Best Spots for Griddle Sweets

Despite my humongous sweet tooth, I have never considered a sweet breakfast a real breakfast. Perhaps this is because I grew up eating Filipino breakfasts of garlic fried rice, fried eggs, bacon, and fresh tomatoes every weekend. However, in my recent "research" on breakfast joints in the Bay Area I have come to realize that a breakfast without sweets, whether it's fresh bread with seasonal jam or a stack of pancakes, isn't a real breakfast either. In fact, I feel oddly incomplete if I eat a completely savory breakfast, unconsciously searching the cafe-lined streets for my sweet fix.

What has prompted me to write about our favorite dessert-like creations from the griddle is a recent, and rather sudden, embrace of pancakes. I have never really liked pancakes. Too often they are lifeless, mushy rounds, overwhelmed with baking soda, and drowned in cloyingly sweet syrup. The thought of such offensive concotions is enough to make my stomach turn as I write this. But how can a confection whose name brings to mind a buttery, fragrant, cake lightly fried in a pan possibly turn out bad? Whatever the reason, it is far too common, for a few experiences in the darling city of San Francisco have shown that the pancake can not only excel, it can be so beautifully done as to convert savory breakfast-eaters like myself.

When it comes to pancakes, I usually like a bit of fruit to break up the intensity of all that buttery goodness, but for those of you who are purists, Mama's in Washington Square serves up a plate of silver dollar pancakes tasty enough for me to order as a side, which I'll split with my very obliging dining mate. I usually opt for their artful omelettes as the main course such as the Farmer's, which is made with pancetta, leeks, spinach, and chevre, or the Dungeness Crab omelette with scallions and creme fraiche. They also have an impressive selection of fresh muffins, pastries, and breads which they incorporate in their extremely popular french toast dishes.

As I had mentioned, I like my pancakes best with a bit of fresh fruit, and I have had two amazing examples of fruit laced pancakes in San Francisco. For light, elegant pancakes in a fittingly swank bistro-bar setting, Absinthe in the Hayes valley makes banana and blueberry souffle pancakes so delectable that I can skip the eggs and potatoes, which are admittedly mediocre. Conversely, for a wonderfully dense, yet tender, cake with tremendous flavor served in an equally hip, yet eclectic-friend's-home setting Dottie's True Blue wins hands down for their blueberry and cornmeal pancakes. These pancakes are my favorite because the cornmeal adds heft and bite to the cake while lending a subtly nutty taste. When paired with the juicy bits of blueberry, these cornmeal cakes are heavenly and need only be dressed with the slightest amount of butter and maple syrup. I must add that their hotlinks, eggs, and homefries nearly had me tearing out of joy. These hotlinks were the real thing: smoky, spicy, and delightfully salty. Paired with slightly runny eggs and crispy-creamy potatoes, the hotlinks nearly had me singing praise, vaudevillian style, atop our tiny table.

For Southern California, I can't mention much for pancakes except that Fred 62 in Los Feliz has won several awards for their cakes. Lately however, my pancake consultant and passionate pancake afficionado, Shiri, has claimed that the pancakes aren't what they used to be. It's likely that a hurried cook in the kitchen is to blame, as most recently we have frequented that joint right after the bars close at 2 a.m. and it gets really hectic. Hopefully, catching a late breakfast there on a weekday would improve the quality of the pancakes, because I have tasted their pancakes on a good day, and they are truly a thing of beauty. As for everything else on the menu, steer clear of the over-priced and pretentious items and opt for eggs, hash browns, and bacon because they don't do very well on their other breakfast items, and I've found their sanwiches and burgers consistently dry, tasteless, and generally disappointing. The waffle conconctions, however, like the Bossanova (ice cream and dulce de leche) are pretty consistently awesome.

I'm pretty famished now. Breakfast may be the ultimate comfort meal, as I crave it at all hours. Unfortunately, Dottie's is only open until 3 p.m. so it looks like I'll have to keep myself pre-occupied until tomorrow morning.