Jafi's Pancake House, 405 W. Liberty St. , Wauconda IL

In order to avoid feeling guilty for not bringing home any work and to make it appear to the family that I was going to the office, I decided to wander off my beaten path to look for a new breakfast spot.  Wauconda is close, and we've had some success there with dinner, so I went fishing for breakfast, thinking surely there was a hometown dive that served a good breakfast.  I found Jafi's Pancake House.

It takes a trained eye to judge breakfast by the building in which it's served, but this one set off my alarm while I was sitting in the parking lot--squat, plain, white, dirty, and open.  I should've driven away, but it was after 10:00, and I was hungry.  It's just a pancake house, I thought.  Those are hard to get wrong.

No need to describe the decor; every town has a diner like this one.  You've seen it before.  I was greeted cheerfully at the door.  Always a nice sign.  But, after I asked for a table upon realizing that the table in the booth the hostess offered was bolted to the wall, she paused for three full seconds to recalibrate.  Not a good sign.  It's never a good sign when the hostess offers me a seat in a bolty booth or the counter with bolty stools.  If you follow 100 in 365, my blog about weight loss, you know that I'm a generously proportioned guy.  Noticeably.  Girthy.  I need my table and chair to move on my cue.  Three seconds is a long time, too.  Count it out.  That's a long time to feel embarrassed by a 110 lbs. hostess. 

She seated me at a table in the back next to two tables of octogenarian girls celebrating Neeva's birthday.  Neeva's in good shape by the way.  She was a guest at a niece's wedding a couple of weeks ago.  "They charge you for everything these days, you know," she said.  They sold pink t-shirts that said Flower Girl, so Neeva had to buy one.  I couldn't make out her pictures, but they elicited a chorus of delight from the girls, and a string of stories about the girls' weddings, most of which must have taken place close to 60 years ago.  "They didn't have bachelorette parties then, you know" Neeva said.  But Neeva would've enjoyed that more then than she did her niece's.  I teetered between revulsion and temptation as I listened in on their conversation.  I suppose I would have felt the same things if they were celebrating Neeva's 20th birthday.

My eavesdropping was interrupted now and then by my own waitress who brought me one of the wateriest cups of coffee anyone has ever tried to pawn off on me, a short stack of buttermilk pancakes, and a plate of bacon.  Three pancakes in the short stack and five pieces of tasteless bacon.  When my waitress brought me the pancakes, they were coated in powdered sugar.  I hate that!  When I told her I didn't want that she stalled for the same three seconds the hostess waited to recalibrate and suggested that she could try to brush it off.  I asked her to bring me pancakes without the sugar.  Three seconds.  "I guess I could try that," she said.  Three seconds.  Then, she picked up the plate and left.

I worried about the pancakes that I was going to get, nibbled on salty wooden shims formed to look like bacon and sipped watery coffee.  You know that feeling you get when you try to finish a glass of water but you've already drunk enough?  I felt that way with the first sip.  That's how much water I'm talking about.  I've tasted better bath water, lake water, garden hose water.

The pancakes were chewy.  Real chewy.  I like fluffy.  Some people like chewy, I guess.  I heard the waitress tell one of the ladies that business was good.  Maybe I'm the odd one.  That's right.  They were sweet, too.  Too much vanilla in the batter.  A big, chewy vanilla disk.  The butter was frozen, and the syrup was room temperature, so the butter just sat in the middle of the disks, a pancake-butter tower, until I ate all the pats in one chewy bite.  A good bite, but only one good bite and some serious penalty pennies.

Bottom Line:  Short Stack of Pancakes $5.95 + 1.00 for watery coffee (which I believe was the cost of the coffee, so if you like watery coffee, here's your spot) + .50 for even trying to get me to wedge myself into that booth + .50 for tasteless bacon + .12 for four awkward three-second pauses = $8.07

The story of this place was the table of girls, not the breakfast.

Gave 'Em a Shot at a Perfect Score

This morning, Debbie and I went out to breakfast at  Eggshells Cafe, and I decided to give them a shot at a perfect score since they didn't score very well with the Country Benedict last time I was there.  Everything just seemed right.  That Shelby wasn't with us was the only obvious impediment to perfection.  I finished mowing the lawn in the early morning, took a shower, and avoided work by taking my wife out for breakfast.  Even though the sky was threatening rain, we decided to sit outside at a hightop table, something Debbie usually doesn't prefer.  She's short, so her feet often don't reach the rungs on the chair.  She was fine.  I should have taken that for the omen it was, but I just didn't.

Now, if you were to read my other blog 100 in 365, you'd know that I'm 25 days into trying to lose 100 lbs. in 365 days.  Doing pretty well, too.  Down about 8 lbs, but my butt's girthy, and I had to wedge it between the arms of the chair.  That lasted about 45 seconds until I wiggled out of the trap and perched on the edge of my seat.  For a moment, I thought I was going to have to chew off one of the arms of the chair to get out, but I realized that was a gymnastic impossibility for me.  People who have 100 lbs. or so to lose, and there are a lot of us, know exactly what I'm talking about.  When I pulled the chair out to sit in it, I realized it was made of aluminum and weighed about the same as a lawnchair.  Lawnchairs have tried valiantly to support my girth for many summers, but few have been up to the challenge.

