IHOP® Restaurant

http://www.ihop.com/


Place: IHOP® Restaurant
Location: 2299 Lombard Street (on the corner of Pierce Street)
Hours: open at 6:00am Sunday through Thursday; open 24 hours Friday & Saturday
Meal: NEW! Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes ~ "We grill sweet pineapple inside our famous Buttermilk Pancakes and top them off with butter rum sauce, a maraschino cherry and creamy whipped topping. It's a breakfast that makes you feel like you're on a dream vacation.", which I had comboed with two eggs over medium and their (also) NEW! Red Potato Hash; and a glassa IHOP Splashers® Tropical Island Twist ~ a blend of lemonade, lemon-lime soda (probably 7-up® or Sprite®, I didn't ask), and tropical mango syrup (which I noticed they use Le Sirop de Monin®[1])

(There is/are no EweToobular juxtaselections for today's linked songs [Unless, you believe me when I say that Mikel Jollett's middle name is really "Pancake". No? Well, okay then.], I just like these songs.)


As has been my breakfastary tradition for several years now (except last year, which I skipped for some reason), I went to IHOP® Restaurant (see last 'blog-entry from June 14th, 2014) for a freebie birthday pancake breakfast! I went to my local restaurant in the Marina on Lombard Street for this meal.

My waitress-person/server-lady, Mayra, was a little busy early on as she was the only person waiting on tables/serving/working the cash register until about 7:30am. Things really got IHOPping around 8:00am (it appears that Fathers Day might not be the best idea to head out to a well-known pancake chain for breakfast if you are a single loser like me); luckily, by then, several other waitress-people/server-ladies had shown up to help out poor Mayra.

As far as national (or International even) restaurant chains go, this wasn't really that bad of a breakfast. There was lots of pineapple chunks in the pancakes and the butter rum sauce was pretty tasty, too. I always like having the option of a second potato side dish-choice, and these were actually pretty good. Because most combo-meals will also come with a side-choice of some kinda dead, decaying animal flesh product, Mayra offered to substitute some toast for me, but with the pancakes and potatoes, I really didn't think that I needed any additional carbohydration this morning.

Now here is how their "free meal" works, you can order either their Rudy Vallée Fresh 'n Fruity® Pancakes (four each) or the equivalent amount (which is up to $9.99) of any other breakfast. My meal came to a total of $11.28. So, after taxes, I only had to pay the difference of $1.41. Not too bad! (Don't worry, because I had saved almost ten bucks on the meal, I made sure to tip overworked Mayra a decent 25%. [Okay, let's see... how much is 25% of $1.41 now?])

IHOP® only offers Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce (Original Red Sauce) and Cholula Hot Sauce® (Original) as condimentary supplements. I came prepared with a few of my own, anyway, and used some Pope's Whiskey River Hot Sauce (Thanks, Amy and Chef Joe!) on the hashed potatoes and some Old Saint Augustine Snake Bite Datil Pepper Sauce (Thanks, Greg & Cindy!) on the mediumed-over eggs.

After breakfast (and because I had skipped any Coffee with breakfast with this specific intent), I headed over to Peet's Coffe & Tea® on Chestnut Street for a 12oz press-pot (read "French press" anywhere else) cuppa Java Giling Basah[2]. I love how these places always come up with these newfangled "Flavor Notes: Full-bodied and unexpectedly bright, with strains of caramel and sweet tobacco". Ummm, yeah... no thanks! If I really wanted tobacco-flavoured Coffee, I'd just drop a cigarette butt or two into my mug before drinking it. The price of the Coffee was $3.05; figuring that I was already still well ahead from the free meal, I tipped the barista-dude a whole buck. I also decided to do a "pay-it-forward" of $5.00 for the next customer (and told the barista-dude to make sure that if there was anything left over [Ha! Fat chance!] to put it in the tip-jar, too). I figure with the money that I saved on the pancake breakfast this morning, I am still about $1.82 ahead for the day. (Hmmmm?! If I had 365 birthdays a year, I could get rich doing this!)

http://www.peets.com/coffee/featured-coffee/coffee-shop-by-category-limited-editions/java-giling-basah.html

the Wild Parrots of San Francisco Interlude

I had parked over by the Presidio's Chestnut Street Gate, so after getting my Coffee, I walked around the little duck pond (pond, pool... pond is good for ducks [which is technically called Letterman Digital Arts Center Recycled Water Pond at Lucas]). While there enjoying the last of my Coffee, (and, no, it tasted nothing like an old cigarette butt dipped in caramel sauce), I saw only three of the colourful chatter-birds flying overhead, but heard many more in the surrounding trees in the neighborhood.

I highly doubt that IHOP® will ever make my Breakfastary Starting Rotation, but none of those other restaurants (cheap bastages) has ever offered me a free breakfast either!


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: 
NEW! Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes ~ 6.4 (mainly due to the freenicity of the meal and the good butter rum sauce);
Tropical Island Twist ~ 6.0;
Peet's Coffe & Tea® Java Giling Basah ~ 6.8;
the Wild Parrots of San Francisco ~ 8.5

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1. https://www.monin.com/m/mango-syrup.html

This is an okay product, but I generally prefer the much more local (as in actually started in San Francisco's North Beach and the production is now located just a bit south in South Francisco) Torani®.

http://www.torani.com/

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:

"Giling basah" means "wet-hulling" in Indonesian. This refers to the method used in processing the Coffee.