Our baseball weekend was winding down. Before the trip, Theo had spotted a location for our last breakfast. The Original Pancake House.
Well, if it’s the Original, did we have a choice?
Now, of course, this Original wasn’t the original Original Pancake House, since the chain was founded in Portland, Oregon in 1953. There is now 116 all over the United States. They pride themselves in using the very finest ingredients, such as 93 score butter, pure 36% whipping cream, fresh grade AA eggs, hard wheat unbleached flour, and their original sourdough starter.
And guess what, their specialty is pancakes.
We made the trek via CRT to the Original Pancake House located in Chicago’s Gold Coast District, an historic district on the North Side, known as one of the richest areas in Chicago. While riding the train, Theo stated that the OPH have something on the menu called a Dutch Baby, that it was enormous, and that if you ate it all, it was free.
Could that be a challenge for The Waffle?
I mean, I’ve had my share of Dutchies in my youth, and a few Old Dutch as I grew older, but could I eat a whole baby?
Turns out, it’s not a real baby. And no, you cannot get it for free if you eat it all. A Dutch Baby is an air filled popover, oven baked to golden perfection and served with lemon, whipped butter and powdered sugar. That did not appeal to me.
However, their actual signature item is their “World Famous” Apple Pancake, a single large pancake smothered with sautéed Granny Smith apples and cinnamon sugar, baked to create a rich cinnamon sugar glaze over the puffed up pancake. There was pictures on the walls, it was on top of their menu – a big plate, with a rich, reddish-brown cinnamon glaze on top of caramelized apples, topping a perfectly baked pancake.
It looked delicious.
We got a table inside the cute blue and white building after about 10 minutes. We got lucky : the patio was packed and there was a line-up to get in, but we had gotten there just in time – soon, the wait was over 30 minutes to get a table.