Pancake Parlour

Melbourne Central, Melbourne 3000

Visited: 16th December 2011

Since I mentioned the pancakes at Pancake Parlour l in my post yesterday, I guess it would only be fair to do a review on one of my favourite food haunts in Melbourne.  I love everything here, from the sweet to the savoury - they just do pancakes like no one else does.  The only downside is that everything is a tad bit pricey.

There are always people outside Melbourne Central and on Bourke St Mall handing out little vouchers - try the new drink, or buy a short stack/ latte/ homemade lemonade and get one free.  I reckon this is a great deal.  Of course they will only allow three vouchers per table, but I think it's a great way of reeling people in.

MerlinFan and my "usual" consists of sharing the chicken nicoise (it's a special so unfortunately is not permanently on the menu but does come up quite often) or cheese Kransky and the Strawberry chocolate jubilee.  Today we decided to try something different for brunch.

Short stack with chocolate and vanilla ice cream $9.90 for two

We had vouchers buy one short stack and get one free, so I had one with chocolate ice cream and my mum had it with vanilla.  Mmmm, sooo good!!!  Simple but wonderful.  The pancakes are smoking hot, and the ice cream is just starting to melt as you dig into it (the perfect way to eat ice cream in my book!).  Like I said before, no one does pancakes like Pancake Parlour.  The buttermilk pancakes are warm and moist and just so light, fluffy and melt in your mouth.  I had the short stack with vanilla yesterday (yes, so busted, we had a drink and some ice cream and pancakes the day before, after lots of shopping) and I think the pancakes definitely go better with good ol' vanilla ice cream and lots of maple syrup.

Eggs Benedict $16.90

MerlinFan had the Eggs Benedict (The original James Bond breakfast, as the Pancake Parlour claims - I wonder if after finishing it, she did feel "positively dangerous"...).  Anyway, it consisted of a buckwheat pancake topped with grilled ham, two poached eggs and their homemade hollandaise sauce.  Just looking at it, it seems like they didn't pay much attention to presentation, huh?  There was a weird glop of hollandaise leading off the plate which didn't look particularly artistic.  @_@  The eggs were perfectly poached, though - see the picture below with gorgeous runny yolk (excuse MerlinFan for otherwise gross looking half eaten food picture).  The hollandaise was light and tangy, but not quite as creamy or rich as the once at the European.  It was nice enough, but MerlinFan felt it was quite a small portion for $16.90.

Perfectly runny yolk

Scimitar and my dad had the $10 lunch fare, which really is quite good value for your money.  They had the barramundi with cottage fries which consisted of a crumbed fish fillet on top of a potato pancake with homemade tartare sauce and butter-fried cottage potatoes, sour cream and spring onions.  I love the fish at Pancake Parlour too - it is never fishy, and is always perfectly seasoned and goes really well with the homemade tartare.  The only inconsistency today was that the fish on one plate was much larger than the one on the other!  (Don't you just hate when chefs don't bother checking or making sure that portions are the same size so that people who get the smaller share don't feel ripped off?)

Lunchtime Baramundi with Fries $10

 My dad also added a dessert for $5.00 - he had the lamington, which was two cold buttermilk pancakes sandwiched with cream and organic strawberry jam and topped with homemade hot chocolate fudge and coconut flakes.  I've had the Pancake Parlour's take of the lamington twice before, and it's fantastic.  The jam and the chocolate fudge blend beautifully with the cream and pancakes.

Lamington $5.00

I think today they also had new staff in training or something.  The girl taking our orders seemed very nervous and uncertain... we gave her three vouchers and told her we would like all three.  (One voucher was for a malt milkshake, the other for the two short stacks and the last for buy one get one free lemonade)  Anyway, the girl asked us what flavours of ice cream we wanted for the milkshake and two short stacks and after taking our order, she returned a few minutes later, saying that oh, since we haven't used our lemonade voucher, she is returning it to us.  We just kind of stared at her.  Um... we told you we were going to use all three?  Why would we give you the voucher for kicks?  >:P

Either way, it was forgiveable - service is usually good there, and the waitresses usually come around and ask if you're happy with everything.  Pancake Parlour will still be one of my usual food haunts as long as they keep making "Lovely" pancakes.

P.S.  I've done this blog ages ago but for some bizarre reason, I forgot to add the Urbanspoon link






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