Pancakes, pancakes and more pancakes

After resting at the hotel we walked around to take in our surroundings and to find a place for dinner. We decide on Pancake House, recommended by a guidebook. It sounded kid-friendly and I love breakfast food for dinner. While the girls did complain a bit they walked all the way from the hotel to the Pancake House, near the Anne Frank house, which is quite a ways from the Marriott.

The Pancake House http://www.pancake.nl/indexeng.php is small and located alongside a canal. Although we arrived early for dinner, there were quite a few diners waiting outside already, all of them tourists. By the way, you can’t be shy. No waiting list; it’s based on the honor system. And you have all come across people who think they are more important than others. No lowly waiting for them! Well, they must not know that mothers with hungry young kids in tow will not let anyone cut in line! Yeah, I had to tell a couple of grown men that we were all actually waiting for a table and not just admiring the murky canal waters.

Pancakes in Amsterdam are not at all like what Americans think of as pancakes. They are more like crepes, thick crepes. We ordered one with cheese and another called Capri which had mozzarella, onions, tomatoes and pesto sauce. The fillings were inside the pancakes. Not bad but we didn’t realize how big they were. Even two pancakes for the four of us were too much.

Still jetlagged (and we won’t really get over it for awhile) we wake up late but we manage to get to the Pancake house across from the hotel before noon. (Yes, you read that right. We had pancakes for dinner and we were going to have pancakes for breakfast.) The breakfast pancakes were just a little over the top in sweetness. My older daughter ordered Nutella and shared it with her sister. I ordered apple thinking I was going to get fresh apple slices sautéed but I ended up with a cloyingly sweet apple jam and small pieces of fresh apple on top of my pancake. Not good.

On our last day in Amsterdam it rains. We ask the concierge for breakfast idea, since the hotel’s buffet is outrageously priced, something like $60 per person! He suggests the Sports Café right across the canal in Leidesplein square. It is really a sports bar with different games on many TV screens. It also smells a bit like a frat house morning after a blowout party. I think I get eggs, I don’t even remember. My younger daughter orders a croissant and her sister gets Dutch pancakes. These pancakes were not flat like the ones we had before. They were small and round and came covered in powdered sugar. Think of the small, round, filled pancakes called ebelskivers, Danish pancakes, and you get the idea.

We didn’t just have pancakes but we did have a lot of pancakes in Amsterdam. So now you know. If you happen to be in Amsterdam with kids you can feed them, pancakes, sweet and savory, morning, noon and night! (August 2009)