Pamela's : A restaurant review.

Okay so I'll try and make this a quick post. But let me tell you, I'm furious so I may end up rambling on and on about my disappointment.

So from time to time I'll hear about different restaurants or maybe pass by them and think that i'd like to try them. Among my list right now are: Sweet Tammy's, Deluca's, The Dor-Stop, Dozen Cupcakes, and a few others. Finally I was able to cross one of my list. Pamela's in the Strip District.

So me and my mom walk in and immediately we like the atmosphere; fun fifties paraphernalia, cute booths, funky lamps. So we sat ourselves like the sign said, and immediately someone came came over and asked us our drinks. The good, quick service was nice. So then we pulled out our menu's and sized them up. Immediately I searched for the pancake section, as they are one of my favorite things to order, like always. I had also heard so much about how Pamela's is one of the best breakfast/pancake places around and I was excited to finally be there. Okay, so they had an all right selection. Your typical strawberry, blueberry, chocolate chip banana (no plain chocolate chip but I guess you could request it), and plain of course. The thing about these pancakes is that they are served crepe-style. Not actual crepes, of course, but they roll them in the same fashion.

After careful consideration, our decisions were made. Although I'm a Pancake Nazi, none of them sounded appetizing to me (not a chocolate fan, strawberries and pancakes are a strange mixture to my palate, and blueberries and I have an off-and-on relationship. I also didn't want to just get plain ones =/.) So I settled on the California French Toast priced at $3.95 for 4 slices, reasonable I suppose. My mom naturally chose the strawberry hotcakes as she pretty much always gets strawberry anything. They were $5.95 for two. Well we assumed maybe they'd be rather big. We also concluded we would share eachother's food.

Within 10 minutes or less we had our food. Or at least one of us did. In front of me was placed an enormous pile of strawberries that probably no one person could even consume the amount in one day. Underneath was what might have been french toast. Immediately I explained how I never asked for strawberries and it was quickly fixed and a new strawberry-free plate was brought back out. But what I saw was not too much better. My California French Toast was described on the menu as, 'home style whole wheat raisin bread, soaked in a vanilla-cinnamon sugar egg batter'. Hmmm... my colorful plate was sadly less cheery with four grey-brown disks placed on it. Smaller than a cake doughnut all around, and about your plain old average bread height, these were not what I was expecting. As I am also I HUGE butter fiend I was hoping to soak them in it. But all I was given was a not quite as large as a ping pong ball, in fact smaller, clump of gross yellowy, borderline call-the-health-inspector-this-color-is-unnatural-and-this-could-be-serious, colored. Okay, so back to the dry poop disks. I didn't even try to eat the edges, on account of I couldn't even cut through them. So one bite to the middle was where I began. The inside was dry and an over-whelming egg taste were my first thoughts. Normally I'm okay with the whole egg taste thingy, 'cause I mean that is what you're soaking the bread in, but what happened to the whole '...soaked in vanilla-cinnamon sugar..."? So I took another bite. Nothing. No flavor. Like seriously, isn't this THE Pamela's. Okay, I put more butter on and looked for a good section to try (that took some searching). Blech. There were raisins, but it was like they were mocking me. When I would taste one my mouth would become very excited that I was about to be eat something sweet. Then when no more sweetness came, (due to the lack of any cinnamon sugar or vanilla flavor) I grew disappointed. My mom tried them as well and became equally displeased. We set those aside for good and moved on to the "hotcakes".

Like I said, I'm not a big fan of strawberries on my pancakes, but I tried anyway. The Strawberry Hotcakes were described as follows, "crepe pancakes stuffed with fresh strawberries, brown sugar, and sour cream". We were served two mediumish sized pancake crepes. There was also a thin little once around ring of whipped cream in the middle. A miniscule amount mind you. Remember: We paid 6 bucks for these. I cut into the middle of one of the rolled pancakes/crepes and looked inside. Boy, was it bursting with strawberries, as well as alot on top. But wait. Where was the brown sugar and sour cream? I check another area. Nada. Oh, do you want to call the 1/4 of a teaspoon sized spread on the bottom the sour cream? Well, call it what you want, but I call it cheap. I'll tell you now that I only had about one and a half bites of that thing. The pancake itself was a bit bland for my taste and the edges were practically inedibly burnt. Also, the filling of the "crepes" didn't even start until you got 1 1/2 inches in from the ends. Kinda lame. Whatever.

Isn't it misleading how that picture on the window makes you think you're going to get a lovely stack of pancakes?

We quickly paid our bill and left. We then spent the next hour or so just ranting about how disgusted and disappointed we were. No offense, but what was Obama thinking?

Okay, I'll stop now, though I could go on forever.
More to come in restaurant reviews, though. and then I'll get to tell you about my love of The Original Pancake House!!!