idea what I'd be getting into, but I knew what my Saturday morning plans would be.

The breakfast was held at Aurora Central Catholic High School, which despite being just about a mile from my apartment, I had to look up online to find. Fortunately, the parking lot was well-marked with directions once I arrived and it was easy to tell where I needed to go from there. Even without the signs, I probably could have followed the steady flow of hungry people towards the cafeteria. It was hosted by the Kiwanis Club of Aurora, which donates proceeds to youth programs around the world.

I knew it was probably going to be busy, but I was surprised to walk in and see such a packed room, not just with customers but with lots of volunteers running about, seating people and refilling drinks. I paid my $5, got in line, and watched the operation as I passed by the kitchen. Even with two of these turntable griddles running, it was all they could do to make them fast enough.

I exchanged my ticket for a plate of three pancakes and three sausages and was directed to one of the long cafeteria tables, the kind which I haven't sat at since high school. I seated myself in the middle of my row of tables, later realizing this was a big mistake as getting attention for coffee and juice refills proved most troublesome, but at least I was surrounded by lots of other people to talk to. Right? I appreciated the invitation to engage in my community and to get to know my neighbors. That's what these get-togethers are for, right? But getting to eat my pancakes and sausage in peace without being hassled by anyone else is something I appreciate even more, and despite the busy, almost chaotic action all around me, it was still a really laid-back morning for everyone who was sitting down.

Three pancakes and sausage were really enough for me, though as my syrup-coated paper plate left my hand for the trashcan, a volunteer at the table next to me approached with another heaping plate of steaming pancakes. Looks like I was seconds too late for seconds. Next year I'll be better prepared.

International House of Pancakes, Aurora

2008-02-23T00:52:00.030-06:00

International House of Pancakes
2455 Augusta Way
Aurora, IL 60506-6444

February 12, 2008

Ah, IHOP. You can't really have a pancake blog without saying a few things about IHOP. Okay, so we mainly went because it was National Pancake Day and they were giving out free shortstacks. I recognize that this is basically a marketing tactic to lure people in so they will spend money on overpriced juice, coffee, and side-orders of bacon. And we did end up spending about five dollars for two juices, plus tip. But hey! Free pancakes!

I almost never try the flavored syrups when I go to IHOP, but today I decided to sample the strawberry and blueberry syrup. Not bad, but I still prefer the good old-fashioned maple syrup. The pancakes were good. What else can you say about IHOP, really? It's IHOP. If you're looking for atmosphere or old-fashioned, genuine home cooking, you'll probably be disappointed, but when you just want pancakes, they're there for you.

At first we were kind of hesitant to come in for National Pancake Day. The IHOP website encouraged customers to make a donation to the Children's Miracle Network when they came in for free pancakes. Not that we mind giving to worthy charities, you understand, but we were worried it was going to be one of those high-pressure scenarios where the waitress comes up to your table and says, "Okay, how much can I put you down for?" And they have a sheet with boxes you're supposed to check for $10, $15 or $20. And you say, "W-well, actually, I was just going to give a few dollars..." And she gets this blank look and says, "Oh. Okay. Well...let me talk to my manager. Maybe we can get a special sheet for you." And then you're left sitting there feeling really cheap while the other customers look at you and shake their heads and say, "Did you hear that? They only want to donate a few dollars to the Children's Miracle Network. What's wrong with them? Don't they care about the children?"

Actually, it was nothing like that. There was a box by the door with a slot that you could drop money through.

This was actually the first time we'd been to this IHOP location, even though it's just a five-minute drive away. There are so many other choices. Still, IHOP did not disappoint.

Joe here. I've always known that this day was coming, but I'd always wanted to put it off for as long as possible. When we started this blog, we wanted to explore as many different pancake houses as we could, not just national chains like the International House of Pancakes. Most of these family-owned restaurants have a character and culture that's completely unique to them, though inexperienced by passers-by and wholly unknown outside of their communities.

IHOP's steady encroachment into our communities -- now at over 1,300 locations in North America -- doesn't bother me so much as the privileged place it's taken up in our collective imaginations. When most people think of pancakes, where do their minds wander? To their local pancake house? Or to that familiar, blue-roofed destination of retirees, bored kids, goth RPG'ers, and drunken revellers everywhere? You know the answer. IHOP is cheap, quick, and within driving distance of almost anywhere in the contiguous 48 states. But how it became synonymous with gourmet breakfasts in the minds of most consumers is beyond me. Granted, many people solely consume IHOP pancakes as "hangover food" and who am I to judge them? But since most of their customers are bound to plain Bisquick flapjacks at home, getting a Rooty Tooty Fresh 'n Fruity or anything else covered in whipped cream and fruit compote is a rare treat indeed. Of course, their local "pancake house" offers the same meals, but why take a chance on something you don't know?

So here we are in 2008, cameraphone brats have reached a critical mass, independent restaurants are folding left and right as a recession looms, and real food critics are finally breaking down and taking IHOP seriously. And if their all-you-can-eat pancakes promotion wasn't enough, IHOP has taken the next logical step and just started giving them away. Traditionally, their observance of National Pancake Day would fall on Shrove/Fat Tuesday, but apparently voting in the February 5 "Super Tuesday" primary AND finishing a plate of three hotcakes simply would be too much for the average American to do in just one day, so the holiday observance was moved to one week later.

Just to be clear, all you're getting is a plate of three regular pancakes, which hardly anyone settles for if they're sitting down for a meal at IHOP. Maybe they were counting on lots of orders for side items and juices? A kind of reciprocal altruism from customers in return for their generosity? Before I get too cynical, IHOP did raise over $875,000 this year for the Children's Miracle Network from customer donations. And the hot-buttered pancakes... aren't that bad. Enjoy your choice of four super-sugary syrup flavors, or just a warmed container of original flavor. The dispensers, along with the coffee urns, now sport a stylish metallic finish. No more cracked blue plastic!

All we purchased were two glasses of orange juice -- one small, one large -- though they were practically the same size. It probably wasn't freshly-squeezed, but what did you expect?

This was my first visit to IHOP in a few years, and probably my last for a while. Still, it's good to come back and see that it's really not the dive that I remembered it being. All the same, it's a big world out there and anyone who loves breakfast would do themselves a favor to venture outside of their comfort zone and try something different for a change. You can enjoy IHOP for what it is, but support your local family restaurants, too. Don't worry, Cliff isn't going to hunt you down. Though it looks like he could if he wanted to.

Golden Nugget Pancake House, Chicago (Lincoln Park)

2008-01-26T17:00:00.001-06:00

Golden Nugget Pancake House
2720 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60614

January 23, 2008

We hadn't planned on visiting the Golden Nugget in Lincoln Park, but we were short on time and slightly famished, and finding street parking near any other restaurant that looked promising was proving to be much more difficult than we expected. The Golden Nugget offered the most tempting of amenities that made dining there an easy choice for us: free parking in their adjacent lot.

This is the second Golden Nugget franchise we've visited, but it's really on another level compared to the location on Irving Park Road: bigger, cleaner, and with better service. Even the sprawling, colorful, glossy menu outclassed the one we'd last read at the other Golden Nugget. Or maybe all their restaurants have these new ones now? The stained glass windows might not be on loan from the Smith Museum or anything, but I resent Centerstage's dismissal of them as "faux stained glass." Do you really want to offer up the real thing within arm's length to the drunken stragglers and hyper kids that probably come stumbling in at 2 a.m.?

I ordered the all fruit waffle. "Fresh and fruity. Covered with strawberries, blueberries, and apple compote. Topped with bananas and whipped cream." Sure, the toppings look delicious, but what you're really witnessing is a fruit flood bursting through the whipped cream levee that was built around it as a last resort. Was this disaster brought on by natural causes, or was it an intentional act of destruction? No, I don't have proof, but someone has to pay.

Amanda here. Joe pretty much said it all. Finding this restaurant was a pleasant surprise...and it's a nice, cozy place to eat on a snowy night. I got the strawberry waffle, which was pretty much like Joe's waffle, but without the massive orgy of fruit on top. Just plain strawberries...the ooey gooey kind (yum!) surrounded by a whipped cream wall. Can't beat a good strawberry waffle.

Clarke's Pancake House, Chicago

2008-01-20T20:27:00.001-06:00

Clarke's Pancake House
2441 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614

January 16, 2007

Despite the fact that it was advertised as "Clarke's Pancake House" online, the sign said "Clarke's Bar and Grill" on the front of the restaurant, leading us to wonder if we'd made a terrible mistake. I don't typically think of a "bar and grille" as a place where you can get breakfast entrees. Luckily, Clarke's does have an all-day breakfast menu. Mostly pancakes and waffles, with some egg dishes. I was disappointed by the lack of breakfast combos--if you want pancakes and eggs, you pretty much have to order them as two separate items. But the blueberry pancakes I got were delicious, with plenty of compote on the side. Mmm, compote!

The decor was rather aggressively fun and cute--little clouds painted on the blue ceiling, faux 1940's posters with wacky sayings on the walls, et cetera. Even the menus were covered with old black and white photos of people with humorous cartoon thought bubbles over their heads. I'm not saying that's bad. Maybe "fun and cute" is your thing. I'm just saying they came on a bit strong. It's still not nearly as bad as, say, Applebee's or TGI Friday's, where the "fun" is rammed down your throat with a hot poker, and Clarke's felt more authentic, anyway, like the decorating choices were made by a person and not a circle of men in business suits with dark, shadowy faces and reflective glasses, sitting around a table and saying things like, "We must focus our core competencies and formulate a new paradigm to increase the bottom line" in their deep, monotone voices.

Joe here. Our first visit to Clarke's, and for a few minutes as we drove in a circle down Lincoln, Sheffield, and Fullerton, it looked like our trip might have been in vain. There was a Clarke's at the very address we were seeking... but Clarke's Bar and Grille? Had they been muscled out of the breakfast business by the Chicago pancake mafia, or had Lincoln Park gentrified ordinary restaurants out of existence in favor of yet more bars? Fortunately, Lincoln Park denizens still need both; Clarke's Pancake House sits next door, inconspicuous from outdoors but every bit the classic, archetypal breakfast diner inside.

Their menu offers specials for every meal, but there's a good emphasis on pancakes and waffles. I chose the multi-grain waffles, which came with a side of fruit and yogurt. I wasn't really sure if I was supposed to put the yogurt on the waffles or eat it by itself. I ended up dipping my most of my waffles into it. However you choose to eat them, they're really good. Everyone needs a healthy break from the whipped cream orgies that most pancake and waffles dishes have become in this young century.

We passed on coffee and juice, sticking to water while trying to save a few dollars for the rest of the day out. I proceeded to spill said water all over the floor while haphazardly sliding my glass across the table. I should have been more careful, and I apologize to the busboy who was stuck with the job of mopping up my mess. In my defense, I hadn't noticed or expected such a dramatic drop in height from one table to the next. But that was my mistake.

Another mistake? Thinking I could pull up to this parking meter two doors down from Clarke's (while giving the car behind me enough room to safely pull out) without getting a ticket. I'd never knowingly park in a crosswalk, but that's because I've been brought up understanding that crosswalks are designated by markings like these, and have to be more than just unmarked, corresponding dips in the curb (at an intersection without any stop signs to aid pedestrians, no less). Would a dictionary definition have given me a chance to fight this in court? Would taking a day off work and negotiating the one-hour commute each way to Chicago to fight it have been worth it? Did I have a chance? Probably not.

Nick's Breakfast House, Brookfield

2008-01-09T17:21:00.000-06:00

Nick's Breakfast House
9132 31st St
Brookfield, IL 60513

January 8, 2008

Nestled next to a dry cleaners and a convenience store, Nick's Breakfast House is a cozy little restaurant with less than a dozen tables, and selective offering of low-priced breakfast dishes. It's less than a mile from the Brookfield Zoo, so if you're attending the zoo on any of its free admission days (Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays through the end of February) out of financial necessity, Nick's might be the affordable breakfast that you've been looking for.

But I'm having trouble coming up with any other possible reason to stop by. The pancakes are adequate but nothing to write home about. My bacon strips were the most thinly sliced I've ever seen. I'd missed having my coffee earlier in the morning and was pretty desperate for some when we walked in. We arrived more than an hour before their 2:00 closing time. I was told they were done serving coffee for the day, unless I wanted the decaf they had still had left. I didn't bother to look, but maybe that steaming cup of coffee pictured on their sign has a tiny asterisk next to it.

Ayinsan here. Not a whole lot else to report about Nick's. The food was fine, though the menu choices were rather limited--no crepes, blintzes or anything fancy, just the usual pancake/waffle/French toast, along with assorted omelettes and skillets. I got the basic breakfast combo. Our waitress was friendly enough, and the food came very quickly, but the whole coffee thing is rather perplexing. She told us something about how her supervisor would get on her case if she brewed another pot, so it's not like they were out of coffee, they just didn't want to make anymore. If we'd decided to make a bigger deal about it, she probably would have brewed a new pot for us, but really, should you have to make a big deal about getting a cup of coffee? At a pancake restaurant?

Juicy-O Pancake House, Downers Grove

2007-12-21T19:53:00.000-06:00

Juicy-O Pancake House
2942 Finley Rd.
Downers Grove, IL 60515

December 11 and 17, 2007

We visited Juicy-O on the way to a job interview I had more than a year ago, enjoyed our meal there immensely, and then promptly forgot not just its name but also the suburb that we were passing through when we found it. The only thing I remembered about its location was its proximity to a Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant, which is all we had to go by for quite some time until I found this last week. I don't know if this completely validates the existence of Downers Grove or not, but at least it's a start.

The first thing you'll notice while walking in the door is the abundance of pictures and signs hanging up. A lot of breakfast restaurants put up framed posters on their walls; specifically, I've seen this, this, this, and ones like this hanging up in different family restaurants/pancake houses, not just here but in other states. Juicy-O isn't content to mimic this motif of contrived spontaneous nostalgia. Instead, their gallery consists not of faux-vintage prints, but framed quotes in the form of arcastic observations, quasi-motivational sayings, self-deprecatory humor and various other maxims and adages. I never want to be "that guy," but despite the head-scratching stupidity of so many of these, I caught myself reading a few out loud, probably to the annoyance of the surrounding waitstaff.

