I agree. Cracker Barrel has the best pancakes around. 
I love IHOP! Just last weekend my husband and I went and I got a spinach and cheddar omelette which was excellent, made with tons of fresh (not frozen) spinach. Yummy! Also, I love their pancakes, and especially their fruit syrups. Hereabouts, the maple, blueberry, boysenberry, and strawberry are the “default” table syrups, and the special hidden-in-the-back syrup is butter pecan. My dad and bro swear by the butter pecan, but I like the strawberry best. Yes, it’s totally fake tasting (none of their fruit syrups taste anything like real fruit) but they are very good in that artificial kinda way. -shrug- I dunno, but I really like it.
You know, between the lack of Cracker Barrel and Waffle House, sometimes I really hate living in California.
Jakeline and I usually road trip for our anniversary, and the first time I discovered Cracker Barrel during a visit to Flagstaff, I thought I’d really found Heaven. My God…those pancakes with the warm, real maple syrup…actually, ALL of their breakfast is amazing. (Suddenly, I’m craving a road trip!)
One day, when I’m not feeling lazy, I’ll post a VERY amusing email exchange I had with one of the execs at Cracker Barrel when I “complained” about the void of locations in California. 
Well, hey…if you’re ever going to be in the LA area, we’ll set up a Doper meet at the IHOP by my house and I’ll give the steak omelette a shot. 
I gotta skip the green pepper, though <gag>.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks that adding Cholula to an IHOP omelette is magnificent?
Since I’m referenced in this thread, I figured I ought to respond. Asimovian was having a mighty craving for breakfast foods tonight, so I bit the bullet and let him take me out to IHOP for breakfast. My findings are as follows:
[ol]
[li]It is not cheap at all. An omlette that tastes like styrofoam is about 10 dollars and seems to only come with pancakes. I can spend $7 at a local greasy spoon, and get a damn good omlette (avocado, bacon, and cheddar… YUM) with fruit toast;[/li][li]They can’t cook eggs worth a darn. Scrambled eggs should not have little brown bits on them;[/li][li]Their sausage was pure unadulterated evil. And yet I ate it. Which just PROVES how evil it is;[/li][li]The bacon didn’t seem to have been drained well. It was overly greasy, but not bad;[/li][li]I’d rather not ponder the hashbrowns. I’m still traumatized;[/li][li]I don’t particularly crave pancakes, but they were fine. The butter pecan syrup helped their cause immensely.[/li][/ol]
The verdict: I’d rather eat someplace local, but if I have to go there in the evenings, I think I’ll stick with a club sandwich or something.
I like IHOP. But I like Denny’s, too.
I didn’t know they were supposed to be bad. Where I come from, all restaurants are bad. However, my mother couldn’t cook. So IHOP and Denny’s? Man, that’s living.
Oh, I dunno about that. IHOP serves black folk. Denny’s sometimes has a bit of trouble in that regard. :rolleyes: ( Or, they used to. So they say.)
I used to work in an IHOP in Philly. When i was in high school, I was a busboy/dishwasher on the graveyard shift. They combined the two jobs due to the usually slow pace during the week. Friday and Saturday nights, there were separate busboys and dishwashers. Interesting place to work. I still adore a Viva La French Toast now and again.
Two interesting events:
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I was at work there the night the Phillies won the World Series in 1980. God…the street filled up fast with revellers. No traffic moved, it was a beautiful party.
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I was at work the night the local chief of police’s son ran on a check. The cook grabbed a knife ( incredibly, now that I think about it ) and ran after him. The waitress called 911. The cook caught the kid, walked him back to the IHOP at knifepoint, at which point the cops showed up. And saw who it was. ( Much to their collective dismay, may I add. Nobody wants their name on that report ! ). They called the kid’s dad at home, as it was around 2:30 am. Then they handcuffed the punk and took him in. :wally
I just ate in one in NJ for the first time in a few years , this past week. DELISH meaty omlette. Hot tea. Tasty side stack 'o cakes. They do it right.
