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Breaking Bread :Family Friendly Restaurant Reviews
October, 2006I usually find chain restaurants to be horrible inventions of frozen, mass-produced, heartless, conveyor belt abominations not worthy of stepping foot in; but the first Original Pancake House opened it’s doors in 1953 (in Portland, OR), and I figured if they have surpassed the half century mark they must be doing something correct.
It is a generations old family run business with each outlet being family owned and operated. They use all-natural, preservative free, fresh ingredients including unbleached wheat flour, seasonal fruit and fresh squeezed juices. Everything is cooked to order and made from scratch including the whipped cream and mayonnaise.
There is a kid’s play corner and library stocked with books, toys and puzzles. They provide crayons and paper for child created masterpieces that can be hung on the wall. There is not a separate kid’s menu, but half orders are offered for most items on the regular menu.
The "famous apple pancake" was unlike anything I’ve had before. It was somewhere a pineapple upside down cake, apple cobbler and a soufflé; it stood at least four inches tall and consumed the entire plate. The crust was thin and tender, topped with an eggy center and finished with gooey cinnamon apples. The pancake was a nice accompaniment to our meal and the leftovers literally fed me for days.
The Eggs Michael also filled an entire plate, but was more a human size portion compared to the giant pancake. The English muffin was split in half and griddle toasted then topped with sausage patties, butter basted eggs and a creamy mushroom sherry sauce served with a side of home fries. It was a wonderful combination of fat and cholesterol, which happens to be a favorite food group of mine, but if you are looking for something less fattening they just added several lighter options to the menu. The potato pancakes, served with applesauce or sour cream, were thin tender patties of shredded potatoes cooked just until the edges were crispy.
The food was fresh, good and inexpensive. The service was great and the kids had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, now I have to re-assess my stereotypes of chain restaurants.
by Natalie Shaw www.BoulderParenting.org or 303-485-6879.
Lehndorff: Breakfast nirvana daily House special
January 14, 2005Truly great pancakes - swabbed with butter and soaked in syrup - can have a profound effect on humanity. In the case of this human, perfect cakes 'n' eggs can morph a horrid morning into a nice day. Unfortunately, mediocre a.m. fare dished at chain eateries always disappoints me so deeply that I vow to never darken their cookie-cutter doors again.
That's my excuse for proudly, if stupidly, avoiding the Original Pancake House for so long. There are two outlets of the widely acclaimed, Oregon-based chain in Greenwood Village, but the opening of a restaurant in Boulder finally got me there one morning. The run-of-the-mill Middle Americana decor is underwhelming, but the fine breakfast perfume - one part coffee, one part bacon and 331/3 percent butter - immediately caught my attention.
My chain doubts were eased by one forkful of corned-beef hash ($9; $5.25 side). It's the real deal, a terrific blend of chopped brisket, red potatoes and onions griddled until browned and topped with neatly basted eggs. It's so superior to the typical mush that it should be assigned a new name.
The hash was just the amuse bouche for the three, light-as-a-feather buttermilk pancakes that accompany many breakfast entrees. OK, you'd expect the cakes to be stellar at a pancake house, but these are exceptional. You can taste the buttermilk, and there's none of that icky raw flour or pancake mix flavor.
The House buckwheat pancakes ($5.50; $4.25 half) should be rated "A" for "adult." Only grown-ups can appreciate the earthy appeal of these dark brown cakes with a nonfluffy, chewy texture. The eatery's regular warm syrup is tolerable, but you must get a side of real maple syrup ($1.25) to fully experience the buckwheats. The sourdough flapjacks ($6.50; $5 half) gave off a yeasty aroma reminiscent of fresh beer.
The attention to detail is heartwarming in even simple dishes like eggs ($6.95-$7.50 with meat and cakes). They take large fresh ones and perfectly fry, scramble and baste them. The top-notch side meats include real, thick-cut bacon and link pork sausage, and the hashbrowns are griddled just right.
The six varieties of omelets ($8.25-$9.75) are big, pan-cooked creations flipped on a plate and delivered to the table as a steaming dome of eggy yumminess. My vegetable omelet was an impressive-looking thing brimming with bits of fresh broccoli and cheese.
The Original Pancake House is the only place I've encountered that offers to cook your French toast ($6.50; $5 half) well-done. The dish is usually lightly cooked and served "custardy," the waitress said, noting that some patrons complain that their French toast isn't cooked enough. "Make mine medium rare," I said. Cooked in butter and dusted with powdered sugar, the sourdough slices were a delicate, custardy treat.
The servers at the Denver-area outlets do a fair amount of that pre-emptive explanation and I appreciate it. On one visit the server warned us that it might take 30 minutes to get either of the two most spectacular dishes: the oven-baked Dutch Baby ($7.95) and the cinnamon-laced apple pancake ($8.95). The pretty, soufflé-like Dutch Baby invariably elicits oohs and aahs when it does arrive all puffed up and dressed with butter, powdered sugar and fresh lemon juice.
The restaurant doesn't need to serve dessert when chocolate chip buttermilk pancakes ($6.75; $4.95 half order) are on the menu. The semi-sweet chocolate-oozing cakes come with thick whipped cream. The thick crepes ($6.95-$8.25) come filled with sweet fruit.
