Griddle Cafe: Where pancakes are a baffling ordeal.

Gather, if you will, to hear the tale of--

Just kidding. It seems like I'm the only one who enjoys food blog posts written in Epic Narrative. You're all Philistines. (That's bad.)

I'm going to go ahead and say it: if you don't like pancakes, you're probably a child rapist and mass murderer. And bearing that in mind one can imagine how pleased I was to hear that we were going to go visit the Griddle Cafe, a tiny restaraunt in Hollywood (7916 Sunset Blvd, the corner of Sunset and Fairfax) that is known for its mastery of the oft-forgotten art of the Pancake.

That's right, I said it. "Mastery." You didn't misread me. Their menu is dauntingly vast, and that's only the breakfast portion (though, to be honest, I didn't see particularly many people ordering anything else but).

Griddle Cafe is open on the weekends from 8AM to 4PM (7AM-4PM on weekdays), and we set out on our merry excursion at about 9:15AM from Westwood. This proved to be a greivous mistake. Parking was pretty simple for once in this godforsaken city as there is a clearly marked lot around the corner for use of Griddle Cafe customers. But there's always a catch: apparently it's one of those quintessential LA sorts of places (like every fucking block on Sunset, apparently), so by the time we arrived (I'm a little fuzzy, but I want to say about 10AM.) there was a disheartening line of people waiting to be seated. Kathy her name down for our party of five, and it was about 12PM by the time we were seated. To be fair there was some sort of kitchen difficulty (fire, flood, gnashing of teeth, etc.) which delayed seating, or so the endearingly wiseassed buzzcut waiter guy announced a number of times. But even without the unnamed calamity, it still would have been a pretty damn long wait. So get there early if you plan on eating breakfast-breakfast, rather than lunch-breakfast.

Upon reflection, I never actually set foot inside the establishment as we were seated outside. Outdoor seating didn't feel particularly cramped, but the building shades the sidewalk pretty much completely so if the heatlamp you're seated under runs out of propane you're kind of in trouble if you're there in the morning. But it's got a pretty laid-back atmosphere to it. Informal like a diner-type place but not quite so diner as to feel truck-stop cheap.

But I'll stop being such a damn tease and get to the main event. Sweet zombie Jesus in the sky, Aiko had warned us when the trip was being planned that Griddle Cafe gives WTFHUGE (Intarweb-to-English: mind-bogglingly huge) portions. Why didn't we listen? Like the headstrong young go-getters that we are, we laughed off her dire warnings and dove in with bravado that would prove to be our undoing.

Picture your average-sized dinner plate. Just so we're on the same page here, let's say about nine or ten inches in diameter. Now, picture a stack of three pancakes towering some four inches into the Heavens, the fluffy golden breadth of the pancakes spilling over the edges of the plate effortlessly mocking of the capacities of a mortal human stomach. Each of the five of us stared in awe at the steaming monstrosities before us, and I instantly regretted ordering an additional side (THEY ABSOLUTELY WERE NOT JOKING WHEN THEY NAMED IT AN "Oversized Slice of Ham." GOD HELP ME, THEY WERE NOT.).

Don't let my fearful tone give you the wrong idea, though. Had I believed that I was going to face down pancakes the size of bike tires, I would have prepared. But even though they were huge, they were heavenly. Cooked thoroughly, yet still fluffy and delicious on the inside. Buttery and delicious, but not overly rich. I ordered the BLUESberry (okay, so they lose a few points for hiring a fifth-grader to name their dishes), traditional blueberry 'cakes topped with a blueberry sour cream. And they weren't no mass-produced Bisquik blueberry pancakes (read: blue food-coloring tablets to fool you into thinking those spots are actual berries). They were fresh blueberries cooked right into the pancakes. The blueberry sour cream might sound a little strange at first, but it was a beautiful addition to an old trick. It was like a generous dollop of blueberry yogurt on the top of the stack.

Though I didn't sample any of the others' pancakes (I was deathly focused upon mortal combat with both my 'cakes and my ham), they ordered the Banana Nana ("Brown-sugar baked bananas cooked inside our buttermilk batter"), the Yellow Brick Road ("You don’t need courage for these butterscotch, caramel and walnut filled originals. Topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar [There’s no place like The Griddle!]", Sow Your Oats ("Honey, cinnamon and rolled oats make these something you shouldn’t resist!!!"), and Eye's [sic] Wide Open ("Wake up with a shot of espresso and semi-sweet chocolate chips folded into our buttermilk recipe…….Sprinkled with powdered sugar").

I only finished about half of my pancakes, but all of the ham because you NEVER waste meat GRAAGHGHHHGHGH. I felt like I had eaten an entire hobo (one of the fat ones, with a hobostick and everything). It was not an unsatisfying feeling.

The total bill for the five entrees (Does that term apply to breakfast? Question mark?) and three sides was about $60, which ain't too shabby considering the sheer magnitude of delicious pancake.