Juicy-O make choosing the perfect breakfast easy: their entire menu is available on their website. On my first visit, I ordered the "pancake flight": one order of pancakes topped with strawberries, blueberries, and bananas. Very good, maybe not as great as The Manor's assorted fruit pancake, but a great bargain for anyone who loves fruit pancakes. Some whipped cream would complement this nicely. I guess I could have requested some. I also wish I'd taken a sharper picture of it all than this. The plate wasn't sliding across the table at a high speed or anything, so there's really no excuse for the blurry atrocity of a photograph pictured below.

Returning to Juicy-O a week later, I wanted something different. Crepes? Waffles? I went with French toast, "Thick Cinnamon Swirl" French toast. This was an adequate breakfast but wasn't as rich as I'd hoped. No cinnamon butter spread either, unfortunately. Maybe Juicy-O was watching out for my health.

I get the feeling that even with three visits under our belt, we're still only scratching the surface of what Juicy-O has to offer. I haven't even mentioned their juice bar, or the free (and delicious) doughnuts they offer during breakfast. All this in a spacious, colorful, and fun restaurant, with fewer gimmicks than my rambling description has probably suggested. I can't wait to go back again! And no, I'm not just saying that to get their customer of the month award.

Ayinsan here. On our first visit to Juicy-O, I had the banana foster French toast. I remember it being good, though that was so long ago I can't say much else about it. On our second visit, a few weeks ago, I had Juicy-O's basic breakfast combo--two pancakes, two eggs, two sausage links and two bacon strips. Most breakfast places have some variation of this. It's a nice balance of foods, and all very tasty. Their pancakes are soft and fluffy, the eggs look and taste like real eggs, the sausage was big and juicy and the bacon was...bacon-y.

On our most recent visit I tried the strawberry pancakes. Not bad, but strawberries and pancakes is not the best combination. Strawberries are great with waffles or blintzes, but pancakes, I have found, are best in their purest and simplest form, their warm fluffy goodness graced only with melted butter and maple syrup.

Joe's already remarked on the large number of framed saying on the walls. They range from mildly clever to irritating to nonsensical. "I used to have a dog, and he was a good dog" reads ones, "but these days he'd be a 'Canine American.'" Okay, whatever that means. Another reads, "Sarcasm is one of the many services we offer," but no one in the restaurant offered us sarcasm, so I think that qualifies as false advertising.

I should comment on Juicy-O's "bubble tea." I'd never had bubble tea before, and based on the name, I was expecting it to be kind of like, you know, tea. Actually, it was more like a fruit smoothie. Very thick. Not that that's a bad thing, I just wasn't prepared for it. I got the "peaches and cream" flavor. You can get bubble tea with or without tapioca. I am not wild about tapioca in general, but in the past I'd only encountered it in pudding. Here, it came in the form of free-floating, dark blue globules near the bottom of the glass. Chewing on one of these is a unique experience. One was enough for me, but if you like tapioca you might have a different reaction.

Overall? I recommend Juicy-O. Tasty food, and the prices, while not cheap, are about what you'd expect for a restaurant of this type. Just be forewarned; the framed sayings on the walls, while not particularly funny, are strangely addictive to read, and you will find yourself attempting to read every single one.

Spring View Family Restaurant, St. Charles

2007-11-30T22:32:00.000-06:00

Spring View Family Restaurant
1650 W Main St
St. Charles, IL 60174

November 25, 2007

I didn't know what to expect from Spring View. We've driven past it before, but I never really noticed it, so this visit was a pleasant surprise. The interior is pretty nice, clean, cozy and well-lit. As you can see, there's kind of a mauve color scheme going on with the chairs and ceiling fixtures...or is that lavender? Something like that. There's lots of plants too. If you happen to be a Viking lord or a rough-edged biker covered with tattoos of knives and snarling tigers, the decor may not be to your tastes, but otherwise it's pretty nice. I also enjoyed the bobble-head dogs near the front entrance. Yes, I'm easily amused.

I got a waffle with whipped cream and strawberries. The menu claims these are "frozen fresh strawberries," which seems like a contradiction to me. I mean, I understand fresh fruit to be fruit that has not been frozen. These strawberries seemed like frozen ones, which I actually prefer, at least on waffles (they're juicier, and their juice soaks into the waffles and makes them ooey gooey good). Maybe the menu writers worried that if they just put "frozen strawberries," people would expect it to show up topped with strawberries frozen in ice-cubes.

In any case, the waffle was good...and surprisingly cheap. There are places where you'd have to pay $7.50 for a waffle with whipped cream and strawberries. This was $5.50, and it tasted great and filled me up.

Ah yes, and how could I forget the koi pond? This is the only pancake restaurant I've been to with a koi pond. And there are lots of those fish in there, all different colors, some nearly a foot long. Surprisingly, they were still pretty active despite the cold weather. The promise of koi was what lured me to this restaurant in the first place. Apparently the pond attracts visitors of the non-human variety as well. Once (according to a waitress) a hawk swooped down and grabbed the biggest koi out of the pond with its talons, and raccoons have been spotted sneaking about as well. I don't know if these fish have any kind of self-awareness, but I imagine their lives are similar to that of the Eloi in that H.G. Wells story. Most of the time it's pretty easy--they just float around and eat--but every so often one of them is snatched and carried to an early and gruesome death. Alas, poor koi.

Joe here. I'm not sure if I've ever been to the Spring View restaurant before this past week. We've been driving past it for years, but always on our way to Colonial, Baker's Square, or the the late, great Manor in downtown St. Charles. It never looked like much from the outside, and being surrounded by guardrails and brick walls, it always seemed like more of a fortress than a restaurant. The sign's been missing those letters for a few months now, too. All this never did much to draw me inside, but last week I finally faced my fears and gave it a chance.

Spring View doesn't bill itself as a pancake house, at least not on their sign outside. But pancake-phobes seeking refuge from those soft, steamy platters of their nightmares will be in for a horrifying surprise when they receive their menu. Their breakfast menu is on the back, and what they lack is selection is made up for by some pretty good prices. My blueberry pancakes weren't even $5.00!

My only real complaint? Our food arrived extremely quick, but felt like it had already been sitting out for minutes. The pancakes were good, but would have been better if they'd only been a little hotter. Nothing to write home about, but worth trying again, especially if you're on a budget.

Don't fall for his dirty tricks.

Higgley's Restaurant, Arlington Heights

2007-11-20T12:07:00.000-06:00

Higgley's Restaurant
2240 S. Arlington Heights Road
Arlington Heights, IL 60005

November 17, 2007

I used to live about a half mile down the road from Higgley's. I probably dined there on fewer than a half-dozen occasions, but I loved the place. Really, I did. Great comfort food, and it was cheap! Higgley's was usually close to empty in the late afternoon, well after the midday lunch rush but before the early dinner customers would begin to show up. That's when I would usually wander in, awaiting free rolls and the sense of reassurance that comes from being the youngest person in the room. Usually, I'd order a soup and sandwich, but I liked their pancakes too, and was looking forward to trying them again, for the first time in over a year. Higgley's wasn't exclusively a breakfast restaurant, but breakfast was always on the menu, and the atmosphere felt like a pancake house, or at least a family restaurant. Though unfortunately, I never saw any actual families at any of the tables. They were probably at the Denny's across the street on Algonquin Road, or in the IHOP a half mile to the north on Golf Road. Their loss.

So maybe I should have seen it coming, but I was still shocked and saddened when we pulled into the Higgley's parking lot, found it to be distressingly empty, and then saw the neon green posterboard taped to the front door.

So what's the story? "CLOSED DUE TO NON-RENEWAL OF LEASE" doesn't really explain why Higgley's closed. As a restaurant that had been open and operating successfully for years (more than ten, at least twenty, I'm assuming), surely the owners of the business itself would also own the actual property that it was housed in. Right? Or so it would seem. So did Higgley's bow out on their own free will, or did CVS put up an offer that the landowners couldn't refuse?

I could have sworn that Higgley's was open during the past few times that I've driven past it. Should have stopped in while I had the chance, but apparently that chance passed by a long time ago. This blog hosts the only complete news story on the matter that's still online, and the article is more than a year old. So strange to see the same sign still taped to the window today. The latest rumor is that a new BP Station could be moving in, demolishing Higgley's as well as, wait for it... the old BP station next door! This new station would be complete with an AMPM store. If you haven't been inside one, it's a laughable "store-within-a-store" that sells ordinary gas station food and soft drinks in appallingly giant cups. Sometimes those also have a Wild Bean Cafe inside. If you loved the authentic, retro-'50s experience of Wal-Mart's Radio Grill, you'll love the friendly baristas, comfy armchairs, and the Friday night poetry slams at the Wild Bean Cafe.

Ayinsan here. I've only been to Higgley's once. This was back when Joe lived in Arlington Heights and the two of us went there. I had their pancakes, which were decent. The only detail I remember clearly is that their syrup came in little packages rather than the traditional container with a pour-spout and handle, but I, too, was sad to see this little restaurant close down, especially since it might be replaced with yet another CVS. Honestly, how many of those do we need?

Gigi's Pancake House & Restaurant, Naperville

2007-10-10T20:53:00.000-05:00

Gigi's Pancake House & Restaurant
2728 W. 111th Street
Naperville, IL 60564

October 9, 2007

Not every pancake house has its own website, so on the uncommon occasion where I find one that does, I'll usually read it pretty thoroughly before heading out the door. Who wouldn't want a sneak preview of where they're going to be spending the next hour in, not to mention a good hour or two's pay? When I first saw the website for Gigi's, I paused to wonder if maybe I should look for some place a little more casual. Flash animation and a snazzy jazz soundtrack? Pretty impressive, maybe even a little intimidating for someone who just wants to get a plate of pancakes. Photos of a sprawling banquet room, tables adorned with expensive silverware, customers wearing designer suits and dresses, toasting Champagne... can I really afford this?

Imagine my surprise when we pull up to the address and find a standard pancake house: no dress code, no maître d', and no white tablecloths in sight. The exquisite pastries featured on Gigi's website? Possibly hidden in the back, though there's a display case full of basic cakes and pies. I've checked and rechecked this site a number of times since then, just to make sure I wasn't looking at a different Gigi's restaurant. Surely there are a few out there that begrudginly share the same name. But the Gigi's online seems to be the same one that we dined at, despite the misleading impressions of its website.

We arrived at mid-afternoon and nearly had the place to ourselves. Pretty standard but inviting interior that does its best to make you forget that you're stranded in a wasteland of suburban strip malls and big box stores. Their breakfast menu features a decent selection of pancakes, and more. I ordered the banana pancakes, pictured below, lurking in the shadows.

Sliced bananas on top, mushed bananas inside, moist, fluffy, and a bit on the heavy side. Whipped cream was provided on the side, which is a good placement for it in this case. Take it as you need it. My freshly squeezed orange juice was like sunshine in a glass. Recommended.

Ayinsan here. Not a whole lot to say about Gigi's. It's cozy, low-key, and has some autumn-y decorations--no tacky paper jack-o-lanterns or dancing skeletons, just some orange leaves festooning the light fixtures. The waitress brought out a bread basket to our table before the meal, which is always nice. Often, when we visit these types of restaurants, we'll be sitting there hungry and we'll be the only people in the restaurant who don't have a basket of succulent muffins and soft, chewy rolls sitting on our table. I don't know if we just send out some kind of anti-bread vibe, or what. We usually either have to request a basket or go without...so it's a pleasant surprise when a basket does show up, even if it's just your basic rolls and crackers, like this one.

I got the blueberry pancakes. In addition to the blueberries baked into the batter, there's some warm blueberry compote on top. Compote is a terribly unappetizing word--it sounds too much like "compost"--but nonetheless it's really good on pancakes. Especially when combined with whipped cream. By the way, I usually have to ask for whipped cream, and some places will even charge extra for it. Here, it came automatically with the pancakes, but it's on the side, so if you don't like whipped cream (but hey, who doesn't?), you can ignore it.

Gigi's might warrant a future visit, if it was a little closer. As it was, we had to drive for what felt like hours, across miles of unknown terrain. I think we crossed a desert at some point, and then had to drive through pirahna-infested rivers in a sweltering jungle. But it was worth it for those pancakes heaped with warm blueberry compote. Mmm, compote.

Grandma Sally's Pancake House, Naperville

2007-09-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

Grandma Sally's Pancake House
450 E Ogden Ave.
Naperville, IL 60563

September 8 and September 25, 2007

The actual name of this restaurant is unclear. While it's referred to as "Grandma Sally's Waffle House" online, the name on the sign is "Grandma Sally's Family Restaurant." Whatever you call it, it's a place where you can get breakfast all day, and in my mind that qualifies it as a pancake house, which it also says on the awning.

We've been here twice now. On our first visit, the food was excellent. I got the strawberry blintzes and received a full plate of blintzes, along with an entire bowl of warm, gooey strawberries on the side. They certainly didn't skimp on anything. If you're a blintz person, this is your restaurant.

On the second visit I thought I'd try something different, so I got a cheese omelet with pancakes. Now, omelets are generally not something I get in restaurants, so I don't have a lot to compare this to, but I can't say it was anything to get excited about. The eggs were kind of tough, and rather than being evenly mixed into the omelet, the cheese was all kind of concentrated in a little pocket in the center. The pancakes were passable, the hash browns were pretty good. Though really, it's hard to screw up hash browns. Mix in a little ketchup and salt and you're set.

The interior of the restaurant sports a large painting of Grandma Sally herself, watching over the customers. I'm not sure whether this should give me a warm, fuzzy feeling, or a sort of, "Grandma Sally's got her eye on you, so you'd better not dine and dash or she'll come after you with her razor" feeling.

The front of the menu also sports a painting. There's Sally serving some food to kids at a table. The boy in the center is named Chris (you have to look really closely--his name is on the front of his shirt). The other children, I guess, aren't important enough to get names. It makes me wonder what sort of strings this "Chris" pulled to get his name on the menu while his fellow children languish in obscurity.

Joe here. I don't know why it took this long for us to check Naperville for a pancake house. It's only a few minutes away, and being the fourth largest city in the state -- it doesn't seem to be a question of if it will ever pass Rockford for third, but when -- and is the perfect suburban setting for the pancake house and/or family restaurant. Maybe a little too perfect? I'd post some of those anti-Naperville shirts that were popular two years or so ago but now they only seem to be available as toddler-sized onesies for Wicker Park grups to dress their kids up in. The irony of it all.