The House takes care of the details - like berry preserves served in a ramekin, not one of those foil-sealed packs. I like the fact that I get a pot of coffee ($1.95) on the table. It's not fabulous, write-home-about-it coffee, but it's rich and hot.
There's very little I sampled in several visits to the House that I didn't love. The potato pancakes ($7.25; $5.75 half) are flat little cakes rather than the thicker, shredded potato latkes I prefer. They're decent enough, as are the eggs Benedict ($9.25) despite the too thin and bland hollandaise. I'm also a little miffed that the eatery isn't open for dinner.
It may be a broad generalization, but the House management seems to hire nice servers and train them to provide the kind of quick, solicitous service you need at breakfast, even if you are eating it for lunch. The House is especially busy on weekends when the post-party and after-church crowds pile in, creating long waits. You'd think these people had never tasted pancakes before.
Too many restaurants view serving breakfast as a burden. The Original Pancake House celebrates breakfast and treats it with respect. Using outstanding ingredients, cooks make the morning classics from scratch and dish them with style and care. They wisely don't waste any effort on doing lunch items.
The Original Pancake House was founded in 1953, and there are now nearly 100 franchises. The crucial factor seems to be that the company is still privately owned by the family that started it. Their philosophy of quality has miraculously survived expansion.
I'm glad I overcame my well-founded aversion to chain eateries to dine at the Original Pancake House, the exception that explains the rule. I'll go back because I haven't sampled the Belgium waffles ($5.25-$8.25), bacon pancakes ($6.50; $5 half), cream of wheat ($3.50) and oatmeal ($3.50) yet. I bet they'll make my day.
John Lehndorff is the dining critic; lehndorffj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5103.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your pancakes?
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by Jessica Hersh(buzz@boulderweekly.com)
Original Pancake House
2600 Canyon
303-449-1575
hours: Monday-Friday 6:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 7
a.m.-3 p.m.
wheelchair accessible: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes, but not vegan
smoking: no
upside: pancakes, pancakes, pancakes
downside: many dishes bland and too sweet
A couple weeks ago I woke up on a Sunday morning with an intense craving for pancakes. I didn't want ones I could make for myself. I wanted the whole pancake house experience. The kind you get in restaurants where the air smells like a combination of cheap coffee, cooking batter and plastic booth seats; where syrup comes in several flavors, not just standard maple; and where the food is made fresh, comes out hot and is satisfyingly made of refined ingredients. My mind raced around town looking for the perfect place to meet those criteria and landed my imagination squarely at the Original Pancake House. From that moment I had my heart set on a pancake breakfast at OPH. By the time I finished all my duties and errands for the day and was able to drag Jim out to eat it was lunchtime. But no fear, breakfast is served all day at such establishments, so I knew I would be able to eat pancakes to my heart's content.
My immediate impression of the place was that I'd found just what I wanted. There were the heavy coffee mugs on the tables, there was a syrup jar and there were the plastic booths. The menu is a veritable who's who of egg batters. Pancakes of various descriptions, omelets and crepes play the leading roles. After some deliberation we ordered a Dutch Baby pancake (an oven-baked pancake sprinkled with powdered sugar), a small order of coconut pancakes, a single French crepe, a single mandarin crepe and an omelet (which came with plain pancakes). And then we waited. And after what seemed like a very long time (it was 25 minutes) we got our food and the impatience that was building up blew away in a puff of sweet steam.
The Dutch Baby came with a three-pronged condiment holder with whipped butter, extra powdered sugar and lemon wedges for squeezing. The baby itself was a giant, plate-sized creation with high browned edges and a flat yellow center and cut easily into segments. I lemon-juiced and buttered up a slice and forked it greedily into my mouth. My first thought was, "lemon-flavored Yorkshire pudding." Next I sampled a bite of the mandarin crepe. The crepe was thin and eggy and wrapped around mandarin orange segments then drowned in a very sweet orangey syrup. That, too, tasted like Yorkshire pudding with oranges. The French crepe was wrapped around a huge amount of jiggly strawberry jam and was drowned in an overly sweet "tropical" syrup.
The only things we ordered that didn't taste like Yorkshire pudding were the pancakes. The omelet we ordered came with spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and feta and somehow was devoid of most flavor, except that of Yorkshire pudding. What, you may ask, is Yorkshire pudding? It is a savory, baked pudding, often cooked in the drippings of a meat roast, made of a thin batter. Think traditional Sunday dinner in England and you've got Yorkshire pudding. It has a distinctive flavor and texture, and I am fascinated to know how the cooks at OPH made so many different dishes with so many different ingredients taste like it. I happen to like Yorkshire pudding very much, but found a meal consisting of four dishes that all tasted the same to be a bit boring.
Coconut pancakes consisted of regular pancake batter with coconut stirred in then more coconut sprinkled on top after cooking. Aside from the slightly chewy texture of the coconut, there was no way to know if any attempt at flavoring the pancakes had been made. I tried the pancakes plain, with butter and with syrup and still could coax no more flavor from them than plain-old pancake. Again, I am very curious about the phenomenon of flavorlessness. The plain pancakes were just what they should have been and for that I was grateful. They were soft in the center and just chewy enough on the edges to give them texture. The flavor was fresh and slightly tangy, and they were just as good eaten plain as decorated with syrup. Since we came for pancakes I was glad to find that they, at least, tasted as they should.
The lesson here is when at the pancake house, eat pancakes.
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