A couple of summers ago, I sat in a very sturdy lawnchair, but it had narrow tubing for legs and feet only about the circumference of a quarter.  When I first sat down and put my beer on the ground, I thought, This chair's too high; I can't reach my beer.  Awhile and a beer or two later, I realized that my beer was getting easier and easier to reach.  At the end of the party, when I tried to pick up my chair to put it on the porch, I realized that I'd driven it into the ground a good three inches.  That chair's probably still there like the sword in the stone.

I need to be careful about what I eat, but one of my goals is to eat better.  To me, that means good food, not just dirt vegetables.  For breakfast, I decided to eat simply, chew a lot, cut back on the sugar in my coffee, and wash it down with water--a short stack of buttermilk pancakes, a side order of bacon, coffee with skimmed milk, and water.  Of course, there was butter and syrup, but I was able to forego the powdered sugar.  I'll get back to the butter in a second.



Sitting outside, talking to my lovely wife, the scent of rain, a fresh-mowed lawn at home, coffee--sounds good to me.  My pancakes appeared to be cooked in the bacon fat from my side order.  You'd think I'd love that, and I should, but when I asked for butter, something I shouldn't have had to do, there was--well--something on the edge of it inside the little cup.  My wife told me it was just some residual bacon grease from the spatula, and I tried to make myself okay with that.  If I had done it at my house, that's the part I would've eaten first, but something about it didn't strike me as right.



Eggshells' Pancakes

So, here's how I'm scoring my breakfast:  The pancakes were hot and good and only $3.25.  You can see how good this could get, but I've got to add some penalty pennies--100 of them for the seat.  My butt still hurts after only 45 seconds of exposure.  Well, exposure to the seat, anyway.  Twenty-five for making me ask for butter and another 25 for the bacon fat enhancement on the side and another 25 for my bacon being all stuck together.  Stuck together bacon wouldn't be a problem for me at all if I were making it myself at home, but this bacon cost me more than my pancakes.  Separate the bacon slices.

Bottom line:  $3.25 + 1.00 + 25 + 25 +25 = $5.00  All things considered, a very good score.  It wouldn't take much to hit the sweet spot with this spot.

By the way, I want to like this place.  The owners seem to have their heads in the right spot.  I wish them the very best in their endeavor to keep this place up and running.  It's very popular.  Try the donuts!

How Near Perfection Yet So Far

This is the breakfast I eat 5 days out of seven--Cheerios, blackberries, a cup of coffee with an equal part of skimmed milk and two tablespoons of raw sugar.  Yes, those are Honey Nut Cheerios, so the sugar content of the whole breakfast is exceptionally high.  The coffee's 71 cents, the milk 56 cents, 73 cents for the Cheerios, 1.39 for the blackberries, and 8 cents for the sugar.  That's $3.47 simply for the cost.  Now, I have to penalize for three things: 1) I put this together myself which means buying and preparing it. The only thing I like about that is that I get exactly the cup of coffee I want everytime; 2) I eat it at the office, so the service is bad; and 3) The ambiance is what you'd expect in an office.

Bottom Line:  $3.47 + 1.00 for having to make it myself -.25 because I always get the coffee exactly right + 1.00 for the cranky service + 2.00 for the bad seat (stool) and poor ambience = $7.22
Nobody should eat breakfast sitting on a stool or eat with a blue plastic spoon.  Have you ever seen a bigger mug of coffee?

Lynn's Paradise Cafe, 984 Barret Avenue, Louisville, Kentucky

Lynn's Paradise Cafe needs no help from me to get the word out that this is probably the best place to eat breakfast in North America.  There is nothing not to enjoy about this place.  It's worth a weekend trip to Louisville just to eat a meal or two here.  The wait staff is friendly, funny, courteous--quite frankly everything you'd ever hope to have in a favorite breakfast place.  When they heard my phone chirping and saw me taking pictures, they were immediately curious about "The Perfect $4.00 Breakfast."  They laughed about the premise of the blog and gave me a press kit.

I ordered the Kentucky Farmer Scramble with coffee and orange juice.  It's everything you see right here. I have no recollection of how much I paid for breakfast, so it's impossible for me to give them a real score, but I promise you that whatever you order here will be satisfying and delicious.

I'll be back in Louisville in June, and I'll make up for not reviewing the Kentucky Farmer Scramble as thoroughly as I should have, but you'll find Lynn's recipe at http://www.foodnetwork.com/.  That's not surprising.  Owner Lynn Winter and staff are just that generous.

McDonalds, Every 4 Blocks. If you can't find one, don't tell anybody because you live in paradise.

McDonalds doesn't count, except that Sausage Biscuit. What is that thing? It's a dollar's worth of what the hell! It must be made of butter, salt, fat, and cholesterol--my favorite things.  I only allow myself one every other week or so, but McDonalds will never score the perfect $4.00 because of the lack of atmosphere and poor service.  I realize they're not even trying in these categories, and I'm glad they're not.  I might not be able to resist several more Sausage Biscuits a month.

This morning, I had my favorite McDonalds breakfast:  a sausage biscuit and a small coffee with 2 packets of Equal, served in a large cup so that I can fill it the rest of the way with milk. The price comes in at $3.21, but I have to penalize them for trying to upsell me at the squawk box--1.00.  Another 1.00 penalty for not being attentive to me at the payment window. I have to say that the server at the pickup window was cheerful--not my usual experience at McDonalds driveup windows. She said good morning and how are you, but no thank you.  How do you forget that?  I'm not going to penalize her for the oversight.  Most people are rude beyond belief at the driveup windows, but I wasn't, and a thank you was called for.

That means the Bottom Line is $3.21 + 1.00 + 1.00 = $5.21.