The blueberry pancakes I had on my first trip were excellent. Didn't get any blueberry syrup with them, but that's fine. I'm starting to think that flavored syrups were only invented to compensate for bland, dry pancakes, anyway. I had these more than a month ago so I'm afraid I don't remember much about them, except that I was very satisfied and was already looking forward to coming back to Grandma Sally's again soon. Maybe I'd found a new favorite pancake house?

My hopes were dashed upon the second trip. I ordered the Swedish pancakes, the hardy perennial dish that I can always count on, no matter where I go. Grandma Sally's serves theirs with a big bowl of lingonberries, which was a promising sign, but it was much more runny than I usually like. The pancakes themselves were soft and chewy, almost to the point of being soggy. There doesn't seem to be any cut and dry way of making Swedish pancakes, but I prefer a crispy edge to them that these didn't have. No lingonberry butter, either, but less than half of the places I've been to seem to offer that. I don't want to say these were terrible, they just weren't satisfying. Ayinsan's American cheese omlette was disappointingly runny and bland.

I do like the interior of the restaurant; lots of browns and greens, plenty of brass fixtures and hanging plants. You see this sort of thing a lot, but that's precisely the point. It's like an unspoken agreement in the pancake house underground: keep the same motif in every restaurant and customers will feel at home no matter where they go. It's more of a loose tradition than any kind of a corporate-mandated commitment to standards. It's a far cry from Grandma Sally's days of feeding orphans in a log cabin (partially pictured here behind the shoulder of the lonely gentleman). These days, her altruism towards children only only goes to ones that can afford it.

Original Pancake House, Oak Park

2007-08-30T22:08:00.000-05:00

Original Pancake House
954 Lake Street
Oak Park, IL 60301

August 18, 2007

I know I said I wasn't going to do any more entries on chains we've already been to, but in light of recent events, it's become clear to me that I was wrong to take these individual franchises for granted. You never know what tomorrow is going to bring... or if tomorrow will even arrive. For you.

But if it does, you might want to treat yourself to breakfast at the Original Pancake House. They have 16 locations in Illinois alone, more than any other state. If there's a non-acronymical pancake house out there with more locations (109 nationwide), I'd like to know. This one sits in downtown Oak Park, just blocks from the childhood home of Ernest Hemingway. I had time to kill before breakfast so I went for a walk but missed it by one street. Nice houses in the neighborhood, anyway. But we all know what Hemingway thought about those.

We dined on a Saturday morning, so as you can see, the OPH was packed. We had to wait almost 15 minutes for a table, and passed the time as best we could. Eventually we were seated and ordered some coffee, brought to us in a pot that was conveniently left on our table. On a busy morning like this, they probably wouldn't have time to come around and give everyone refills, anyway. We all ordered pancakes or eggs. I wish I would have picked something a little more adventurous than a basic plate of buttermilk pancakes, but I've been burned a few times this summer by ordering a few appetizing-sounding but ultimately disappointing exotic pancake dishes, so I chose to play it safe. And nobody wants to be the only person to order a pile of fruit and whipped cream. Not when you're in the presence of greatness, anyway.

My pancakes were delicious: evenly cooked, fluffy but not bready, and a perfectly-sized portion. In other words: good pancakes, which is all we ever ask for. This good-ness is a difficult quality to define in plain, flour-based pancakes, much less discern to any significant degree for most people from restaurant to restaurant. These differences are largely imperceptible to the human tongue, though I hoped that in time I would somehow develop the skills to do so. Unfortunately, this ability is purely genetic, meaning that I'll probably never fully experience the long-rumored, consciousness-altering, fourth plateau of pancake goodness that's supposedly out there somewhere. I wanted to try some of Gena's omelet, which was too much for her to finish, but I didn't want to look like a gluttonous cadger so I didn't ask. No one else had any trouble cleaning their plates. For the five of us, our bill came to about $45.00. This isn't bad for a group of single people with a wealth of disposable income to blow indiscriminately. But I'm starting to understand why going out like this would be difficult for families to do on a regular basis.

Downtown Oak Park seems like a nice place to live, a suburb with character, if you will. Maybe I'm just oblivious to its dark, gentrified secrets? I don't know. Any place with a pancake house, movie theater, Borders bookstore, and internet cafe/bubble tea bar on the same block can't be that bad, can it?

Broadway Pancake House, Brookfield

2007-08-20T15:40:00.000-05:00

Broadway Pancake House
9215 West Broadway Ave.
Brookfield, IL 60513

August 16, 2007

We've had a pair of free passes to the Brookfield Zoo that we've been waiting to use since the spring, which we finally put to good use this week. Since we were already headed to Brookfield, we wanted to find some place to have breakfast first. Sure enough, there was a pancake house in Brookfield, and though we took the wrong way out of the nearby turnabout to get there, we eventually found it relative ease. The Brookfield Pancake House sits on a quiet street, just across from an old fashioned barber shop, and next door to something called Micro Thunder, Inc.. As you can see, it's also next to a dollar store. And not one of those cheap Dollar Tree stores that have taken over every strip mall in the suburbs (and unfortunate shopping malls as well), either. Check the dude in the jorts who's about to sit on the sign. Classic style.

The awning above the door displays the name "Broadway Pancake House," yet the sign just above it clearly reads "Broadway Family Restaurant." From the outside this might seem like a restaurant with an identity crisis. Just don't expect to find a shocking collision of themes inside. It's a pancake house, but feels more like a diner than a family restaurant. Our host/waiter was friendly and the service was good, but we were two of the only customers in at the time. It was after 1:00 on a weekday, so obviously business was slow. It must pick up later in the evening, because unlike most other pancake houses we've been to, Broadway is open until 9:00 at night for dinner.

The menu gives you a decent but not quite impressive list of pancakes to pick from. I chose the silver dollar pancakes, while Ayinsan skipped pancakes altogether and tried the French toast special with eggs and sausage. My pancakes were fine. Nothing special, here.

Our bill came to under ten dollars for both of us, but that's without any coffee or juice. We'd both had coffee earlier that morning, and maybe we just wanted to save money by drinking ice water instead of juice. It's probably a fact that meals are more enjoyable when you get "real" beverages with them, so we're probably doing these restaurants (and our opinions of them) an unfair disservice when we choose not to have any with our meals. Not that we really think that our opinions are really filling (or emptying) the booths. I just don't want to put up an unnecessarily critical or pissy "review" that some pancake house owner is eventually going to find on Google. Is that a spineless attitude or what?

Anyway, the Broadway Pancake House is a good stop if you're looking for breakfast on the cheap, especially if you're planning on spending a few hours at the zoo afterwards (worth doing before Labor Day). Just don't expect anything more than a no-frills breakfast. No fancy crepes, Belgian waffles, apricot glaze, or chrome caddies of fruit-flavored syrups. But maybe that's just fine with you.

Ayinsan here. As you can see, my breakfast came arranged with geometric precision on the plate, with french toast triangles bracketing a large, yellow rectangle of eggs, and a sausage link perched at each end. Of course, I only had a few seconds to appreciate this effort before I tore it apart with my knife and fork.

Pretty much all that needs to be said about the Broadway Pancake House has been said. It's simple, quick and cheap, and while the food was nothing to get excited about, it's also nothing to scoff at. And somehow, I was left with the impression that the folks running this restaurant take a certain pride in their work. Maybe it was the attentive and friendly service, or the carefully arranged food, or maybe they were broadcasting sub-audible hypnotic suggestions through the Oldies radio station.

Olde North Pancake House, West Chicago

2007-08-08T21:34:00.000-05:00

Olde North Pancake House
27W751 North Avenue (Rte 64)
West Chicago, IL 60185

July 31 & August 2, 2007

Less than two miles east of the Cascade Drive-In theater, the Olde North Pancake Pancake House stands on a relatively unoccupied stretch of Route 64. It's one of the last places you'd expect to find a pancake house, though in another five years, it might just be surrounded by Starbucks and bathroom tile stores like most of the other restaurants we've been to. Open space serviced by a major road like this doesn't stay unoccupied for very long anymore. It's probably only a matter of time before Lowes and Home Depot set up shop across the street from each other, Wal Mart buys up the busiest street corner they can, and mattress stores suddenly start springing up.

Hopefully this oncoming sprawl won't swallow up the Olde North Pancake House anytime soon. Olde North offers a good variety of pancakes and other breakfast entrees, and lots of lunch specials too. It was only open until 2:00 on the days that we visited, but apparently stay open later for dinner on Fridays.

There's a good selection of pancakes at Olde North, though my initial order of coconut pancakes wasn't the best choice I could have made. Shredded coconuts on top, and also baked into the cakes. I love coconut, but after finishing half of my order, I was longing for some good old fashioned plain hotcakes, or at least the cornmeal pancakes that I'd decided not to order at the last moment. On our next visit, I ordered my unoffical favorite: Swedish pancakes. They arrive at your table wrapped up like crepes, with lingonberries packed inside and drizzled on top, crispy on the edges and chewy in the center. These didn't disappoint at all, and were some of the best Swedish pancakes I've ever had.

Both of our visits were around 1:00 on weekday afternoons, hardly the busiest time for business for any breakfast restaurant, but each time there were still small groups of people coming in after us. That's a good thing. Like the Cascade Drive-In just down the road, it's easy to get the feeling that the days of the Olde North (or rather, places like it, in general) are numbered. Or maybe they're making more money every week than they know how to spend? I don't know. Hopefully people are also buying the decorations that hang on the walls. Most are for sale and have tiny price tags hanging from them. I don't like folk art at all but I support folk artists. I mean, I support their intentions, but not necessarily with my wallet. Yeah, I'm sure they really appreciate that.

Ayinsan here. As you can see, the interior has a cozy, rustic feel. Well, aside from that tower of individually packaged sugar cereals on the front counter, which are neither cozy nor rustic, but probably very tasty nonetheless. We got a booth near the back of the restaurant, next to a window, and there was a bird-feeder just outside. While we waited for our food, we watched hordes of sparrows (I think that's what they were...I can recognize robins and cardinals and pidgeons, but aside from that I am woefully ignorant of the birds inhabiting our fair state) crowding around to peck up seeds.

For our first visit I ordered the stuffed french toast, which was just plain delicious. Sweet cream-cheese filling between two half-slices of french toast, smothered with strawberry sauce and topped with dollops of whipped cream. For our second visit I got a combo which I believe was called the country breakfast. Hot cakes, scrambled eggs and sausage patties...can't go wrong with that. The sausage was especially good. Eggs? Eh, there was nothing wrong with them, but they weren't exciting. Finding really good scrambled eggs seems to be a tough task. I guess there's only so much you can do with them, but restaurant scrambled eggs all have the same dry, spongy consistency--filling, yet devoid of soul and character. I've taken to livening them up with a few drops of Tobasco sauce.

The Olde North Pancake House is right across from a mini golf course called Coyote Crossing. Their inflatable, grinning mascot proved a valuable advertising tool. After lunch, we crossed a busy street just so we could take a closer look, and a photo, and the next time we visited Olde North we ended up playing a game.

Orange, Chicago

2007-07-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

Orange
3231 N Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60657

June 19, 2007

We forgot our digital camera on the day we went to the Orange restaurant, and unfortunately, all I could find to replace it was a really cheap disposable camera, so the photos aren't as high-quality as we might have liked. They still give you an idea though, hopefully.

The inside of the Orange restaurant is, as you might guess, very orange. They offer a selection of freshly squeezed juice. I had apple-grape juice. Yum.

Their specials were various kinds of candy pancakes. I was tempted to try it just for the novelty, but a stack of pancakes with chocolate and candy bar chunks in it just sounded like too much. I love sweet things, but even I have my limits. Still, it appears that the specials change regularly, so the next time we come in, they'll probably have something different.

I got the cinnamon roll pancakes. Wow, just wow. To start out with, they're enormous. I could only finish about half of these, and I'm no amateur when it comes to polishing off a plate of pancakes. Very sweet, very dense, these almost tasted more like cinnamon coffee cake than pancakes, and were covered with some sort of maple-almond flavored frosting. Joe got the chai tea French toast, which I tasted. Good stuff. I also got a side-order of sausage (though I might have skipped that if I'd known how big the pancakes would be) which was quite tasty. The sausages had a bit of a kick to them, and were less greasy than the sausage at most breakfast places.

The Orange restaurant is perfect if you want to try something new and exotic. They're certainly not your av-er-age pancakes. I can't imagine eating here regularly, though. For one thing, it's a bit pricey. For another, the food (or at least, the food we had) is intensely filling and rich. To be fair, I didn't try their normal pancakes, so I can't comment on those, but this seems like a "special occasion" type of place to me.

Joe here. We'd tried visiting Orange earlier in June, but arrived moments too late to get in before their afternoon closing. This time we were right on time, and even found a parking spot right in front of the building. I'd forgotten my camera, so we had to make due with a disposable one instead. If you want better photos, consult this photo collection or others like it on the Internet.

We started our meal with some freshly squeezed juice. Each table has a miniature pail full of pencils and slips which list all the different varieties of juice to choose from. Circle the kind you want, whether it's a blend like apple-grape, or just a plain glass of fresh orange juice, and hand it to the waitress when she comes back around. It's some of the best juice I've ever tasted, and well worth it if you're willing to indulge yourself. If you're not, you might be at the wrong restaurant.

I'd heard rumors of Orange's chai tea French toast and had just to try it for myself. Sure enough, it arrived in a bowl with baked apples on top, and sitting in a small pool of chai tea. It wasn't super sweet chai like most coffeeshops offer, but probably closer to real, authentic chai, which I've only tasted on a few occasions. This was delicious. Don't let these seemingly pretentious offerings fool you: the portions are big, and you actually get what you pay for, even if it turns out to be much more than you expected. We both struggled to finish our meals.

The obvious downside of this is that breakfast/brunch at Orange is -- regardless of the actual value of what you're getting -- fairly expensive. Our check amounted to nearly $35 or so. Hard to see for sure as the photo didn't turn out as planned. I'd love to return to Orange again someday. Their menu (which didn't resemble this at all) seems like an ongoing work in progress, at least as far as their specials. What bizarre creations will they be serving next month? If you choose to find out for yourself, just be sure to bring your appetite with you.

