Retrologist's Pancake House Picks!
Sept. 26 is National Pancake Day. Here are some spots, past and present, to sample the sweet treat.
America seems to celebrate two pancake days. One is orchestrated every year on Mardi Gras by the International House of Pancakes, hoping to encourage a global, bacchanalian succumbing to the urges of the Sweet Tooth the day before the start of the Christian period of Lent and its traditional 40 days of fasting. The pancake chain, however, would surely insist you needn’t keep fast during Lent!
The other pancake day is celebrated every Sept. 26, as so prescribed by the people behind National Calendar Day, which designates daily holidays that give us all reasons to engage in a little escapism, and give me an excuse to post fun photos and tell a good yard or two. Sept. 26 used to be Lumberjack Day, and that morphed into pancake day, the preferred food of hearty Paul Bunyan types, don’t you know.
The best place to have a pancake is a good old pancake house. Indeed, I love the ring of those two words. It’s the ring of deliciousness. To mark the occasion of our national celebration of the pancake, I’m sharing some of my photos of pancake houses, some still with us, others a memory, but all interesting.
Anyway, let’s get to it!
PANCAKE CIRCUS, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
We begin with Pancake Circus in Sacramento, California. Come if you like pancakes, but think twice if you are afraid of clowns.
Yes, Pancake Circus is overrun with clowns. The over 60-year-old business once had nothing to do with the circus, but a name change in the early 1970s launched the carnival atmosphere, and customers have made a tradition of contributing clown-themed gifts to the ever-growing collection.
Wherever you go at Pancake Circus, there are clown dolls, toys, sculptures, paintings, you name it.
The owner, Naren Muri, and his son, Nick, (seen in photographs at the cash register and counter, respectively) are the friendly keepers of the tradition.
Customers are far from scared – they love this place, with more than one telling me he’d been coming here all his life.
The pancakes are really good – the lure of them might just be enough to help sufferers of coulrophobia get over their fears once and for all.
And if that’s not possible, they can at least admire the neon, which the Muris spend $375 a month to maintain, they told me in February 2020.
I’m grateful to him and his son for sending in the clowns – and the great comfort food.
SILVER DOLLAR PANCAKE HOUSE, CORONA, CALIFORNIA
Next, we head to Southern California and the Silver Dollar Pancake House in Corona.
It’s been a restaurant long before assuming its current name in the 1960s.
It was closed when I stopped by last October, but the inside is gorgeous. I really want to take my time and shoot it next time I’m here.
COACHMAN’S DINNER AND PANCAKE HOUSE, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH
We’re off to Utah and the defunct Coachman’s Dinner and Pancake House, which was a staple of Salt Lake City for 59 years until closing in April 2021 to make way for a condo, which might incorporate a revival of the restaurant.
I was absolutely smitten by this sign, a leftover of a time when Colonial touches were a go-to design flourish for many a restaurant.
The Nikols family owns the property and adjacent retail office complex, which they wanted to redevelop into taller condos and stores. To get the height they wanted, zoning rules required them to include the restaurant property, according to KUTV.
A customer told local station Fox 13 at the time the restaurant closed: “I don’t think they’re doing the right thing … They’ve had a good business, but maybe they’ve made all the money they need.”
COLONEL'S PANCAKE HOUSE, JOPLIN, MISSOURI
Another defunct favorite is the Colonel’s Pancake House, which I visited in June 2013, and just in time. The Joplin, Missouri restaurant, closed the very next month.
A Route 66 mainstay since 1960, the restaurant later reopened for a run that lasted a few more years.
Back in 2013, the new owners were eager to take command of the colonel’s hut: “I’m really excited about this,‘’ Kelly Weaver told the Joplin Globe. “We have lost so much and so many locally owned restaurants, I did not want to lose another one. There is so much nostalgia to this place — I wanted to keep it open and reinvent it.”
Although the colonel and his griddle goodies are now gone, we can take comfort that the successor business, Lucy’s Ensenada Mexican restaurant, has kept the building and original signage, just modifying the lettering, of course.
I didn’t have time to sample the colonel’s creations -- not when you’re covering hundreds of miles a day -- but I’m sure glad I got these photos to remember this charming mom-and-pop restaurant.
SUGAR BOWL, DES PLAINES, ILLINOIS
Chicagoland has many pancake houses, and I had a memorable meal at the aptly named Sugar Bowl in Des Plaines, which traces its roots to the 1920s but had its grand opening here in 1958.
Check out the pancakes below, from my November 2018 visit.
Walker Brothers Original Pancake House, Wilmette, Illinois
Before we leave Illinois, we stop at the Walker Brothers Original Pancake House in Wilmette, which in 1960 became an early franchisee of a pancake chain that launched in Portland, Oregon in 1953.
Lake George Pancake House, Lake George, NY
Next, we visit New York’s Adirondacks and the Lake George Pancake House, with a similar pancake-flipping fellow for a mascot. I shot this from my car in 2008 and I'm glad I did. It’s since been renamed and the cool sign is gone.
UNCLE BILL’S PANCAKE HOUSE, WILDWOOD, NEW JERSEY
Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in Wildwood is part of a beloved Jersey Shore chain. This neon sign, shot in 2017, has been replaced with a plastic simulacrum.
PANCAKE COTTAGE, SUN-VET MALL, HOLBROOK, NY
Pancake Cottage has served its last tall stack, but it still looks as though it’s just closed for the day. I adore the typeface on the sign!
This is at the Sun-Vet Mall, an almost-dead mall in Holbrook, NY.
Hang on to this post. I’ll update it, and turn it into a definitive list of vintage pancake houses around the country.
Allow me to suggest PJ’s pancake house in Princeton NJ