One family. Every pancake. Rated stack by stack.
Short Stack Reviews is a running record of every pancake we order. Not a food blog with a recipe attached, not a list of the ten best brunch spots in a city we flew into for a weekend. Just four people who eat a lot of pancakes, writing down what they thought while the syrup was still on the plate.
How This Started
It was Dylan’s idea, hatched over a stack of pancakes at a location that remains a closely guarded secret. We will say only this about it: it professes to be international, it offers several types of syrup — none of which are actually maple — and it is open late. Somewhere in that booth we looked up and saw a country awash in pancakes, waiting for a few highly qualified palates to make sense of it all.
So we did. Meet the crew to see who does what.
How We Score
Three numbers, and they measure different things on purpose.
- Standard stack, out of 10. Plain buttermilk pancakes with nothing to hide behind. This is the score that sets the ranking, because it is the only honest comparison between a beach-town cafe and a hotel dining room.
- Specialty, out of 10. Whatever the kitchen is proud of. Scored separately so a good idea cannot rescue a mediocre pancake, and so a great blueberry stack gets credit without inflating the base score.
- Service, out of 5 butter pats. Warmth, coffee refills, patience with a table that photographs its food. This has nothing to do with the cooking, and we never let one drag down the other.
Everything we have eaten is ranked on the Stack Leaderboard and pinned on the Pancake Map.
The Rules We Eat By
- We pay for our own pancakes. Nobody comps us, nobody sponsors us, and no restaurant knows we are coming. If that ever changes, we will say so at the top of the review.
- We order the plain stack first. Always, even when the specialty sounds better.
- One chance. One visit, one review, one day. We do not come back for a second opinion — the plate we were handed is the plate we score.
- We say what we actually thought. A 5 out of 10 is not an insult, it is a 5. We would rather be useful than nice.
- The photos are ours. Unretouched, taken at the table, syrup and all.
Got a Stack We Should Try?
Tell us in the comments on any review. Diners, hotel dining rooms, roadside places with a hand-painted sign — we are not picky about the room. We are extremely picky about the pancake.