Des Plaines Family Restaurant & Pancake House, Des Plaines

2007-06-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

Des Plaines Family Restaurant & Pancake House
1769 Miner St
Des Plaines, IL 60016

June 19, 2007

We hadn't planned on visiting the Des Plaines Family Restaurant & Pancake House this week. Instead, we were out looking for another restaurant that we'd visited almost a year before, only we did not remember its name and weren't completely sure what town it was in. I know it's shocking, but we were unable to find it. We could have sworn that it was in the same same shopping center as a Cheeseburger In Paradise restaurant, one that we'd seen somewhere in the north suburbs. We found their location in Des Plaines, but it's not the right one. Fortunately, we spotted the Des Plaines Family Restaurant & Pancake House and were able to get in less than ten minutes before they closed at 3:00.

This isn't a big restaurant; the main (well, only) dining room looks like it would hold less than 100 people. We were the only visitors on hand during our stay so our service was pretty excellent. They didn't rush us out the door in a hurry to close, either, which was nice. I ordered the blueberry crepes, which were moist and sweet. Very good. No complaints. Ayinsan's waffle was okay too. I only had one bite so it's hard for me to judge. Overall, this was a pleasant visit. I'd love to have this little restaurant in my neighborhood. Not sure if it's worth driving nearly an hour to get to, through endless construction and twisting detrours, though. But few things are.

Ayinsan here. Not too much to say about the Des Plaines Pancake House. The food and prices were decent and about what you'd expect. The service was probably the most notable thing about the experience. We were greeted pleasantly when we came in, the waitress came to our table right away and we hardly had to wait at all for our food. (Of course, this could have to do with the fact that we were the only people there. This was, I believe, the first time we've been the only customers in a restaurant.) She was polite, but professional, which is good because I personally don't like it when the waitresses or waiters get TOO friendly. Call me a sour old grumpykins, but it weirds me out when they grin like the Joker and hunker down by the table and peer up at you like a hungry cocker spaniel peering at a steak as they take your order. That sort of thing seems to happen more often at chain restaurants, though, where the employees are apparently put through some sort of extensive corporate conditioning to make them as maniacally eager to serve you as possible. I appreciate the friendly-yet-restrained treatment I get at these little individually owned places.

This chef is so delighted to serve you food, he's doing a little dance. Either that or he's in the process of slipping on a puddle of grease, and the fall will result in a broken femur and possibly a lawsuit. Either way, you can be sure the food on that tray is delicious.

Golden Nugget Pancake House, Chicago

2007-06-16T00:07:00.001-05:00

Golden Nugget Pancake House & Restaurant
3234 W. Irving Park Rd.
Chicago, IL 60618

June 12, 2007

Our original plan was to go to the Orange restaurant, but when we arrived, the door was locked. The restaurant supposedly closes at two, but we got there a few minutes before two and the place was already closed and deserted. Undaunted, we got back into the car and drove on in search of pancakes.

Luckily, the Golden Nugget pancake house was not far. We'd been to this particular restaurant a couple times in the past already, and my experiences there were always positive. Granted, I tend to get pretty basic stuff whenever I go there--usually a pancake-and-egg combo--so I don't know what their french toast or waffles are like. I do know that they don't have crepes or blintzes. I've come to expect those things from pancake restaurants, so I was a bit disappointed, but nonetheless, the food was quite satisfying.

The eggs here are better than most of the eggs I've tasted from similar restaurants. They're light, fluffy and buoyant, and they look like actual scrambled eggs, whereas many restaurants will just give you a plate with a something flat and yellowish-brown that looks like it was scraped off the underside of a truck.

The pancakes are moist, fluffy and sweet. They have a very distinctive taste. I have difficulty capturing it in words or explaining how it's different from most other pancakes I've had, but they must put something unusual in their batter.

Joe here. I know it's ridiculous, but we've somehow done more than 20 entries now without visiting even a single pancake house within Chicago city limits. As the months have passed I've become more and more aware of this, realizing that it's probably undermining our cause, or that it possibly could if anyone took notice of it. It reminds me of the Don DeLillo novel White Noise, in which the main character, a college professor specializing in "Hitler studies," privately bemoans the fact that he cannot speak German and lives in fear that his secret will eventually be found out. It's a terrible book, but I always found that plot point particularly amusing.

The last time that we visited the Golden Nugget was on July 16, 2005. I remember this so clearly because it was the afternoon of the first day of the Intonation festival held in Union Park that year. Traffic was light for a Saturday and we got into the city much quicker than we expected, so we had plenty of time to grab a late breakfast before seeking out the green line to head west to the park. It was a great afternoon of music, though come to think of it, we only saw three bands before leaving: Four Tet, The Go! Team, and Prefuse 73. We refilled our bottles of water and sat in the shade during Broken Social Scene, no sense in fighting the masses to stand within a hundred yards of that band. I'd wanted to stay late for Tortoise, but that would have meant sitting through DFA 1979, who took a ridiculous amount of time to even take the stage. By the time they started playing, we were already gone and watching from the el platform.

I'd already seen Tortoise before, four times, actually, so missing out on them was no big deal. The second time I saw them was with a friend at Metro. We met up with a few friends of his, a couple of art school dropouts who were renting a farmhouse out in Plano or God knows where, and who wouldn't stop talking about about all the amazing parties they'd been having and how wasted they'd gotten last week. This was my introduction to the modern indie music dude: guys who read Pitchfork and have esoteric taste, but who act like complete douchebags at a Dave Matthews concert -- screaming at and high-fiving each other -- whenever they go out to a show. I'll never forget one kid in our group in particular. Halfway through the show during "Seneca," he elbowed his way to the front to the crowd. Holding his hands above his head for everyone to see, he started clapping out the rhythms of the song, several minutes before the actual handclap parts even came in. He turned around and smiled to us, obviously incredibly pleased with himself that he was so far ahead of everyone else in this regard, and later bragged about this after the show as we had a late-night break at the Golden Nugget. I didn't have pancakes that night, just some coffee, which said kid proceeded to spill all over me as he drunkenly struggled to open a packet of cream, tearing it open in a violent motion that carried over into my coffee cup. He apologized for this for at least the next ten minutes.

Our afternoon at the Golden Nugget this week was much more enjoyable. We seated ourselves as directed to, visited the restrooms, and waited to be served. Considering that we were two of the only diners in the restaurant at all, it took a few more minutes than we were expecting for the waitress to take our order. Perhaps it wasn't a long wait after all, but I was extremely hungry, so it certainly felt like it. Ayinsan ordered the "pancake sandwich," which turned out to be nothing like a sandwich at all. I just ordered a plain order of pancakes. "I hope you're hungry," our waitress said. "Oh, I think I can handle it," I replied. Or so I thought. All I had was just five buttermilk pancakes, and they weren't even very big. But they were very filling and I regretfully had to leave uneaten scraps of the last one on my plate.

There are several Golden Nugget locations throughout Chicago, all located on the north side of the city. We visited the easternmost location on Irving Park Road. I've been past several of the other restaurants, but never inside, so I can't compare this location to any of the others. For more information and some history, there's a Wikipedia entry on the chain.

Omega Restaurant & Pancake House, Downers Grove

2007-06-06T11:49:00.000-05:00

Omega Restaurant & Pancake House
1300 Ogden Ave
Downers Grove, IL 60515

May 29, 2007

My Greek is a bit spotty, I'll admit, but a name like "Omega Pancake House" is not necessarily promising. Maybe I'm alone in this, but when I hear "omega," I think of the omega wolf, the lowest member of the wolf pack, basically the canine equivalent of that undersized, nearsighted kid who gets picked on by all the bullies at school. Maybe the owners of the Omega Pancake House are unaware of the negative connotations...or perhaps it's a deliberate attempt to tug at our heartstrings? A "support the underdog" kind of thing?

Probably not, but nonetheless, these connotations scampered about in my subconscious as we entered the Omega Pancake House. We were greeted by the traditional glass display case of tasty-looking desserts--always nice to see, even if we don't usually end up getting dessert at these restaurants. We were seated promptly and given a rather impressive basket of bread. Along with the usual saltines and rolls, it offered several different kinds of muffins, and a sign inviting us to take any unfinished bread home with us when we left. I kind of wished I'd asked for a bigger to-go container.

The menu offers the usual choices of pancakes, waffles, crepes, and french toast, with a few non-standard options, such as the Hawaiian pancakes (which Joe got). These are simply pancakes with pineapples on top. The menu also claims they came with "tropical syrup," but as far as I can tell, what we got was regular maple syrup.

I got the banana pancakes. They were tasty and filling, though not remarkable. The bananas were slightly underripe and chewy, which is, incidentally, exactly how I like them. Nothing worse than a mushy banana...unless you're making banana bread, in which case they're perfect. But I digress.

It's always slightly awkward when the waitress notices our camera and asks questions about it. In this case, the waitress seemed almost suspicious: "What are you doing? Taking a picture? What for?" As if she thought we were up to no good--perhaps spies from one of their rival pancake houses, sent to ferret out their weaknesses.

Joe here. Somewhere in the massive suburban sprawl of Downers Grove, you'll find the Omega Restaurant & Pancake House. Is it anywhere near Downers Delight? I have no idea. There's a reason that I-355 and I-88 were built; so you'd never have to actually drive through Downers Grove under any cirumstance. Is it related to the Omega Restaurant that I've passed by so many times in Warrenville? That location simply billed itself as "Omega Restaurant" on all of its outdoor signage and not as a pancake house in any way, shape, or form. As for the Downers Grove location, the "& Pancake House" portion of the name feels like an afterthought. An eight-page menu devotes about a single page to breakfast, less than half to pancakes.

For a Tuesday afternoon, the place seemed really busy. The service was good; despite the overflow of regulars for the lunch rush (you learn to recognize these people over time, they're the same wherever you go) we were seated quickly, our orders taken promptly. No complaints there. The food itself was... disappointing. My Hawaiian pancakes were just a regular order of pancakes with a handful of diced pineapples tossed on top. The banana pancakes? An order of regular pancakes with some banana on top, which may or may not have been applied using a Salad Shooter. Not much to get excited about, unfortunately. I wish I had more to say about my experience visiting Omega, but nothing left a strong impression on me. Maybe this is a destination better saved for lunch and dinner?

Manor Restaurant & Pancake House, East Dundee

2007-05-17T23:34:00.000-05:00

Manor Restaurant & Pancake House
425 E. Main St. (Rt.72)
East Dundee, IL 60118

May 17, 2007

If you've been to one Original Pancake House, one Golden Nugget, or one IHOP, and you enjoyed your visit, odds are you'd probably enjoy another day out at one of their other locations. We agree with this, but that doesn't mean we'd want to write about it all over again. Yes, over the past few months we've been to a few pancake houses that didn't get mentioned here, but only because we'd already written about one of their sister locations. I don't really know how interesting it would be to write about Colonial five or six different times, or if there's really any reason to bother comparing one Lumes location to another. We'd much rather move on and keep exploring, really. Maybe real food critics have the patience and the highly honed taste threshholds for that stuff, but not us.

We already visited the Manor location in St. Charles late last year, but unfortunately, we were a few months too late and arrived at a vacant and locked building. Under these circumstances, I think we could excuse ourselves from our self-imposed limitations considering that there were still other Manor locations out there waiting for us to try. I couldn't remember exactly where the one in Elgin was (apparently it's at 555 N. McLean, though I honestly have no idea if it's still open or not), so we headed up to East Dundee instead. Fortunately, the Manor is still alive and well in East Dundee, which is great news for the town, still searching for its soul ever since Santa's Village closed up for good two years ago.

The Manor Restaurant & Pancake House sits at the corner of routes 72 & 68. Maybe not at the true corner, as that's occupied by a gas station that unfortunately obscures most of the building from the road. This isn't really a bad thing, as the restaurant is kind of settled in behind it and nestled in by a lot of trees, which shade the building and keep the screaming sunshine outside where it belongs. I don't necessarily like dark restaurants, but when I'm inside I like being able to forget about what time it is if I want to, and the low-key ambiance at The Manor is perfect for that. Low lighting, mirrored walls, and lots of glass partitions divide the room up into a dimly-lit maze of indeterminate depth, at least from the confines of our booth. Up front, there's a nice case of cakes and pies at the counter, some torn vinyl chairs (note the classic slash in the seat on the right), and some nice wooden carvings of bald eagles that could be yours for about $1,200 each.

My usual at the Manor was always Italian beef for dinner or lunch, and blitzes for breakfast. But I remembered having the assorted fruit pancake and enjoying it, and I've often wondered why more restaurants don't offer anything like it. Strawberries, bananas, peaches... all together on one plate. Yeah, there's a pancake in there too, a thick one, actually, but it's folded in half with fruit inside and whipped cream on top. This is so good, words can't do it justice. If you like fruit pancakes then this is your dream breakfast. Well, for me it was a dream mid-afternoon lunch, one that I'd been looking forward to all day, having skipped breakfast. Still, I almost couldn't clean my plate. It was only after three cups of coffee that I finally finished picking at it. I regret nothing.

Our bill came to an even $16.00 after tax. Not bad for two orders with coffees. Afterwards we wandered outside into a garden in the parking lot. There are some steps leading up to it from the parking lot, so I assume that it's owned and maintained by the Manor. Most suburban restaurants take their non-paved extra land for granted, so it's nice to see someone trying to bring a little beauty to the community for a change.

In appreciation of the Manor's wonderful aesthetic taste, I thought I'd try to give their sign the Matt Siber treatment. Using MS Paint, this was the best I could do.

Ayinsan here. I had high expectations coming to the Manor--I mean, with a name like "Manor restaurant," you expect something classy. It did not disappoint. The interior was clean and comfortable, and the pancakes are, quite simply, among the best I've ever tasted. I kind of wish I hadn't accepted the offer for whipped cream on mine, since all that gooey sweetness almost overwhelmed the taste. As you can see below, they certainly weren't stingy with it.

My one complaint about the Manor is that the coffee tasted really strange to me. I can't explain it. It didn't taste old or stale or anything, just odd. I actually tasted the contents of the sugar dispenser to see if maybe I'd accidentally put salt in my coffee, but no, it was sugar. Joe liked it fine, so maybe it was just me.

Apparently the head chef at the Manor is a bear who has overcome the limitations of his species and gained respectable employment in the human world. Either that or a bear devoured the head chef and stole his hat, and is now posing innocently with a tray of food, perhaps to lure more victims into his clutches.

"Mr. Chef, what big claws you have!"

