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| IHOP's Breakfast Sampler |
Two's a Charm
If I could, I'd have breakfast three times a day (and twice on Sunday!) Why limit yourself to just one serving of the most important meal of the day? Friday lunch came late today, so I slipped into the International House of Pancakes at 935 N. Stafford Street in Ballston for "a little bit of everything."
IHOP is IHOP, but I left happy after devouring a Breakfast Sampler - two eggs (scrambled) two strips of bacon, two sausage links, two pieces of ham, two pancakes and hash browns. $9.29 may seem like a lot for breakfast, but you get a lot of food for your buck here. The restaurant is big and usually crowded. A/C was on full blast (nice) and I was seated at a clean table in the middle of everything: It's a bit of a tight fit (I banged my leg getting up.) Service was relatively quick and polite.
I ordered a Diet Pepsi (for $2.29) and didn't have long to wait for my food to arrive. One negative is that you only get one napkin (the one wrapped around your cutlery) and there are no napkin dispensers along the crowded choice of syrups and spice shakers. The food was pretty good: The eggs were fluffy, but bordering on overdone. The hash was delicious, the ham so-so. My sausage links were greasy and overdone on one side, but nice & tasty. The bacon was overly salty and tasted nothing like bacon. By the time I got to my pancakes, they were ice cold. Stay clear of the blueberry syrup, unless you want to crack a tooth... Way too sweet.
Overall, it's hard to complain about a relatively good plate of food. I shudder to guess what the total sodium count was... yet alone, how much saturated fat, etc. There's something strangely comforting about places like IHOP and Denny's: Perhaps all those late-night/early-morning meals years ago are better memories than I thought they were.
