Polly's Pancake Parlor

In the summer of 2008, my family took a short camping and shopping trip to North Conway, New Hampshire. While there, we made a delightful and unexpected discovery -- that Polly's Pancake Parlor was within a somewhat reasonable driving distance of our campground in the foothills of the White Mountains.

Funny how memory is, though. After a couple of readers' questions about how close Polly's is to North Conway, I mapquested the distance to and Sugar Hill, it says an hour and fifteen minutes. I guess it was worth the drive to us but of course it would be more sensible to incorporate it as part of a trip rather than making it a trip on its own!

Why, you wonder, was Polly's worth a drive of that length when we had never eaten there? Well, you see, our 'family' pancake recipe, the one that we have been preparing for about 15 years, came from an article discussing Polly's Pancake Parlor! The recipe is not Polly's because that is the one recipe that the pancake house refuses to share but it is one based on an adaptation of several traditional recipes. That does not matter though; we had come to think of our recipe as that of Polly's Pancake Parlor...we wanted to see how Polly's recipe faired against our own.

So you see it might be said that we had been waiting for 15 years to eat at Polly's! It was more than about time! So we arose early and departed our campground with Polly's as our goal. It was a fairly lengthy drive for a vehicle full of hungry lads but we were determined.

When we arrived we were momentarily dismayed to see a lot of people milling about, waiting to get in...but we approached the desk and left our name anyway. After all, we had come all the way from Canada for these pancakes! We were given an electronic paging gizmo and joined the rest of hungry adventurers in the yard and waited for our turn.

When our pager finally called us, we were definitely more than ready for the pancakes and guess what? They did not let us down! They were delicious as all of the food was. The service was great and the atmosphere fun. We had just created another fantastic memory for our family memory banks!

Here's a little known secret...
to shorten the length of your wait,
call when you are about an hour away
and ask to be put on the waiting list!

Picture by Mikie Bones.

Polly's Pancake House is certainly the only restaurant I have been to where the waitress not only takes your order but prepares your food. You'll have to choose between five or more types of pancakes -- plain, whole-wheat, buck-wheat, cornmeal, oatmeal-buttermilk and a daily special, like gingerbread -- with your choice of filling. (Blueberries, coconut, chocolate chips or walnuts.) Of course, there are all the regular breakfast choices like fruit, eggs, bacon and sausage. After your server has taken your order, she actually cooks it on the griddle for you herself!

Everything is homemade from the pancakes to the English muffins, quiche, soups and baked beans. Even the maple syrup is homemade right there in the hills of New Hampshire by a process and some of the machinery originally invented by "Sugar Bill" Dexter, the original owner. If you know anything about it, making maple syrup is slow and time-consuming but that is the only way to make syrup that has the best flavor, color and texture.

What did we order? My husband and I both had a breakfast of some sort, the details I cannot remember. It may have been three different types of pancakes, eggs and bacon or some combination like that. However, after we finished we felt we could eat just one more pancake and ordered a couple more to share. Ian and Douglas, my teenage boys, both felt they had to go for the all-you-can-eat platter. At home, we triple the recipe so we know they can eat a lot of pancakes. They did very well, especially when you consider that the all-you-can-eat meal comes with an appetizer. One son was delighted to find chili as an option and the other enjoyed some fresh melon. However, this extra food had the natural result of filling a couple of hollow spots and they did not eat quite as many pancakes as they thought they would!

My favorite were the blueberry pancakes because, I suppose, they were delicious and they are the closest to me to the pancakes that I grew up with. A really nice part of the experience, as opposed to other places I have had pancakes, is that the syrup here is real maple syrup and is not served in tight rations!

It was great fun and especially memorable because we have been eating The Best-Ever Buttermilk Pancakes Recipe since my boys were babies.

The owners were offered $1 million
for the restaurant and the recipes.
The owners said, "No."

It would not be fair of me to avoid the subject of cost at Polly's and I must say that the total bill for our breakfast for four was definitely a 'whopper,' especially for a meal at breakfast time. Not quite all you can eat for 50¢...The newspaper clipping that I have from Polly's is about 15 years old. Back then, an order of six pancakes cost $5.30; the all-you-can-eat platter $9.90. Unfortunately, times they have a-changed and the all-you-can-eat platter cost, I believe about double that amount.

However, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us that we will remember for a very long time, if not forever. (Hey, our story is immortalized on this page!) Pancakes are a real delight for my family and a special part of the memories that we have. Both boys have been master pancake creators for as long as they have been old enough to stand on a chair in the kitchen. Therefore, I think that this special opportunity and the yummy pancakes make the expense and effort of our visit worthwhile. What a treat! Would I go again? You bet I would, just not right away!