"All the better to serve you this delicious burger with, my dear."

I don't know what this statue is supposed to be, really. It's either a symbol of human unity or a genetic experiment gone terribly wrong. But you have to admit it's an original thing to put outside a pancake house. The landscaping was gorgeous as well.

The Blueberry Hill Pancake House, Darien

2007-05-07T00:57:00.000-05:00

Blueberry Hill Pancake House
7340 S. Route 83
Darien, Illinois 60559

April 23, 2007

The Blueberry Hill Pancake House is easy to miss, lodged in a tiny stripmall. I was a little disappointed to see this. Stand-alone restaurants, to me, just seem classier. This may not be a fair or accurate judgment, but when you see a restaurant sitting next to some grimy little dollar store or a dry cleaners, it kind of kills that cozy, homespun mystique that pancake houses are supposed to have. Once you enter the restaurant, however, it's like entering a portal into another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of taste.

As you might expect, the Blueberry Hill Pancake House is very blue on the inside. The menu offers a good array of choices, from the mundane to the unusual. I got blueberry banana pancakes. Going to the Blueberry Hill Pancake House (man, I'm already starting to get tired of typing that out) and not getting an item with blueberries in it is sort of like going to Pizza Hut for the salad bar. Or going to Red Lobster and ordering a hamburger. You can do it, but if it's your first visit you want to taste what the restaurant is famous for.

The pancakes were quite tasty, and there was plenty of them. I had to bring home leftovers. Joe got the blueberry french toast, one of the specials. I tasted it, and it was quite moist and dense, almost more like bread pudding than french toast. It came with a sweet cream cheese sauce which reminds me a little of that frosting that comes with the cinnamon french toast at Mother's. Sometimes, the line between breakfast and dessert is a thin and blurry one.

The prices were pretty reasonable.

Joe here. I enjoyed our trip to Blueberry Hill, but hey, I love blueberries. You can get them on almost anything here, and the prices are pretty good, too. Well, they would have been even better if we had remembered to print out the coupon on their website. I'd definitely recommend it and I know that we'll be going back for more again soon. Afternoon stragglers beware: all locations close at 3:00 pm every day. Maybe that's normal? I probably just need to start getting up earlier.

Butterfield's Pancake House & Restaurant, Wheaton

2007-04-25T21:02:00.000-05:00

Butterfield's Pancake House & Restaurant
351 Rice Lake Square
Wheaton, IL 60187

March 22 and April 10, 2007

Our first trip to Butterfield's wasn't promising. We were seated immediately but didn't see our waitress for almost 15 minutes. We received our coffee but had to wait ten minutes for cream because she had to help cook something in the kitchen. My order was completely wrong (though this could have been immediately addressed if I'd actually been paying attention when it was brought out to us) and it took 10 minutes for any waitress to even approach our area of the dining room for me to point this out. I was then playfully chided for this, like it was my fault.

And yet, I wanted to go back again, because I didn't want to just write this place off completely. The food certainly wasn't bad and the restaurant itself was really nice. Maybe they were just shorthanded before, and we came on a bad day. On our first trip I ordered the mudslide pancakes, which I'd highly recommend for anyone with a serious sweet tooth. But like most non-alcoholic Kahlua products, they were missing a little something that would have made them just a little more satisfying.

Our second time in was much better, with much faster service and none of the misunderstandings of our first time in. I wasn't feeling quite as adventurous, and just ordered a plain serving of buttermilk pancakes and washed them down with some freshly squeezed orange juice; Butterfield's has a fair share of exotic choices on its menu, but sometimes the basics can be just as good.

We dined at their Wheaton location, but there's another in Naperville as well. Oh, and another in Arizona, too, for some reason.

Amanda here. The first time we came in, I ordered the strawberry blintzes and Joe got the Mudslide pancakes. Or at least, that was what he requested, but what he initially received instead was a short stack of pancakes heaped with strawberries and some sort of unsavory, yellowish, vaguely pus-like liquid that turned out to be banana-flavored...uh...I don't know what to call it, really. Syrup? Sauce? It wasn't horrible, and hey, we got it for free (since the waitress later brought out his correct order and let us keep the one she'd given us), so I'm not complaining. The mudslide pancakes were pretty good too.

The stuffed French toast, which I got on our second visit, was excellent. You really can't go wrong with stuffed French toast. Unless you stuffed it with something disgusting, like hamster brains, but that's pretty unusual. What I got was more like strawberry flavored cream cheese. Mmm.

My strawberry blintzes were good, about what you'd expect. Nothing earth-shattering here.

Eggman's Restaurant & Omelette House, Romeoville

2007-03-07T23:48:00.000-06:00

Eggman's Restaurant & Omelette House
345 Independence Blvd
Romeoville, IL 60446

March 3, 2007

I used to pass this restaurant all the time on my way to Lewis University, where I took some classes a few years back. I only went into Eggman's once or twice, and I remember it being kind of scuzzy and dimly lit, with that air of quiet desperation and hopelessness that indicates a restaurant will soon be going out of business. Either my memories are inaccurate or they did some serious remodeling, because the place seemed much nicer this time around. Like Mother's, the decor had kind of a "rooster" theme going on.

I ordered a waffle combo with strawberries and whipped cream. Most restaurants will just kind of plop some whipped cream and fruit on top when you order these extras, but at Eggman's, they were artfully arranged. The waffle was good. I was not, however, a big fan of the strawberry gel (I don't know what else to call it) that they drizzled over the top. It didn't ruin the experience or anything, it just really didn't seem like something that belonged on a waffle. Strawberry syrup? Oh yeah. But strawberry gel? That's something altogether different.

With the waffle combo I also got a scrambled egg, a piece of bacon and a sausage, all good, but pretty ordinary. It's hard to screw up that kind of thing, but it's also hard to go above and beyond the norm. I mean, an egg is an egg, there's not a lot you can do to make it eggstraordinary. Unless you put lots of stuff in it, but then it ceases to become a simple egg and becomes an omelet.

Joe here. This was my first trip to Eggman's Restaurant & Omelette House. It's not much to look at outside but it's a pretty cozy and clean restaurant once you come in (as seen here in a regretfully blurry photo of the dining room). Obviously, they serve omelettes (as seen here in a regretfully incomplete snapshot of the menu), and as expected, a lot of other breakfast items too. There was a lot of Greek food on the menu too, if you like that sort of thing.

I had the basic pancake platter: 5 golden brown pancakes and nothing more. These were done very well (not to be confused with well-done), hot and fresh, like they were made on the spot just for me. What I mean is, they weren't probably weren't poured and flipped by some underpaid kid with an hourly quota to meet, as they likely are (and likely have to be) elsewhere. Or maybe they were. Yes, I have worked in food service, but never in a kitchen so what do I know.

Colonial Cafe, St. Charles

2007-03-05T22:04:00.001-06:00

Colonial Cafe
2036 W. Lincoln Hwy (Rt. 38)
St. Charles, IL 60174

February 24, 2007

The website for the Colonial Cafe lists seven different locations across the Chicago suburbs. I'm kind of surprised that there aren't actually more than that, since it seems like there's always been one near me no matter where I've lived. I've been to four of them over the years and have never had any bad experiences with food or service. Then again, I've never visited Colonial on clown night. Nothing personal against clowns, really. I'm sure they're really good people and I'm sure that the discrimination and dangers of the life they've chosen have to be a constant source of pain in their life. I just don't want them at my table when I'm eating. That's all.

Colonial originally began as a dairy company, probably just delivering milk to people's homes. I feel like I should know the entire history of the company by now; every restaurant has at least one wall that's completely covered with old-time photos of their founders and nostalgic snapshots of old milktrucks and other images of the good old days. Yes, the history of Colonial goes back over a century; don't even try to forget this, every location is practically a museum inside so completely avoiding their corporate mythology is almost impossible. That said, with their devotion to staying true to their roots, I can't understand why they chose to close down their original ice cream shop in downtown St. Charles. That was a landmark, but apparently a few pictures on a wall (not to mention a few thousand bumper stickers on cars, too) are an acceptable substitute for the real thing.

But that's all in the past now. Colonial is still running the ice cream game in northern Illinois (is it just me or is Oberweis incredibly overrated?) but has also reinvented itself as an up-and-coming player in family restaurants as well. There's always a good choice of lunch and dinner specials, salads, sandwiches, and other standard fare that I won't go into right now. Colonial is always a really relaxed and casual place, but somehow it doesn't draw the kind of awful, awful customers that IHOP or Denny's does every night. At least not in my experience.

Anyway, breakfast at Colonial is a reliable but predictable experience. I usually spring for the blueberry pancakes, but today I chose the regular hot cakes combo. Actually, we both did, though I went with eggs over easy on the side. The pancakes themselves... I don't know. Nothing much to say. Some butter and hot syrup on top... yeah. Good stuff, but not great.

The western St. Charles Colonial location isn't the closest one to me, but it's the one that I've visited the most and especially enjoy returning to. Mornings and evenings are usually fairly busy, with afternoons being unusually quiet, even on weekends. Nowadays, I guess that could be said about the entire western edge of the city. But it wasn't always like this. The St. Charles Mall, once located in the empty field just across the parking lot (back when this location was once a Wag's and later a Shoney's), was the place to shop in St. Charles throughout the 1980's. It was closed over a decade ago and finally torn down five years ago. For a while there was talk of a new mall being built in its place, and then some kind of car dealership instead. As you can see, those ideas either fell through or were just rumors in the first place. The land has become a kind of suburban Chernobyl, seemingly abandoned for good and permanently tainted beyond any hope of future development. Look across the ground there and you'll still find pieces of old concrete from the original outer walls. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Thanks for the memories.

Think Colonial might want to hang some of these on their wall? Just wondering.

Aurora Pancake House, Aurora

2007-03-05T01:13:00.000-06:00

Aurora Pancake House
321 North Lake St.
Aurora, IL 60506

February 22, 2007

We'd been to the Aurora Pancake House once before this visit. I got blueberry pancakes last time, which I remember as being thoroughly mediocre.

My experiences on our most recent visit were more positive. This time I opted for the banana crepes. Stuffed with sour cream and bananas and covered with some sort of apricot glaze, they were quite satisfying. Lately I've been having more luck with crepes and blintzes than I have with traditional pancake meals.

The Aurora Pancake House has a fairly standard "family restaurant" feel to it, kind of cozy and understated. Our waitress was friendly, though she seemed strangely astonished by the fact that we had brought our digital camera into the restaurant with us ("Is that a CAMERA?") During most of our meal we could hear her having a loud political discussion with some other people in the corner of the restaurant, and she kept mentioning Barack Obama, but she slurred his name so it sounded like "Aquabama," making me wonder if Barack has some sort of superhero identity which enables him to breathe underwater and communicate with dolphins.

As you can see on the sign, the Aurora Pancake House invites you to "Try our new menu." They say it like it's an option...as if the waitress is going to ask you, "Would you like to try our new menu today?" They also include a phone number, which is helpful but kind of strange to see right there on the sign. It makes me wonder if the restaurant is just really lonely and looking for someone to talk to.

Joe here. Our second trip to the Aurora Pancake House in a few months was a bit better than the first time around. The service back then? Pretty bad... no other words for it, really. The restaurant wasn't very busy at all, but we were more or less ignored the whole time. I never expect the white glove treatment when I go out, and I know it's not fair to judge a restaurant based on just one visit, but that left a lasting impression that was hard to forget. I was skeptical in coming back, even when I saw the signs on the windows announcing NEW MANAGEMENT. Did the new boss bring in sweeping changes? I have no idea, but the service was much better this time.

I ordered the Swedish pancake, which comes crispier than most and with a generous portion of lingonberries to be spread however you like. Some restaurants also offer lingonberry butter with their Swedish pancakes; The Aurora Pancake House doesn't, but I guess that's probably for the best. I'm sure it's not the healthiest stuff to put in your body.

Unfortunately I forgot to take note of the prices at the Aurora Pancake House. I don't remember them being unreasonable, or too much to discourage anyone from giving the APH a try.

Warrenville Pancake House, Warrenville

2007-02-02T02:21:00.000-06:00

Warrenville Pancake House & Restaurant
2 S 505 Route 59
Warrenville, IL 60555

January 30 and February 10, 2007

I stumbled upon the Warrenville Restaurant & Pancake House purely by chance, and later lost my bearings completely when we returned to check it out. I was looking up and down Route 59 on the complete wrong side of the road, but that's due to my own lack of direction. That said, the WPH&R doesn't do much to stand out from the rest of Route 59. Nothing more than an incredibly nondescript sign and some window clings identify it, and sitting almost 100 yards off the road, it's easy to pass up without noticing.

This unpromising facade hides a much bigger room than expected. Nothing too fancy or ornate, but they make good use of the space they have. As expected, our Tuesday afternoon visit found the room almost empty, save for two or three other customers. Saturday mornings are a different story, with a packed house at noon. On both visits we were seated in booths and brought a breadbasket overflowing with rolls, croissants, and muffins. This is the kind of thing that you're lucky to be offered even half of the time when dining out for dinner in most restaurants; at the WPH&R, they brought it out before even taking our orders (for breakfast!), no questions asked.

This generosity doesn't stop with the appetizers. Prices at the WPH&R are a steal. My platter of four pumpkin pancakes was just $6.05. A stack of five blueberry pancakes? Just $4.95. Both of these were more than I could handle in one sitting, and I just couldn't finish them. As seen above, the WPH&R can and will smother your pancakes in as much whipped cream as possible, and while that's great the first few bites, it becomes very filling very fast. I took the rest of my blueberry pancakes -- listed in the menu as "OLD FASHIONED PANCAKES with Cherry or Strawberry or Blueberry or Blackberry or Cinnamon Apple or Banana or Pecans or Raisin Walnuts, Topping" -- home in a container, where half a day in the refrigerator turned the blueberry topping and whipped cream into a strange purple paste that rendered my leftovers inedible. I didn't even bother asking for a box for my pumpkin pancakes, as the whipped cream and cream cheese toppings had already begun to congeal into a strange heterogeneous mix. I should have learned my lesson from before and turned down the offer for whipped cream on them, but I went with it anyway and paid the price. The pancakes themselves were great, though.

The WPH&R seems like a great place to bring your family, but there were a few solo diners there as well. Whoever you go visit with, be sure to come hungry, or to practice some self-discipline in turning down dinner rolls and whipped cream. Succeed where I failed. Good luck.

