About time

I finally, FINALLY, have some pancake reviews. What can I say? I love pancakes but the opportunity just doesn’t often present itself for me to get pancakes. Pancakes aren’t as conducive to take-out as so many other kinds of food, and I usually just don’t feel like going to a pancake house by myself. I’m a cereal person anyway, so I don’t go out for breakfast too often. So while I was traveling with my mom up to the Niagara Falls area last month, we did stop for breakfast a couple times, and jumped at the chance to eat me some. I think it’s a pretty good sample too, because one is from a wide-spread chain, and one is from a really small local place.

My first pancakes came from a Perkins in Williamsport, PA. Here I chose the strawberry pancakes. Five pancakes with a strawberry topping and whipped cream. Most overwhelming thing about these was as an exhibit of the power of strawberry topping. I am not a real big fan of dry pancakes. I love syrups and toppings and stuff. Strawberry topping is one of my favorites. This was a decent one, like a combination of a syrup and preserves. I liked it, and combined with whipped cream, it’s a winner. But it ran out before the pancakes did, and after that, these were some disappointing pancakes. One measure for me of a pancake is what it does under maple syrup. When you put syrup on these, it absorbed in a way that made the pancake stiff. Not great. It reminded me of what McDonald’s cheap-o pancakes used to do as soon as syrup touched them. It also reminded me of what would happen if I put syrup in my hair and played with it. It took it in like a sponge in such a way that it was now just a cake with some maple flavoring. I don’t like that, I like to be able to recognize the syrup as a liquid still, or at least a goop, like you would expect if you put ketchup on fries. Plus they were pretty thin. Thick and fluffy, that’s what I like.

Second pancakes came from Dick & Jenny’s Bake & Brew on Grand Island, NY, a small place on a small island between Niagara Falls and Buffalo. It was basically a coffee shop/bakery, mostly coffee and muffins, but they also have a rotating menu available for breakfast. This time I got the blueberry pancakes. No topping on this one, blueberries were baked in. No blueberry flecks here, they were big and juicy. And the pancakes had to contain them, so they were a decent thickness. These did what they were supposed to with the syrup too. Dipped it in, absorbed it a little, but still stayed drippy.

Perkins couldn’t have been that bad though. I got the strawberry pancakes again on the way back. I could eat truckloads of strawberry topping.

I don’t think I’ve bought a record in a few months. I’ve put myself on a minor CD buying regiment, trying to get myself to listen to music and get familiar with albums I’m buying, and pursuing jazz more than anything else.