I just finished walking two fucking miles through the mountains of North Carolina only to find the ending point of my destination closed for business.
I did this not just once, but twice. Once on Saturday, and again a second time on Sunday.
You might ask — at what precise hour of the day were my two excursions?
My first venture ended at 2:20 pm. My second venture was completed at 1:05 pm.
Question: What kind of fucking pancake house padlocks its front doors at 1:05!
I’ll tell you precisely what pancake house. Stick around. Grab a chair. Pop some popcorn. Better yet — make some pancakes!
* * *
This is my eleventh straight day in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. The food around here has grown tiresome. So, this past weekend I jaunted from my usual dining choices and opted for something quite simple. What could be more simple than good old-fashioned Southern-style pancakes?
On Saturday, I hiked down a two-lane highway heading toward a building in the distance that had caught my eye days before.
“PANCAKE HOUSE.”
Giant white letters. Big as a stadium scoreboard.
Ever since the lasting first memory of that giant sign emblazoned on the sloped Alpine-style roof, I’ve been dreaming about pancakes the same way a junkie fantasizes about getting his next fix. And finally, on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, I found barely enough free time to make the holy excursion on foot and walk down the road to the reservoir that would temporarily extinguish my craving for cheap calories.
Sometime later, I arrived at the front door only to see a most disappointing sight:
CLOSED.
Well, fuck me.
Trouble was, the sign wasn’t clear. It was more confusing than a Bible verse. From the limited information provided to the public, I was able to deduce that the Pancake House opened at 7:30 (AM, I presume). The signage also indicated the restaurant was only open Friday through Monday — which is four days out of seven. Those seemed like odd days of the week for a breakfast joint. But since this was Saturday, at least I’d arrived on one of the four days when the place was open for business. Well, at least I’d scratched one number right in the lottery.
I departed hungry and disappointed but vowed to return again the following day. Note to self: Arrive earlier than 2:20 pm.
Now, stop. Time out. From what you’ve been told so far — what hour of the day would you guess the Pancake Houses closes? My guess would have been at 2 pm. Maybe even 1:30 pm.
Sunday comes along and all I’m thinking about in the meantime are the phantom pancakes that I missed out on yesterday. Hallucinations of hot melted butter mixed with pure maple syrup poured on top of fresh hot North Carolina pancakes seared into my mind.
And so, I made the same walk as on the previous day. The time was 1:05. This time, when I arrived at the Pancake House, here’s the vision that greeted me at the front door:
WHAT THE FUCK!
YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!
I can’t stand it any longer. I think blood vessels actually ruptured inside my head All I recall from that car-crash instant was letting out a slew of profanities in the parking lot that lasted until I’d used every conceivable detestable word in every way, shape, and form — and then some.
Fed up with this treatment and furious that I’d wasted two days hiking down a lonely highway to eat some persistently prevaricating pancakes, I banged on the front door. The glass rattled.
I finally got someone’s attention. An older woman with beehive hair glanced at me and shouted, “We’re closed!”
“I can see that!” I hollered. I begged the woman to approach the front door. She reluctantly but finally obliged my annoyance. Too bad, I didn’t have a gun.
The beehived lady asked what I wanted.
“I walked all the way over here two straight days, and you’re closed?”
“Yeah, we’re closed up.”
“Well, what time do you close?” I asked
“I don’t know. It depends.”
“It depends? Are you serious? It depends on what?” I demanded.
“We close up after the rush.”
“The rush? What rush? Why doesn’t your sign here say exactly what time your business stays open?”
“I’ve got work to do. We open up tomorrow morning.”
With that, the beehive woman clicked the lock on the door and walked away. More profanity spewed. I departed, hungrier and angrier than ever before.
Outraged that a restaurant wouldn’t bother to post its own hours of operation, I returned to my hotel hell-bent on a holy mission. I went straight to several popular websites with consumer reviews. I was curious to learn if anyone else had lost in the red-black, open-closed fixed roulette game double-dealt by the Pancake House. I wasn’t at all surprised to observe in place of complaints about limited hours of operation, instead, I read several customer complaints which were considerably worse.
Check these out. Read below. Here are some gems from the actual reviews section posted at Yelp and Yahoo:
Racist eatery. Recently stopped in for some food around 9:00 am one morning and commented to the waitress I was craving an omelet. When she returned with my water she informed me they did not have the ingredients to prepare one. I asked if they were out of eggs and she said yes, but it would take about 30 minutes to get everything else. I told her I could not wait and she said to go to the Waffle House up the street. First of all, it took more than 10 minutes just to bring water in a place that only had a couple of customers. Secondly, a place called the Pancake House should always be able to prepare an omelet. Finally, I never told what kind of omelet I wanted. You can do the math on this one. Do not eat here if you are a person of color.
If I found myself in Cherokee again I would sooner eat breakfast from the dumpster of another restaurant than have another meal here. Nothing about this place is good. The bathrooms are gross, the food even worse and the service worse than everything else. Even the bacon here is bad! How do you make bacon gross? I don’t know but the cooks here have mastered it!
After eating at this place for years due to lack of anywhere else to go I have had it! They used a $50 Visa gift card of mine, said it broke their machine, and then took my $50 cash. Come to find out when I got home I had a $0 balance on my card because Pancake House took $50 and then my cash also. This was Dec. 31, 2012, today is Feb 5, 2013, and I still haven’t settled the dispute. In my mind, that is THEFT!
Absolutely the worst food I have ever ate in my life. How hard can making a pancake be? It was cold, bland, and rubbery. Eggs were horrid as well. Stay away from this place!
I will never go back to this nasty place !!!! I had hair in my food and when I went to the owner about it , he wanted to fight me and threatened to throw me out of the restaurant. I will report him to the Better Business Bureau. THIS PLACE SUCKS!
This was the worst dining experience I have ever had! We walked in and stood in the entryway for about 3 minutes before any of the lazy staff even acknowledged our presence, then one lady says, just sit here (motioning to the table in front if the entry door that had silverware piled on it) we asked if we could have a table that was NOT in front of the entrance as she grudgingly told us to just sit wherever and she would deal with it. The server was awful and you could tell she hated her job and quite possibly her life. The powdered eggs and instant grits were awful, pancakes came out of a box and when we asked for ketchup she practically threw PACKETS of ketchup at us. PACKETS?!? At a sit-down restaurant?!? For $21 I could have just eaten in the hotel room! We told the cashier that it was the worst service, food, experience EVER and she looked at us as if shocked by my comment and just shrugged! AWFUL! AWFUL! AWFUL!
Hear me now: I hereby call for an international boycott of the Pancake House in Cherokee, North Carolina. Mark it down. The restaurant is located at 352 Paint Town Road, otherwise known as NC State Highway 19.
The moral of this story is this: Sometimes when you lose, actually you win. In retrospect, the best thing about my negative experience encountering a closed sign was avoiding a bad meal at a terrible restaurant. However, my gain may have denied you an even more ballistic story.
Now on Sunday night, I still can’t find anyone in this small town that makes pancakes — besides the evil Pancake House.
What did that sign say again? What time do those motherfuckers open up tomorrow morning?