Oh, and here's John's Special, the combination platter that Ayinsan ordered. What I tasted of the eggs and bacon were okay. A good value for under $6, at least. I'm guessing that John is the owner or something, and I'm pretty sure that he rang us up at the cash register each time we visited. It must be quite a feeling to know that even after you die, your name will live on as a timeless special on a breakfast menu.

Crispy Waffle, Romeoville

2007-01-10T00:07:00.000-06:00

Crispy Waffle
642 S. Webber Rd.
Romeoville, IL 60446

December 28, 2006

We first heard about this restaurant from my grandma, who told us they were building a new Crispy Waffle near her place and said that we should check it out sometime. The way she phrased it made it sound like it was a chain, and the restaurant itself had kind of a "chain" feel to it, but as far as I know, this restaurant is the only Crispy Waffle in existence. I've never seen any others, and they don't appear to have a website. Perhaps they're keeping a low profile, hoping that people will be enticed by the aura of mystery surrounding them? Who knows.

True to its name, Crispy Waffle has a wide array of waffles to choose from. You've got your standard waffles, your waffles with fruit on top, your waffles with bacon in the mix (many breakfast places seems to have this option, though I've never tried it and frankly it sounds disgusting...sure, you can have bacon with waffles, but IN the waffles?) and then you've got some more extravagant choices, such as the Hawaiian waffle (with coconut!), and their Crispy Waffle special, a big ol' waffle topped with mounds of ice-cream, chocolate syrup and other sticky-sweet goodness. It's probably not the sort of thing you want to have every day, not unless you're trying to kill yourself very slowly and deliciously, but I imagine it makes a grand treat for those special occasions when it's acceptable to have something spectacularly fattening. I'll have to go back and try it sometime, but for our first visit I had a simple strawberry waffle with whipped cream. Hard to go wrong with that. It was good--maybe a notch or two above the strawberry waffles I've had at other breakfast places. The waffle itself was both tender and crispy, neither too soggy nor too hard. Though really, I would have felt severely ripped off if the Crispy Waffle's waffles were not at least slightly better than usual.

The ambiance is low-key and pleasant, and the decor kind of reminded me of Panera--similar colors, same sort of lighting--though it was much bigger and more open. Crispy Waffle is a bit pricey, unfortunately. Not unreasonably so, but it's definitely a "once in a while" sort of place.

My Blogger avatar would suggest that I'm some kind of waffle fanatic, but I almost always opt for pancakes instead. Waffles are usually more defined by their toppings than by anything that's actually inside of them, while pancakes offer a virtually endless possibility of flavor in every moist millimeter of grilled mixture. Maybe a trip to Crispy Waffle could have persuaded me otherwise, but I ordered the peach pancakes instead, so I'll never know. I honestly can't say very much about them right now as it's been nearly three weeks since I consumed them, and have little more than basic impressions about the experience and almost no memory of the specific taste. Peaches and whipped cream were piled on top just as promised, yet I somehow wanted more. But more of what? I remember feeling starved that afternoon so I was probably just thankful to finally get some food in my stomach before 2:00.

Sitting in the middle of an isolated strip mall across from a landfill, Crispy Waffle isn't content to deliver the traditional family restaurant atmosphere that most small-town upstarts try to mimick. On the contrary, Crispy Waffle goes for a hip, urban loft-vibe complete with authentic graffiti tags from the "waffle-icious" gang (see above). They might have even pulled off this design coup if it wasn't sabotaged by other goofy pictures painted on the walls. In a move that could cost them their business, they give away their waffle recipe in a huge mural painted on the wall. They use flour and sugar! If you want the rest, you'll have to go see it for yourself.

Manor Restaurant & Pancake House, St. Charles

2006-12-27T17:18:00.000-06:00

Manor Restaurant & Pancake House
1 West Main Street
St. Charles, IL 60174

December 26, 2006

This was no great surprise; we'd visted the Manor Restaurant & Pancake House in St. Charles this past summer and found it mysteriously closed down, so we didn't expect any miracles when we dropped by the day after Christmas. Lights out, tables gone, and no signs of any renovation or remodeling to speak of. Looks like this really is the end of the Manor, but why? Why would a local fixture like the Manor, occupying the best piece of real estate in downtown St. Charles, suddenly pack up and leave?

Maybe I just answered my own question.

Still, it's hard to imagine that The Manor would have fallen on such hard times as of late. Even with shoppers and diners migrating further east to the Charlestowne Mall area, and residents in west St. Charles being tempted by the nearby offerings of the Geneva Commons, downtown St. Charles has enjoyed a quiet renaissance of its own, with the debut of local live theater and a variety of other bars and restaurants opening on both sides of the river. It's enough to make me wonder if the Manor's fate was tied to the Arcada Theatre, which gave up its run as the best bargain-priced theater in the state to instead embrace weekly appearances by cover bands and standup comedians, and to project Sunday football games on the big screen instead of actual movies. May they lose their liquor license and see the error of their ways!

As for the Manor, it will be missed. An almost-weekly tradition for my family for many years, the Manor was primarily a breakfast restaurant with great pancakes, but there were enough sandwiches and other specials to make it a great destination for lunch or dinner too. I know the sign in the picture says the closing time was 3:00, but most times I visited were in the evening, so I can only assume these new hours were instituted very recently, or at least in the past two years since I last visited.

I'll always remember the Manor, the glass case of candy and gum at the front register, the great view of the river and the downtown from the windowside booths in the nonsmoking section, and the old-fashioned coffeeshop feel of the smoking section. We'd grab rolls from the breadbaskets and toss them to ducks from the bridge afterwards, and I'd peer through the windows of the tavern located downstairs with dark fascination, wanting to lose myself in the neon-lit, seedy recesses of its dark confines. Nothing that was both literally underground and riverside like that could not intrigue my young imagination. Unfortunately, that bar is now closed as well.

So what happened to the Manor? I still don't know why they closed in April and left St. Charles, but they recently reopened in South Elgin on Randall Road. Meanwhile, I've read conflicting reports of a new Manor Restaurant reopening a few blocks west on Main Street, but have been unable to locate this new site. Unfortunately, I know my expectations and memories will overshadow any new improvements or offerings found at either. Maybe I wasn't as attached to the food at the Manor as I was to the building itself. Considering that I've devoted all of one sentence in this entry to their cuisine, that's probably the case.

Fox Restaurant & Pancake House, Aurora

2006-11-23T01:38:00.000-06:00

Fox Restaurant & Pancake House
2290 Ogden Avenue
Aurora, IL 60504

November 22, 2006

We've driven past the Fox Restaurant & Pancake House more times than we can count, usually around the same time in the late afternoon, and the sight of the sun setting behind it is always kind of stunning. I realize that's casting an aura around it that it can't possibly live up to, and that constantly finding a sense of majesty in ordinary things like this is only serving to deprive me of experiencing real wonders -- the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, etc. -- that I owe it to myself to one day see in person. But that will have to wait.

Inside, the Fox Restaurant does what it can to live up to its name. That doesn't mean serving up fresh fox meat (though carnivores will find something called "broasted chicken" on the menu), but decorating the walls with a very foxy motif. You'll find plenty of fox pictures and fox statues along the walls, and even some real, stuffed foxes near the kitchen above the bar. There's even one in the cover of the menu! Obviously, vulpephobes will have to face (and hopefully conquer) their fears if they hope to make it through an entire meal here. The foxes are countered with lots of Chicago sports memorabilia, but only enough to bring back a few fond memories of the 80's Bears and 90's Bulls. Thankfully, it's not enough to turn the room into a tacky sports bar.

I've seen Palestine crepes listed on a few different menus before this but could never tell just what they were, and I've never felt bold enough to find out for myself until now. In a nutshell (well, in a crepe), they're crepes packed with more sour cream than the body should be able to safely digest. I can only guess that my yogurt-saturated childhood gave me some kind of extra tolerance for lactose, because I passed them just fine, but they were really filling. The crepes themselves were perfect: light, sweet, and with an almost rubber-like texture that stretches out just a little before tearing when you pull on them.

We arrived shortly after 2:00 in the afternoon, and for at least 20 or 30 minutes we were the only customers in the restaurant aside from a few other employees that seemed to be on their lunch break. After paying our check, we headed out to the Phillips Park Zoo, which was only a five minute drive away, and just as mysteriously under-attended as the Fox Restaurant. Granted, it was a weekday afternoon, which aren't considered "busy hours" for leisure-based establishments such as these, but Phillips Park is free, and what else is there to do in Aurora? Come watch the otters play and swim, or get a very up-close look at the cougars (at least when they're in the mood to lounge about on the platform next to the observation window, that is). The wolves are usually pretty active in their pen, though I can't say the same for their cousins in the fox exhibit, which are so sedentary that they could fit right in with the decor at the Fox Restaurant. Maybe they're nocturnal?

Amanda here. This time I finally broke away from my tradition of ordering blintzes everywhere I went and got the blueberry pancakes. They were okay, but honestly? Too many blueberries. I never thought I would say that about blueberry pancakes, since usually restaurants tend to be stingy with them, but if there seems to be more blueberry than pancake, it's too much. Also, some of the stems were still attached and they got stuck in my teeth. The first few bites were good, but after that I started to feel like I was wading through an endless swamp of blueberries and soggy, blueberry-juice-soaked batter. Maybe I should have ordered the blintzes. Or the Palestine crepes. I sampled some of Joe's, and they were pretty good. I have to wonder about the name, though. Why Palestine crepes? Are they from Palestine? Were the Palestinians the first guys who thought of putting sour cream in a shell and calling it a crepe? Or is it just one of those things, like french fries (pardon me, I mean freedom fries) that really has nothing to do with its nominal nationality?

I rather liked the stuffed foxes. I mean, I'm sure the foxes are not crazy about the situation, but their sacrifice will be appreciated by countless restaurant goers. Really, it's an honor. I can only hope that when the foxes evolve into intelligent beings with opposable thumbs and take over the world, they will display my remains in "Human Restaurant."

Elly's Pancake House, Arlington Heights

2006-11-16T00:48:00.000-06:00

Elly's Pancake House
372 E Golf Rd
Arlington Heights, IL 60005

November 14, 2006

Out of the short but disparate list of different suburbs I've lived in over the course of my young adult life, Arlington Heights has to be my favorite town of residence so far. I don't really know how I'd justify that or how I might try to categorically compare it to Elgin, West Dundee, Elburn, or Aurora. I don't know how its average standard of living stacks up against those other municipalities, let alone if it's a "growing community" or "a good place to raise a family" or anything like that. I do know that it's the only place I've ever been the victim of a crime, as my car was broken into during the middle of the night nearly two years ago, and that I constantly complained about the window-rattling noise from planes taking off from and landing at nearby O'Hare, but in hindsight, those were small prices to pay for everything else that I enjoyed. I was happier there than I have been in any other town that I've called home, and though there were plenty of reasons for that that had nothing to do with the town itself, I did enjoy the well-stocked library, the parks and forest preserve, and the easy access to Chicago. There were plenty of shops and restaurants within walking distance too, and the streets and sidewalks were clean, free of litter and broken glass. I wish I could say the same for Aurora, but the popular use of "trash cans" never really caught on here like it did in the rest of America.

One of our favorite places to eat, if only for breakfast and lunch, was Elly's Pancake House. Just a 20 minute walk away from my apartment, it was always easy to get to, at least until you had to cross the usually-busy Golf Road to finally reach the green awnings of Elly's. Once inside, we rarely encountered much of a wait to be seated, though we rarely dined during the peak hours of breakfast. Any time around noon or thereafter usually guarantees instant service, though they're only open until 4:00 on most days anyway. One of these days we'll have to request the smoking section, otherwise we'll probably never get to sit on the left/west side of the restaurant. There's a pretty-impressive mural on the wall there I wish I'd been able to take a picture of. Unfortunately, we didn't have our camera with us on Tuesday, which is why we don't have any photos to post here. Instead, we've attempted to draw our food, with mixed results as you can see. This blob of brown and blue is supposed to be my order of blackberry pancakes, which was much better than it probably looks here.

I've never been a good artist but on a good day I can sometimes draw pictures of things that actually look like what they are. Sometimes. It's been years since I last attempted to sketch anything at all, the last time I can remember being assigned cityscapes (complete with a proper "vanishing point" in the distance!) that could have passed for Wesley Willis originals back in eighth grade art class. Amanda's rendition of her colorful strawberry blintzes platter is a bit more appetizing.

One of Elly's more reliable treats is their freshly squeezed orange juice. I've never been too keen on oj with heavy pulp, but I can't get enough of it at Elly's. It tastes great, and it's just got to be healthier than juice from concentrate, right? Check out the stacks of oranges behind the counter as you come in and see if that doesn't tempt you right away. Maybe it's all just a clever ruse, a bait-and-switch that my untrained taste buds can't detect. If it is, they've pulled it off magnificently.

About the restaurant itself: it's spacious with lots of windows, so the stale, claustrophobic feeling that I get in so many other restaurants never really comes together here. I guess I could complain about the restroom, but the peeled wallpaper gives it a haunting, noir-like atmosphere. Plus, someone carved "DRAGON ARMY" into the men's room stall door. How cool is that? I haven't the slightest idea what the "DRAGON ARMY" is, though my guess would be an up-and-coming street gang. Even if that's really the case (again, I might be wrong), then I'm once again willing to forgive Arlington Heights for its occasional crime issues if its gangs continue to choose great names like that. It’s the price you pay for great pancakes, and more...

Amanda here. I don't know why, but I've been on a blintz kick lately, so I once again ordered the strawberry blintzes when we visited Elly's. So far, none of the blitzes I've ordered at various restaurants have compared to the ones at Downer's Delight, but they've all been pretty good, and Elly's is no exception. I ordered whipped cream on the side, expecting to get a little puff of it atop my food. Instead I got an entire bowl. I proceeded to slather it on and make a complete glutton of myself.

Our waitress was quite nice, though I can't help but wonder what she thought of us when she saw us drawing crude representations of our food.

It is worth noting that Elly's has an attractive menu. They also provide paper take-out menus. As you can see, on the cover is the restaurant itself. I'm not sure what those green streaks in the background are supposed to represent. Paint raining from the heavens? Zeus hurling down angry lightning bolts because mere mortals dared to create pancakes better than his, and must pay for their hubris? Countless alien spaceships landing in Arlington Heights just to sample Elly's famous orange juice? You decide.

