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.
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