by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n
I love to eat at unique, small-town restaurants. I have written of some those in this series of blog posts. After those, I ate at national fast food chains. McDonald’s, the most prevalent of all fast foot chains, was the the least frequented. I liked Hardee’s best because we don’t have Hardee’s where I live in Northern Virginia. After these two types of restaurants come the national chains: Outback Steakhouse, Chili’s, Panera’s, and so on.<\/p>\n
Given this hierarchy of food, I hate to admit that one of the best meals I ate was at a national restaurant chain – The International House of Pancakes.<\/p>\n
I was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and it was raining when I awoke. Sigh; it was going to be a slow morning. The rain had quit by 7 AM, but the roads were too wet for my liking, actually too wet for my biking as the tires throw road water all over me. I needed to kill an hour until 8 AM or so.<\/p>\n
There it was – the IHOP. I go to an IHOP about two times a year. There is one thing on the menu that I order<\/p>\n
chocolate chip pancakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
At IHOP, they don’t just put chocolate chips in the pancake batter. They put chocolate in the pancake batter as well. I think they pour chocolate syrup into the batter, but people who know something about cooking claim that such a batter would burn and not cook. I don’t know how they do it, but the chocolate chip pancakes taste like they are half chocolate syrup.<\/p>\n
Then there is the whipped cream. The waitresses at IHOP always ask if I want the whipped cream on top of the pancakes. Are they kidding? Why do they ask this? Of course I want the whipped cream. What good are chocolate chips and chocolate syrup in pancakes without whipped cream on top – a lot of whipped cream piled high.<\/p>\n
Then there are the flavored syrups. Ah yes, the IHOP flavors of syrup on the table. I cannot remember what they flavors are; I think strawberry is one of them. I don’t think the taste of the syrups match the label on the dispenser. That doesn’t matter – I like the taste.<\/p>\n
Eating Procedure:<\/p>\n
\n
- Put a little of the first flavor syrup on the edge of the pancakes,<\/li>\n
- eat that,<\/li>\n
- put a little of the next flavor syrup on the edge of the pancakes,<\/li>\n
- eat that,<\/li>\n
- repeat steps 3. and 4. until you have tasted all the flavors on the table,<\/li>\n
- go back to step 1.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
This is a great way to kill an hour before walking 18 miles and then riding a bike 18 miles in the Alabama heat and humidity. A great meal to start a great day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Dwayne Phillips I love to eat at unique, small-town restaurants. I have written of some those in this series of blog posts. After those, I ate at national fast food chains. McDonald’s, the most prevalent of all fast foot chains, was the the least frequented. I liked Hardee’s best because we don’t have Hardee’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[144,93,110],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alabama","tag-food","tag-restaurants","tag-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions\/632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}