Paddington House of Pancakes

Paddington House of Pancakes
Opening Hours: 11 am to 10 pm (Mon-Sun)
About $20 per pax
Western, International
Wide range of pancakes & serviceable

      Paddington falls into the spectrum of food places where I enjoyed the experience overall but would not recommend it to friends. Not without reservations at least. Paddington is what I would call a Good Idea place that does not taste as good. It's a real pity though because it has a beautiful menu:

       

     P tells me Paddington is a franchise brought over from KL. Its concept is pancakes around the world - so the menu is really beautiful and extensive. Truly drool-worthy. But perhaps therein lies the problem. Each pancake is supposedly made only after you order it - so there is a 15-20 minutes wait. Indeed, there is a wait, but when my pancakes reached me, it wasn't even warm! I ordered some fancy naming Buckleberry and P ordered Oslo.

   

     My blueberry pancakes clearly stemmed from a good idea. Cream cheese filling! It tasted good even though my pancakes weren't warm. But imagine if they were piping hot and the cream cheese melted in the mouth! Alas.

      And, look Oslo and Buckleberry have the exact same type of eggs! The pancakes doesn't seem too different either - so why does it take so long?

    I think there's just too many options on the menu and you can't completely blame the kitchen staff for not being on top of things. So, I think in the end everything was just about there but not enough. Serviceable. Just like the decorations - rather run of the mill we-are-oh-so-cool-industrial and how I realised later that the bill exceeded $50 but the cashier did not tell me to pay using DBS so I could get a complimentary pot of tea. Serviceable, but not there.

 

         Still, it is a decent pancake house with killer drinks (we ordered a wicked pitcher of some lemon lime zest). I am pickier than most when it comes to pancakes. As P and I reminisced about our old swimming days and how Dad and Mum would bring us to this terrific old school pancake place for dinner afterwards or even Mum's truly awesome banana pancakes for breakfast. The thing about pancakes for me is that it does not need to be fancy, it does not need to come from some exotic place in the world. It just needs to come from the heart.  

   So, I don't need hundreds of choices for pancakes. It feels like all the choices are hiding what is at the heart of a real pancake. A real pancake is a big fat hug in the morning from someone who loves you. And the most important thing about a hug is that you need it to be warm.