Original Pancake House Takeaway. Chart Topping Pancakes And Bacon. One of the best pancakes you'll have, or possibly the worst. The 9.3 / 10 pancakes have a unique fermented potato flavor you'll either love or hate. I love it. Paired with some of the best bacon you'll find, it's worth the price of admission.
And the price of admission isn't cheap. The $13.50 Dutch Baby pancake I had will get you two meals at other breakfast establishments. Throw in the bacon and a cup of coffee, and your order is pushing $20.
Super fast and friendly service. They're old pros at serving a ton of people as quickly as possible. Expect a wait on the weekends. Parking is available in the dedicated strip mall lot.
Company Experience Summary
The quest to find the best breakfast option in St. Louis continued with a stop at the Original Pancake House (OPH) in Ladue.
Unlike the Olivette Diner, I knew that the pancakes were the big draw at the Original Pancake house, not my affordable Standard Breakfast.
And, to be clear, you don't go to the Original Pancake House in Ladue expecting affordable.
The only obstacle to a fantastic breakfast is the price. The ticket for me and my two sons was ~$50 after tax and tip. The same breakfast at the Olivette Diner would run around $30.
The regular pancakes are an acquired taste, but I can easily see them having a bimodal distribution around 5 and 9. In other words, you'll either love them or hate them, but it's impossible for me to tell you ahead of time. They have a sourdough-y flavor because of the fermented potato used in the recipe.
Yes, fermented potato.
I ended up with a Dutch Baby ($13.50), a German take on a pancake that comes with a lemon wedge on the side. Not quite hashbrowns and ketchup.
This baby ended up being one of the best pancake or pancake-adjacent items I've had in a long time. A solid 9.3 / 10 on the pancake score, it's part spongey and park cakey, with a luscious flavor that incorporates the OPH's unique pancake recipe.
The other chart-topper here is the bacon. It's somehow thick and crispy but not burnt and dripping with flavor. It has an almost jerky level of thickness without the associated toughness. My eight-year-old and I agreed it's one of the best slices of bacon you'll have.
While the quest for the perfect breakfast continues, Original Pancake House is a required part of the St. Louis breakfast adventure.
The Food At Original Pancake House
My Standard Breakfast, which I use to compare across all breakfast establishments, includes two eggs over medium, with hashbrowns and toast.
After giving the menu a once over, I realized today's adventure would be a bit of a pivot. I still got to taste the eggs, but the toast and hashbrowns will have to wait for another day.
You can't go to a place named the Original Pancake House and not get the house specialty.
Pancakes.
In my case, I went with the Dutch Baby ($13.50). A German take on pancakes, they have a light, almost custardy center with a more traditional rim. Normally cooked in a cast iron skillet, they are hard to get right, but worth the effort when you stick the landing.
The OPH stuck the landing.
A 9.3/10 on my pancake score; there's not much missing in these bad boys. Topped with a bit of syrup, you can combine a bite in the middle with part of the rim to create a sweet, egg custardy pancake experience. After tasting that, you can up the game by adding a bit of lemon to the same bite to enhance the flavor profile with a citrus kick.
The Dutch Baby is for pancake aristocrats. The whole experience would be lost on an eight-year-old.
Underlying the fantastic flavor is the OPH's secret pancake recipe. I learned on a previous trip that they use fermented potatoes to create a unique flavor. You'll either love love it or hate hate it.
The Dutch Baby takes the tang from the pancake batter and just steps it up two notches, in my opinion.
I had a bit of my son's pancake, and it's very, very good, too. I'd give those a relatively more modest but still excellent 8.6 / 10. You really need to like the sourdough flavor to like them as much as I do.
My eight-year-old got the strawberry pancake short stack for $11.95. I've never seen him eat anything so quickly and happily.
Topped with a ton of homemade whipped cream and paired with a side of strawberry syrup, he had as much on his face as in his mouth most of the time.
This goes to show, with enough sugar, everyone can love love the pancakes.
The Bacon
I knew the pancakes were good from my last visit some four years ago, but I forgot about the amazing bacon.
I don't recall having such an excellently prepared piece of bacon in a long time.
Thick cut and perfectly cooked, it didn't come across as having an overall fatty or oily exterior. In fact, from the look of it, I thought maybe it was a lean piece of bacon without fat.
Gosh, was I wrong.
One bite was enough to put me over the moon in love with it. My eight-year-old shared the opinion saying it was the best piece of bacon he'd ever had.
The Coffee
I wasn't a fan of the coffee. For $3.75, it didn't stand out enough compared to my Keurig at home. Next time, I'd try to pre-caffeinate to save the $3.
The Eggs
The one part of the Standard Breakfast I had didn't wow me. The eggs had a bit of a buttery flavor. Not nearly in the same class of buttery mess as IHOP, but still a bit too much.
In my opinion, you need to let the eggs do the work, and the butter and salt should be minimized to that effect. 5 / 10 eggs.
Overall, don't let my progressively negative commentary dissuade you. The pancakes and bacon are so good that you need to come here once if you're at all interested in finding your favorite breakfast in St. Louis.
Original Pancake House Atmosphere And Miscellaneous
The Original Pancake House has a bit of a corporate, but yet log cabiny feel to it. The servers and maitre de have literal secret service ear pieces, but the booths and tables feel homey.
It's an interesting dichotomy that falls more on the homey / log cabiny side.
For kids, they have etch-a-sketches and magnadoodles waiting at the entrance. Both my kids loved playing with them while we waited to be seated and for food.
We were actually quite lucky and only had to wait about five minutes for a table around 9 am on a Saturday morning. When we left, people were lined up down the strip mall at 10 am. They do a good job of cycling tables through, but even there enormous dining area can only hold so many people at once.
And they do have that cycle time down to a science. I ordered my dutch pancake as soon as we sat down because it takes a bit to cook. By the time it came, both my kids had already eaten. That's a testament to how fast they get the food out more so than how long it took to cook the dutch baby.
The time to food was probably sub 20 minutes for the kids.
My aimed for a booth because it let's me control my four year old a bit better. The dining area is split in half by a short privacy wall and is about half tables and half booths.
And the biggest downside to the Original Pancake House is the price. It cost $50 even for the three of us for breakfast. That compares to about $30 at the Olivette Diner or IHOP for a similar meal quantity wise. The quality is 30x better than IHOP and maybe 1.4x higher than the Diner.
Parking At Original Pancake House
Parking is easy in a dedicated lot outside the
Original Pancake House Receipt