Lumes Pancake House, Orland Park

2006-11-07T00:07:00.000-06:00

Lumes Pancake House
9060 W. 159th St.
Orland Park 60462

November 2, 2006

As a pancake restaurant reviewer, it causes me deep shame to admit that until I went to Lumes Restaurant, I never fully understood the difference between blintzes and crepes. I mean, they look kind of the same, and they're both shells stuffed with filling, so I guess I've always lumped them into the same category. I finally succumbed to curiosity and asked the waitress, and she informed me that blintzes contain a ricotta-cheese based filling, whereas crepes are just shells stuffed with a generous helping of whatever. Having learned this, I have ascended one rung higher on the long ladder to Pancake Nirvana, a state of total enlightenment in which all breakfast-related knowledge is clear to me. When I achieve Pancake Nirvana, rays of pure energy will shoot out of my body and I will be able to control matter with my mind. In addition to this, all breakfast items will feel an instinctive bond with me and come to my aid in times of trouble.

Fittingly enough, I ordered blintzes at Lumes. Strawberry blintzes, to be precise. They were smaller than the ones I had at Downer's Delight, but I found them satisfying, nonetheless. The ricotta-cheese based filling was the perfect consistency, neither too runny nor too solid. Joe sampled them and thought they were a little dry. Maybe I just like my blintzes dry. Maybe next time, I'll ask for a dry blintz on the rocks.

I suppose I should say a few words about the restaurant itself. Lumes is fairly nondescript, as far as pancake restaurants go. It has a classy, restrained feel, maybe because they don't cover the walls with kitsch. The windows let in plenty of light. Our waitress was polite and helpful. And the coffee was good. Good coffee may seem like a triviality, but nothing ruins a good meal like a mouthful of foul, gritty, lukewarm coffee dregs. And all too often, restaurant coffee is either sludgy and too strong, or so weak that it's just like brown water. This was neither.

My one complaint is the pancakes themselves. I didn't order them, but I tried a bite. They weren't horrible, but they were definitely substandard for an actual pancake restaurant, sort of what you'd expect from a store-bought mix. If you're in the mood for some really excellent pancakes, go elsewhere, but if you're in the mood for something else, Lumes offers a good variety of breakfast foods. It's worth a visit.

Just like Bakers Square and Downers Delight, Lumes Pancake House has deceivingly anti-apostrophic name designed to trip up even the most astutue observer. It's not Lume's, as a casual glance or a word-of-mouth recommendation from a friend would suggest, but Lumes. This lack of possessiveness is troubling if you consider the possibility that the small chain is owned by one Lume (or Lumes) family. Where's the family pride? Unfortunately, this remains the only explanation for the name that makes sense, though, as neither Merriam-Webster or even Google are able to clear up the matter. Here's where a simple telephone call would likely give me the answer I need, but I'm not about to hassle someone with such a petty question.

Nomenclature aside, Lumes has a good selection of pancakes and other breakfast favorites. It had been a few weeks since I'd had a good waffle so I ordered one. No fruit or frills this time, just a regular waffle. It was pretty much what I expected, but the presentation was nice. Our friend Chris ordered the blueberry French toast, which came with a very generous portion of blueberry compote on top.

For a Thursday afternoon, Lumes was fairly packed with customers, even though the photo below really doesn't capture that at all. It should give you a general idea of what you're in for, though. It's a welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere that should appeal to all ages.

Bakers Square, Orland Park

2006-11-02T03:44:00.000-06:00

Bakers Square
15711 Harlem Avenue
Orland Park, IL 60462

October 31, 2006

With 151 restaurants across the country, Bakers Square isn't well-known as a breakfast hotspot. Seeing how their biggest draw is an after-dinner treat, that's unlikely to change any time soon. That said, they do serve breakfast, mostly omelettes and skillet dishes, with a few basic pancake and waffle options included.

Personally, I prefer the BS in St. Charles with its spacious dining room and their reliable serving staff of art school students. The crane machine is frustrating as hell, though. Steer clear! But on Halloween we decided to grab lunch at the Orland Park location, a smaller and decidedly less cheerful locale. I can't quite put my finger on what it is; the lighting, the scratched wood paneling around the booths, the clientele... I just get the feeling that most people around me, from the servers to the cooks to the other customers, would really rather be somewhere else instead. It's a psychic virus that's hard not to catch.

As usual, if it's after noon then you'll have to request the breakfast menu if you want to see any of their choices. I chose the basic pancake combo: pancakes, eggs, bacon. There's not much else to choose from if you want pancakes. What you see is what you get.

Nothing to write home about here. BS hold up their end of the bargain and deliver a startlingly average breakfast and nothing more. With so many other options available, especially in the vicinity of the Orland Square Mall, it's hard to recommend Baker's Square for anyone on the hunt for some good pancakes. We like the Chicken Caesar Pita and the Grown-Up Grilled Cheese for lunch and dinner, and we always stay for the pie, as they recommend. Coming for the food is just fine too, but if you're looking for a reliable breakfast haunt, you can do a lot better elsewhere.

Now if I can only figure out what this is for. I'm guessing that the numbers are supposed to light up, but I never see them turned on. Anyone?

Country Cafe, Big Rock

2006-10-27T23:02:00.000-05:00

Country Cafe
103 Galena Street
Big Rock, IL 60511

October 26, 2006

If you want the same old, standard list of diners and pancake houses, go check Metromix. But if you want some under-recognized, below-the-radar recommendations, you’ve got to dig a little deeper. We went ahead and dug straight to the bottom of the barrel and found a review of the Country Café in the local community college newspaper. Nothing against college newspapers, though. It's just hard to wade through the painful editorial rhetoric found in the Waubonsee Community College Insight, penned primarily by one faithful student of the Rush Limbaugh/Michael Savage school of balanced, empathetic journalism, who was somehow appointed to the position of editor in chief. So finding the restaurant review means sifting through not just page-length tirades on illegal immigrants and liberals, but also self-congratulatory reminders of how his controversial "freedom fries" article really got everyone talking last fall. Thankfully, the restaurant review was left to a different student, but her description of it still seemed a bit embellished. Could it possibly be as homely and old-fashioned as she described it?

And yet, when we walked into the Country Cafe, I was suddenly struck by how right she was. With just seven booths, six tables, and a lengthy bar where the regulars congregated over coffees, the tiny, one-room restaurant was a lot smaller than we'd expected, and the arrival of any newcomers through the door (especially any younger than 40) seemed to grab everyone's attention. We were free to seat ourselves whereever we wanted, so we picked a booth and waited for our server. She was incredibly friendly and brought the coffee around to us about a half-dozen times before we left, so we never came close to running out.

I ordered the regular stack of three pancakes, and though I hardly ever order meat on the side, the pancakes were only $4.25, so I added bacon for a dollar extra. Ayinsan ordered a breakfast called the 2x4, which consisted of two pancakes, scrambled eggs, and one piece of sausage and bacon. I don't know what kind of math they used to come up with that name, but the eggs were just right, and the bacon was good and crispy.

I hate to have to say anything negative about The Country Cafe. Our waitress was nice, our food was good, and the prices were extremely affordable. Then again, I know I was seeing apartments listed for $400 in Big Rock when I was combing through the papers for a place to live this past spring, so maybe everything in Big Rock is just cheaper than it is in the suburbs. No, I hate to say anything negative at all about this humble little restaurant, but I must. The water was terrible. I don't know what could have been in it, or if the glasses just hadn't been washed correctly or if the water in Big Rock is just naturally bad but still tolerated and consumed by the locals. If you decide to give it a shot, bring bottled water if you can.

Ayinsan here:
It was a cold and rainy day as we pulled into the parking lot of the tiny, remote pancake house. In the distance, I heard the haunting sound of a cow's moo from across the barren, lonely cornfields as we left our car and crossed the parking lot, braving the icy, wet winds. We had driven for miles to find this place, and here it was, the holy grail, the end of our quest: The Country Cafe.

Country Cafe is indeed out of the way, patronized mostly by locals, or so it would seem. When we entered, an old man at the front counter looked up and eyed me suspiciously, and I half-expected him to drawl, "We don't cotton to you city-folk around here," or something adorably "local" like that. Okay, so Big Rock is not actually way out in the country and no one actually talks like that anyway, but my point is, this is about as far from IHOP as you can get.

So, what is the verdict, you ask? It's worth checking out. The food was all pretty good, nothing stellar, but tasty, nonetheless, and all very reasonably priced. Service was quick and friendly.

As previously mentioned, however, there was one significant blight on our experience. The meal was fine right up until we got our check and I finally took a sip of my water. It tasted sort of like a bucket of seawater that someone had wrung out their dirty mop in. I'm not exaggerating. To be fair, that may not be the restaurant's fault. Maybe it was a one-time occurence caused by a freak accident involving dirty laundry and salt blocks at the water plant. And we were about to leave so I didn't say anything about it. What's strange is that I remember thinking that the coffee there was exceptionally good, but presumably they had to brew it with the same rancid tapwater, so I don't know how that's possible. It's all part of the mystery that is Country Cafe.

Original Pancake House, Park Ridge

2006-10-25T23:44:00.000-05:00

Original Pancake House
106 S. Northwest Highway
Park Ridge, IL 60068

October 21, 2006

So The Original Pancake House actually has over 90 different locations nationwide? What a letdown. Here I thought I was setting foot inside what should have been a national landmark, or at least a restaurant that could stake claim to an original and gutsy name. But it's just another chain, apparently. Next someone's going to tell me that there's more than one Waffle House out there.

But as far as chains go, at least they give their franchises (or at least their Park Ridge location) the freedom to run things as they see fit, no matter how eccentric and wierd that might be. As if IHOP would let any of their restaurants put up a Christmas tree in the middle of the dining room during October (covered with Halloween ornaments, no less). Model trains rode in nonstop circles around its base; there were only two running when we were sitting down, but it looked like they could have had as many as four running at once on different tracks if they really wanted to.

But I figure I should stop wasting time describing the toy trains because there are apparently a couple of people who read this blog now, and they'd probably wonder why I'd pay so much attention to such a silly thing. Oh, and most, if not all of those readers were sitting next to me, too, probably wondering why I'd bother with this blog in the first place. Then again, they seemed to be having more fun laughing at everyone else in the restaurant instead. We arrived after 2:00 so it wasn't busy at all and the dining room was mostly vacant, but they still had fun mocking the pasty man in the tank top sitting by the exit door. I can't say for sure that he didn't deserve it.

I ordered the blueberry pancakes and was a bit dissappointed when a plate of five slightly-larger-than-silver-dollar blueberry pancakes arrived. The blueberries were mixed into the batter and there was extra blueberry compote on the side as well. But they didn't last long, and it really just wasn't enough. Gena ordered the apple pancake, which was more than enough for her, so I cut a big piece from that. The apples were baked on top of it, not inside like the famous Apple Villa pancake, but it was still as chewy, sweet, and moist as I'd hoped.

A few years of ordering Swedish pancakes at IHOP has permanently perverted my expectations and understanding of just what they're supposed to be, so I'm always shocked and confused whenever I see them or try to order them anywhere else. The ones that Marcia ordered were crispy and so flat that you could almost see through them. Is this normal? Don't get me wrong, they were good, and the generous helping of lingonberries was excellent.

Yancy ordered a plate of crepes that were apparently very filling, so as you can see below, the last of the three went untouched. But the human body can only consume so much cream and filling before it begins to reject the excess lactose. He also ordered hash browns on the side, only to receive a bowl full of diced potatoes that we later found out (thanks to the receipt) were actually "Southern Potatoes." I think he was pretty disgusted by these just on principle, and hardly ate any of them.

Dan ordered some kind of egg sampler platter that included pancakes on the side. He seemed satisfied. I should have let him do part of the review but I'd like to keep this blog clean enough for my grandmother to read. If she ever gets a computer and learns to use the internet, I mean.

As far as chain (breakfast) restaurants go, The Original Pancake House surely has to be one of the best I've ever been to, if not for its food, then for the fact that it doesn't stick to a phoned-in design at any of its locations -- not in any of the images of its various restaurants that I've been able to find on Google, and certainly not at the barn-shaped Park Ridge location -- unlike IHOP or any of the the other prefabricated blights upon our American landscape. If you want to go someplace fun and -- I hate to say it -- "quirky" for breakfast or lunch (sorry, they're not open for dinner), then maybe the Original Pancake House is for you. Be an Original!

Apple Villa, Batavia

2006-10-14T23:19:00.000-05:00

Apple Villa
1961 W. Wilson
Batavia, IL 60510

October 10, 2006

Near the far south end of the Randall Road Sprawl sits Apple Villa, tucked away next to a music store and a saddle repair shop. The entrance to this strip of stores is actually off of Wilson Street by the Wendy's, so after making that turn just go all the way to the north end of the parking lot and you're there. But why follow these directions when you could just follow your nose, and the scent of golden, delicious apples slowly cooking from inside their famous brick ovens?

Alright, their ovens probably aren't made of brick. And there really isn't an overpowering apple scent inside the dining room, let alone outside on the streets. But there should be, or at least you'll think so once you taste their "famous Apple Villa pancake." Just getting an up-close look at it will make you reconsider everything you ever thought you knew about pancakes. Then again, if a pancake is as big as a deep-dish pizza and full of sliced fruit, is it really still a pancake at all? Regardless of whether or not it's actually a pancake, it's probably more famous than most other restaurants' "famous" foods of choice. After all, it's what they're building their brand and image on.

It's been a few years since I'd been to Apple Villa, but I remembered that the Apple Villa pancake was far too much for one person to eat on their own. So we decided to split one, and we ordered the 10" version of it with vanilla ice cream on the side. There's a smaller, 8" version too, but I assumed that wouldn't be enough for us. How wrong I was.

There's a minimum wait time of 20 minutes for the Apple Villa pancake, but I think we ended up waiting close to a half hour for ours. A warning before you dig in: it's dangerously hot, and it's going to stay hot for at least 15 minutes so eat slowly and carefully. Another warning: it's filling, and there's a lot of it to eat. A 10" pancake would probably feed four people. We only finished a little more than half of ours before giving up and taking the rest home.

