Have you eaten at Kiss the Cook in Glendale Arizona yet? If not, you really need to drop in and see them some morning and have one of their best-loved meals, their buttermilk pancakes. Those pancakes are really something else and Kiss the Cook is one of the first places I head for whenever I return to Glendale from Japan to work on the Glendale Shopper.

I don't know what the secret to their pancakes is, and they post the recipe on the wall in their hallway, but I haven't been able to replicate with any success the magic that Kiss the Cook does.

Well, I got to thinking about those pancakes one Saturday evening while sitting in my little apartment in Japan. Since I obviously was not gong to be able to make it over for breakfast the next morning, I did a little research on the Internet and came up with the following tidbits. Hope you enjoy what I found out.

Kiss the Cook Continues a Long and Proud Pancake History

Pancakes have a long and proud history. Of course, individual ones have extremely short histories, assuming they are tasty! I took at look at pancakes on wikipedia where I found a lot of pictures and information about pancakes from many countries around the world. From there, I did a search of the Internet to see what interesting tidbits of information I could find. So let's begin this tasty trip!

United States

In the US, depending on where in it we grew up, we call pancakes hotcakes, griddlecakes, or flapjacks. We have the pancakes that come as a short stack, which refers to the number, and maybe as silver dollar, which refers to their size. The real art of making pancakes depends on two things from my point of view. The tastiness and the ability to flip them over in the air without them landing anywhere but back in the pan!

Great Britain & Ireland

The British appear to like their pancakes more as a dessert than a meal. However, the Scots and the Irish appear to like their pancakes more like the Americans. Nonetheless, the British in Buckinghamshire have been holding a Pancake Day Race since 1445 according to Pancake Palour which shows some pictures of the event. The length of the race is 375 meters with the record set in 1967 at the flapjack rate of 63 seconds!

Japan

Living here in Japan, I don't often get the chance to go down to Kiss the Cook for a great morning breakfast of pancakes. So what do I do? Well not very much. They do have pancakes here but they too are more of a dessert thing than a breakfast meal. However, I recall when Denny's first came to Japan around 30 years ago that I often went there for breakfast which at that time was almost exactly the same as that served in the US. However, the whole menu has become 'Japanized' over the years and the pancakes have become more sweet but they are still served with eggs for breakfast which does well in a pinch. Other than this, the Denny's menu would be unrecognizable for most Americans that enter a Denny's in Japan today. Well, I digress. Back to the flapjacks.

Well it is getting late here so I am going to stop writing about pancakes for now and get me something to eat. All this talking about pancakes makes me hungry!