Perkins is a well-established family restaurant and bakery chain well known for its home-style meals and pie. Most Notre Dame students know it as one of the few places off-campus that is open 24 hours over the weekend for late-night snacks. Prefacing the rest of this review, the vast majority of my experiences at Perkins have been nothing but positive. Their pies are delicious, their apple cinnamon and peaches and cream muffins the best I have ever had. However, keeping with the theme of my column, I had to try their pancakes.
Perkins' menu claims that their pancakes are "World Famous" and paired with my positive previous experiences, my expectations were understandably high. The menu options were limited to strawberry, blueberry, and buttermilk pancakes, but being the avid Jack Johnson fan that I am, I went off-menu and ordered banana pancakes. Little did I know, ordering off-menu was not the best idea.
Now there is no real general consensus on how banana pancakes ought to be made, but what I was served was anything but. Typically when making them on my own, I use the recipe my mother taught me and blend bananas into the batter, while also placing freshly-cut slices in the batter as the pancake is about halfway cooked so they don't fall through, but rest within the pancake.
I realize this is far more than most people would expect from a banana pancake, and I by no means anticipated that sort of display (though it would have warranted a five-shamrock review).
Perkins' presented me a sad-looking plate with three flat, dry excuses for pancakes, with less than half a bruised banana's worth of banana slices. These were not even worthy of publishing a picture of. Trying to find consolation with the experience, it was a busy morning and I did order off-menu, but their "World Famous" pancakes could and should only be famous for all the wrong reasons.
This was a very uncharacteristic experience I had at Perkins, but maintaining the integrity of this column searching for the best pancakes in South Bend, my vote is to avoid these. If you are looking for a more than solid selection of muffins or home-style dinners there are few places better, but it was not my favorite breakfast in the Bend.
Contact AnkurChawla at achawla@nd.edu
The views in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
Perkins: Banana Pancakes
Location: 423 South Dixie Way South Bend, IN 46637
Hours:Sun-Thu, 6a.m. - 11p.m., Fri-Sat6a.m.-1a.m.
1 Shamrock of 5