Cartooniverse
It is evil- I got sick last time I ate it, so I now avoid IHOP. The pancakes are tasty, I admit.
Oh man, I loves me some IHOP. I spend a lot of time on the road, and odd hours, so IHOP is my favorite interstate-at-3-am-stop-for-something. Chocolate chip pancakes. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmGood. I even like their coffee, usually.
I belive wholeheartedly that breakfast food is for anytime of the day eating. Especially pancakes. I don’t like Denny’s so much, Shari’s is really gross. The Waffle House also rules, but they seem to only be in the Southeast.
My absoulte favorite that I miss desperately since I moved here, as it’s a Pittsburgh thing, is Eat-N-Park. I took my co-worker there last fall when we were in Pgh for work, and he still hasn’t stopped talking about how much it rules. $3.49 for a Breakfast Smile. 3 cakes, bacon, sausage, juice, eggs, and toast, as opposed to $8.99 here for a short stack, no sides, at Denny’s here.
Jeez, you guys, we don’t have any breakfast chains up here that I’m aware of. All we’ve got are the expensive semi-ritzy ones like Chez Cora or Eggspectations.
I guess all Canadians just go to Timmy’s, despite the lack of eggs or pancakes.
Oh, wait… does Belle Province do eggs? (I highly doubt it does pancakes…)
And a visit to the IHOP website confirms that the only IHOPs in Canada are in BC, for some reason. And there are Denny’s at least in Ontario and the Prairies, but none in Quebec.
Can’t remember the last time I set foot in any of the national breakfast chains when there was another alternative, though there are 2 IHOPs within about a 15-minute drive from here. (And neither of those is great; the only reason to go there was in high school, when they were the only place we could hang out late at night without bothering anyone’s parents or being harrased by the cops.) Even then, I was not impressed by the food, but we always had to order something or another to be allowed to hang out there. If I’m on the road somewhere, I’ve been to Cracker Barrel a fewe times, and it was decent, if quite a bit on the kitschy side.
If I want pancakes, there are several local places within a short walk of here that serve them, 2 of them for the entire time that they are open (until 5 pm), and one until an hour before they close at 11 pm. Much better food, much less sterile atmosphere. If I want pancakes past breakfast time, I might go to Ann Sather’s, a local Swedish restaurant chain that serves kickass Swedish pancakes with lingonberry sauce all day. Or late at night, there is always Clarke’s, a local chain with 1 location open until midnight and 2 locations open and serving breakfast 24/7; I’d much rather go there. Or of course, regular pancakes only take a few minutes to make from scratch with pantry staples, and there’s a 24/7 supermarket a block from my house if I’ve run out of anything.
(I’ve never been to Waffle House; I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one, but then I’m a Northerner who hasn’t really been in much of the south unless you count South Florida, which isn’t really the same thing.)
In Alberta, there’s a chain called Humpty’s. Holy shit is that good eatin’. Also, we’ve got Smitty’s and Phil’s and Denny’s.
Bolding is mine. I’m not sure how you’d even call that breakfast. That’s depressing.
Featherlou’s been trying to convince me to move up to Canada, but she’s apparently been holding back on providing this critical bit of info. Hmmph.
My friend Rob intro’d me to IHOP about 6 months before I had to have some serious stomach surgery. It wasn’t bad- good place to go cos I like breakfast food, and we could just hang out.
Unfortunately, after the surgery, some of my digestive-ness-ability changed. We went to IHOP 3 times after, and I got vomitously sick every single time.
We no longer go to IHOP 
My favorite 24/7 never-closes place for breakfast is the Egg Platter. It’s a local chain of 4 restaurants – giant menus, giant servings, cheap as hell. Waffles the size of your head and fantastic pancakes. Not there for the ambience, though, unless you like an airbrushed chicken-themed decor. Most of the waitresses are cool as hell to talk to, and it’s a great place to sober up at 3 am.
I don’t ever go to IHOP or Denny’s since I discovered the Egg Platter.