Friday, July 09, 2010

On the Road Eats: New Hampshire Pancake Contest



Polly's Pancake Parlor is a charming breakfast spot in bucolic Sugar Hill, N.H. As our group perused the large menu, one of my dining companions said he wanted something hearty, so I pointed out the All You Can Eat pancakes option. And as I too contemplated it, I sensed that I was being scoffed at. So I declared that though I may not look like I eat much, I have a huge appetite.You can probably guess where that led: a head-to-head all-you-can-eat pancake contest.



Polly's menu described the pancakes as being 3 inches in diameter and when I peeked over the counter where they were being made, they seemed small enough that I could eat lots of them. At Polly's, you can choose from a few different types of batters and a few different add-ins to construct your ideal pancakes.


My bad-ass competitor. He stuck to plain and oatmeal buttermilk for his sets.

I, on the other hand, went for gingerbread (a special of the day) and cornmeal blueberry. The gingerbread turned out to be my favorite flavor. The cornmeal blueberry was too dry and bland. But I finished them anyway. As we made our way through the first six, the waitress came back to ask us what we wanted for our next sets.

I switched it up to buckwheat blueberry and oatmeal buttermilk.Though the pancakes weren't that large, the hardest part was eating so much of the same texture. Halfway through my second plate, I realized that eating them with bites of my slice of cantaloup helped. My competitor ordered two scrambled eggs (I was only competing against him in pancake eating). He gave up at 11.

I conquered all 12. Maybe I should have just ordered some bacon to go with it. My competitor and I agreed that we weren't even totally stuffed afterward, we just needed something with a different flavor. I have to say that if it were a speed contest he would have won easily. So what if practically everyone else had left the table to go linger in the grass outside while I slowly masticated the last. few. bites. Slow and steady wins the race.

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