Aside from the food, the restaurant itself is really nice. I hate to keep using this word, but it's a very cozy place. There's a lot of quality wood trim and glass around the booths, and a lot of tasteful Halloween decorations hanging up, too. I'm willing to bet they go all out with this stuff during Christmas.

I have no idea what the rest of their menu is like, but if you'd like to try something different and don't have an aversion towards apples (I can't stress this enough), then get your family or a few friends together and try one of their "famous" Apple Villa pancakes, or whatever they are.

Ayinsan here. As Joe said, if you do order the apple pancake, you will end up waiting awhile for it. Some recommended ways to pass the time: Stack the coffee creamers or jams into little pyramids. Pretend that lots of little people live in them. Then pretend to be an angry deity and knock down the pyramids with one sweep of your mighty hand. Or play betting games with them. Cover them with a napkin and then try to guess which flavor they have the most of. If you're right, you get to leave without tipping the waitress. If you're wrong, you have to stab yourself in the back of the hand with a fork.

No, just kidding, you should never leave without tipping the waitress. They live off of tips, and most of them are already half-insane from their stressful jobs, so it's not a good idea to push them over the edge. Who knows what might happen. The next time you come in, there might be a rusty nail on your chair. Or some anthrax might "accidentally" find its way into your coffee. Or someone might be waiting for you in your car when you leave the restaurant, and "accidentally" stick you in the ribs with a shiv.

But back to the pancakes. Yes, the apple pancake was quite good, with a consistency similar to bread pudding, and a delicious cinnamon glaze. Put some ice-cream on it and allow the ice-cream to melt a bit. I had my leftovers later that night for dessert, and it was just as tasty the second time around.

Downers Delight, Downers Grove

2006-10-09T01:42:00.000-05:00

Downers Delight
401 75th St.
Downers Grove, IL 60516

October 7, 2006

Amanda here. Thought I'd take a stab at writing the main entry for a change.

This weekend we went to Downer's Delight, which is--as the name implies--in Downer's Grove. The name is something of a contradiction. "Downer" seems to imply that it will depress you, but "delight" promises a world of sensuous pleasures. The overall effect is one of bewildered uncertainty, hope mixed with dread. Will the restaurant be a downer or a delight? There's only one way to find out.

First impressions? A rather standard-looking family restaurant, with an assortment of cakes and pies in a glass case by the front counter. The atmosphere is pleasant, low-key. The menu offers a pretty decent range of choices, from standard pancakes and waffles to blintzes and crepes in a variety of flavors. Joe got the potato pancakes. I ended up ordering the banana blitzes, which I didn't plan. Usually, I survey the menu for a few minutes, considering various entrees and carefully weighing the pros and cons before I inevitably just go with a standard pancake platter. You can't possibly go wrong with that. But when the waitress approached our table, I wasn't ready, so I sort of froze up and then just randomly picked something because I didn't want to miss my window of opportunity (it was a Saturday, so it was pretty busy). Now, blintzes are really kind of an iffy thing, not an old, reliable favorite like pancakes. For a moment, I thought I might have made a disastrous mistake. But as it turned out, the blintzes were quite tasty: Tender, chewy shells wrapped around a filling like sweet cottage cheese, and loaded with bananas. I'll probably get them again the next time I go there.

Furthermore, they were BIG. I almost couldn't finish, and for me, that's saying something.

I sampled Joe's potato pancakes as well. They were decent, not spectacular, but serviceable, and they came with a side of sour cream and apple sauce.

The prices were pretty reasonable, about what you'd expect from a restaurant of this type.

In conclusion? Downer's Delight lives up to the second part of its name. If you want to be trendy and clever you can refer to the restaurant as "Double D." On second thought, don't. People will just look at you funny and ask what you're talking about and you'll wish you hadn't said anything.

The first thing you'll notice as you walk into Dowers Delight is the small fountain right next to the front door. It lies low, recessed down into the ground, not raised upwards like most fountains. And it's full of change, not just pennies, but quarters! I'm not saying that you'll really need an extra pocketful of change just to have a plate of pancakes there, but it certainly wouldn't hurt, and it's all just an arm's length away for any brave soul willing to roll up their sleeves for it. We spent our spare change on a Care Bears capsule toy. I'm not really a betting man but I went ahead and placed a guess on which one we'd get. Amanda turned the crank and out it came! Go ahead and try to guess which one it was.

We were seated in the same booth as we were when we came by for breakfast a few months ago. It's the one right next to the entrance to the patio, but fortunately there were no customers dining outside, bringing an end to the once-constant flow of servers in and out of the doors. It wasn't the foot traffic that I minded back then so much as the repetitive yet upredictable slamming sound of the door right behind me. Google "Chinese water torture" and you'll see what I'm getting at.

I had a good view of the large plasma screen television hanging on the wall, which was tuned to CNN and covering North Korea's imminent nuclear test. But then my potato pancakes arrived, and they turned out to be so thick, tender, and moist that I forgot all my cares and fears of global thermonuclear war and just dug in. I don't normally order this sort of thing but I was in the mood for something different today. The applesauce and sour cream didn't last long so I switched to ketchup and Tabasco. It was filling, but nothing to write home about.

Even though I've enjoyed my food on both trips to Downers Delight, I'm having a hard time trying to figure out why I should ever go back. Their selection is fairly average. Their prices aren't exactly unreasonable but I definitely wouldn't call them a bargain, either. There's a strange, ineffible quality to the box-shaped building itself and the well-manicured lawn surrounding it that repulses me. Maybe this feeling started to take root the first time that I tried to process the restaurant's seemingly incomprehensible name in my mind. Naturally, I guess it was inevitable that I'd end up with such mixed feelings about Downers Delight.

Lemont Street Cafe, Darien

2006-09-27T01:33:00.000-05:00

Lemont Street Cafe
7511 Lemont Rd., Suite 200
Darien, IL

September 7, 2006

The Lemont Street Cafe is not actually located in Lemont, but a ten minute drive north into Darien. It is, indeed, located on Lemont Street. It is also a cafe, a cafe that closes every day at 2:00. Restaurants with such early hours have a certain obligation to deliver the goods, so to speak, when it comes to certain menu items. We're talking the breakfast menu here, people. Breakfast. Hot breakfast. Fortunately, LSC is already way ahead of us here. What else would you expect from a restaurant that puts its location in its name? They don't have time to take phone calls asking "where are you located?" They're too busy firing up the griddles and brewing the coffee.

I'll get the criticisms out of the way first. Maybe they've got plenty of people firing up the griddles and brewing the coffee, but they could use more servers. I've been to LSC at least a half dozen times, maybe more, but each time there only seems to be one or two servers on hand to wait on the entire restaurant. The girls that wait on us everytime seem so overworked that it's a wonder they stick around month after month.

LSC just finished up their summer remodeling job and the difference shows. Everything is clean and spotless, the abundant windows let plenty of natural light inside. Some people like eating in the dark. I enjoy a clean, well lighted place for a change. The minimal approach to decor is a nice break from too many other restaurants that try to load up on kitchy junk everywhere.

I usually get breakfast at LSC. The selection of sandwiches and burgers is pretty decent, but the side of fries is sometimes insultingly small. My blueberry waffle was every bit as good as it looks. Ayinsan just ordered a plain waffle, but it came with a side of scrambled eggs and sausage that was also good. As usual, I probably finished whatever she didn't eat of that with some Tabasco sauce on top.

If you ever stop by Lemont Street Cafe (and you should, yes, it's recommended!) there's a good bookstore just a few minute's walk down to the other end of the shopping center called The Frugal Muse that offers a good selection of used books, music, and videos. You'll always find something unexpected there.

Ayinsan here. Lemont Street Cafe is saturated with memories for me, since my mom and I used to come here almost every Saturday when I was younger. The remodeling looks nice, but I have to say I miss the old look, especially the cheesy Christmas lights strung up along the walls, regardless of the season. But I'll get used to it. The new cranberry-and-cream color scheme is kind of nice, and the pancakes are still fluffy and delicious. It is a TAD expensive, which is my one criticism. There's really no reason for a basic pancake-egg-and-sausage meal to cost eight bucks (or close to it, I can't remember the exact price). I mean, pancakes are pancakes. The ingredients are pretty similar regardless of where you're getting them. But hey, sometimes you don't feel like eating at Denny's. So if you don't mind forking over a few extra dollars for the ambiance, it's worth checking out.

Nikarry's Restaurant, Aurora

2006-09-22T20:49:00.000-05:00

Nikarry's Restaurant
1053 N. Lake St.
Aurora, IL

September 5, 2006

Going out for breakfast and expecting that you're actually going to remember the details of the experience more than two weeks later is pretty unrealistic. But that's exactly what I did after going to Nikarry's, so unfortunately I don't have quite as much to say about the place as I'd hoped. For a weekday, it was much busier than I'd expected, and pretty noisy too. If you're looking for a quiet, friendly atmosphere, maybe this isn't the place for you. If you like that greasy diner feel when you eat out, and just want good food served up fast and on the cheap, then it's worth checking out.

Inside you'll find lots of brass fixtures, venetian blinds, and plastic plants. The booths on the north end of the building provide a breathtaking view of the cemetery next door, too. The service was pretty good; even though it was busy we were seated right away, the coffee refills were plentiful, and upon seeing that we only had about ten butter packets left at our table, our waitress exclaimed "Uh oh, you're almost out of butter!" and ran to get us a dozen more.

There were plenty of fruit pancakes and crepes to choose from, but I played it safe and got the plate of a dozen dollar pancakes. Not silver dollar pancakes, just "dollar pancakes." And they were only about a quarter each, if you do the math. According to the menu, you can order as many as 18 on a plate but 12 is more than enough. Ayinsan's eggs were okay. It's hard to screw these things up, really.

I'd head back to Nikarry's again, but it's in the heart of the Aurora pancake district and I still don't know how it stacks up next to its neighbors/bitter rivals down the street. Only time will tell.

Ayinsan here. I don't have too many comments to add about Nikarry's. Joe pretty much summed it up: It's a decent restaurant, but kind of forgettable. But then, maybe that's what you want sometimes. Maybe you don't want a restaurant that tries to impress you with its clever, cutesy decor or gimmicky entree-names (I'm looking at you, IHOP. I mean, come on. 'Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity?' Just typing it out makes me feel vaguely ashamed.) Maybe sometimes, you don't want nine kinds of syrup, or a wide array of strange and exotic breakfast foods that confuse your tired, overburdened mind and make you want to run away. You just want some pancakes, damn it. Nikarry's has pancakes, without any of the frills. It won't blow your mind, but it's still pretty good.

Mother's Pancake House & Restaurant, Aurora

2006-09-18T22:31:00.000-05:00

Mother's Pancake House & Restaurant
2290 West Galena Blvd
Aurora, IL

August 29, 2006

We figured we'd start with Mother's, since it's only a 15 minute walk from my apartment. Since I just moved to the area I have no idea how long it's been open, but the makeshift vinyl sign on the east side of the building and the lack of a yellow pages listing suggests that they haven't been in business for long. But I really have no idea. The inside could pass for new; everything seems new and clean, but there were more than enough retirees reading newspapers and sipping their midday coffees to give it that old school, pancake house charm. You'd think that the unexpected Italian disco music playing over the speakers in the lobby would undercut this vibe, but it doesn't. For fun, see how many roosters you can count in the decor.

Mother's has a pretty good breakfast menu. It's been three weeks since I last looked over their menu, but they've got just about every kind of pancake, waffle, or crepe you could ask for. I got the banana crepes, which were pretty good if you like lots of sour cream. Ayinsan had the strawberry french toast, which was more like little sandwiches of grilled bread and strawberries. You can't go wrong with any of their breakfast menu.

After we finished and were getting ready to leave, our waitress offered to take our check up to the cashier for us, so we gave her our money and waited for her to bring us back our change. It wasn't much, and we were going to leave it as part of the tip anyway. But we never saw her again. Needless to say, her tip wasn't as big as it could have been. Until the end, she was great. Or at least she was better than the waiter we had on another day that once exclaimed, with genuine shock, "Wow, that was quick!" when he saw that we were finished eating. I know, I know. Don't sweat the small stuff. But we weren't asking for any special treatment, and it wasn't busy on either day.

Anyway, if you're out in west Aurora, Mother's is worth a visit. Just find the Cub Foods and you're there.

Ayinsan here. I feel it wouldn't be fair to end this review without commenting on the cinnamon roll french toast, which is easily the most decadent thing on the menu (or at least, the most decadent that I've tried so far). They serve it to you with a side of cinnamon butter and frosting, along with the usual butter and syrup. The result is a warm, gooey mass of sugary goodness so intense that the rush of pleasure from the first bite may overload your nervous system and cause a violent cinnamon-induced seizure. After that bite, I blacked out and woke up in the hospital. After several months of rehab (those Nazis force you to go cold turkey, they won't even let you sprinkle a little cinnamon on your coffee--that's all I wanted, just a little sprinkle!), I'm still struggling to regain the full use of my left arm and learn how to write in cursive again, but it was worth it.

I had eggs and sausage with it to make me feel like I was actually eating a meal and not a dessert, but really, the french toast alone is enough to fill you up. I recommend also the banana bread french toast and the split pea soup. Or better yet, dip the banana bread french toast in the split pea soup for a unique experience. No, better yet, don't, that would be gross.

The REAL first post

2006-09-15T16:22:00.000-05:00

If it's not obvious already, this blog is going to be about pancakes. Pancakes in Illinois, to be precise.

Or maybe that wasn't obvious. Maybe you just stumbled across this blog by mistake and quickly assumed that "Illinois Pancakes" just another blog full of pictures of cats, boring rants about pop culture, or viral polls ("What 'Grey's Anatomy' character are you?"). I guess a name like "Illinois Pancakes" does sound irreverent and absurd (or as the kids would probably say, "that's so random!") enough to be about just about anything, but don't be fooled. We have a mission and we're sticking to it. And that mission is simple: hit up as many pancake restaurants in our nation's 21st state as we can.

Getting started with this isn't a lot different from making pancakes at home. It usually makes a big mess, and that first batch that come off the freshly-sprayed pan always seem to turn out dry and crispy. The first few entires here might not turn out as moist and fluffy as we'd like, but don't feed them to the dogs just yet! Hopefully we'll get the hang of it after a few tries.

first post

2006-09-14T00:45:00.000-05:00

"The price of greatness is responsibility."
--Sir Winston Churchill