So we get up this morning and Marek announces that it’s going to rain pancakes. I say sure kid, it rains pancakes every weekend. That’s what we’re here for, to serve the people of the Tampa Bay area by exercising our exceptional breakfast powers. He says, no dad, it’s really going to rain pancakes. I’m bringing an umbrella. There’s no arguing with this kid.

We visited the Garden Grill at 8425 W Hillsborough Ave on 24 October 2009. This was our first visit to the Garden Grill. It’s on the way to the Oldsmar Flea Market, which is, if the sign may be believed, the mightiest in the south. That’s our favorite flea market. The Garden Grill sign says that they’re the best kept secret in town. And they promise. That’s a good sign. That’s also a good double entendre.

We got inside and found a pretty nice little place. Lunch counter. Check. Friendly folks. Check. Sit anywhere you like. Check. Booth in the back. Check.

We got right into some high octane. That’s a good brew. Tastes like Columbian battery acid (that’s a compliment, by the way). Sometimes a little slow in coming, but it hit the spot like a twelve volt jolt to the nervy system. I’m not going to disparage this coffee.

We were cute when we sat down. We were not crazy.

We promptly got out of hand, like a couple of sailors on a bender after six months of sea duty with no port calls. We got crazy.

What about breakfast? The menu was extensive. Three pages of breakfast bliss. And. AND. And they were able to do blueberry pancakes. Marek had the Micky pancake.

I had the “two two two.” Our waitress was very sweet. We kept asking her to repeat it. “Two two two.” We just liked hearing her say it, and we talked about Thomas the Train after she left. “What does Thomas say?” “Two two two!”

Two Two Two, Thomas!

The eggs were OK, but not nearly what you’d find at Samaria Cafe. The bacon was OK, but not Steve Standard. I was surprised that Marek had some. He hasn’t touched bacon since he started reading up on Middle Eastern history a few months back. The pancakes were interesting. They were good, and I showed them who’s boss in a vigorous, take-no-pancakes-prisoner sort of way. But they had an odd taste, like the blueberries were fresh but a little out of season or there was an extra ingredient in the batter. Hard to put the finger on it. Not a bad thing, just something I noticed while I was concentrating on making pancakes disappear with my mind. Oh, and also by eating them.

I says, hey Marek Madness, give yer ole man a kiss. The Madness replies, not in a million years, pops, because a Hooters girl might walk in any moment and see me and I don’t want you cootying me up like that.

Then a nice lady come by to talk about her fruit cups. If we weren’t there for pancakes, we’d have had fruit! It looked delicious!

After the nice fruit lady left, we had a bit of an altercation about shoes. I was “pro-shoes” and “anti-feet-on-table” and Marek, dear Marek, was a member of the opposition party. And he supports raising taxes to increase funding for public schools. It’s always politics with this kid.

That’s when we realized that there were spiders in the booth with us. Holy Moley! Luckily, these were common Breakfast Spiders. We see them every weekend. I think they follow us in.

We finished up and paid the bill. Marek was in a hurry to get home in time for Leave it to Beaver!

Our breakfast turned out to be about $14, which is a little high but not bad for what we had. The people were all exceptionally nice, especially the fresh fruit lady. The chow was good and we certainly didn’t go away hungry. We just had a nice, low-key time at the Garden Grill and would cheerfully recommend it to breakfasteers anywhere.

We’re pleased to give the Garden Grill a Tampa Bay Breakfasts rating of three and a half stars.

We are the Pancakinators.

We visited Pinky’s Restaurant at 3203 Bay to Bay Blvd on 27 September 2009. This was our first visit to Pinky’s, and we heard about it through our Recommendation Page.

Parking is in back. There appears to be a parking war going on in this little strip. Many spots have “no Pinky’s parking” signs (the smaller sign on the left). Apparently Pinky’s and Cappy’s across the street have some sort of Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement, while Pinky’s and the Giggle Box seem to have recalled their diplomatic missions and started calling each other names in the U.N. general assembly.

This is a nice place. Eclectic and homey, but not dirty or messy. A little funky but not so much as to be kitschy. A good vibe here. Note the barista machine along the wall. That, my fine feathered friends, is always a good sign.

The menu has a “full English breakfast” on it. Marek actually learned to walk whilst living in England and his very first breakfasts in restaurants were “full English.” We’ve moved on from that chapter of our lives and now we focus on pancakes. While it’s a bloody shame that we don’t have any pictures of our English breakfasts, we do seem to have plenty of pictures of the pubs. In honor of Pinky’s English, here’s a classic picture of Marek having a packet of crisps and a pint of Cambridgeshire Greyhound. Please note my proper use of the words “whilst,” “bloody,” “crisps,” and “proper.” We try to maintain high standards here at TBB.

Enough about the good ole days, we’re here to talk about a Tampa Bay Breakfast! Our charming waitress Cary informed us that Pinky’s had recently won a “Best of the Bay” award, they had a glowing review in a local newspaper last week, and business was out the door, as you can see here. Oh, and today’s special was some Eggs Benedict thing that I’m sure is great if you don’t have pancakes on the brain. And if you like Eggs Benedict.

By now you’re wondering if we got any of that high-test coffee. Well stick my finger in a light socket and call me perky, we surely did. And it was very fine, indeed. I got to choose our coffee cups from the shelf. Cary informed me that she buys them at local thrift stores (I told her about Martha’s Restaurant on Nebraska, with similar cups). I chose the sailor cup for myself and the Canadian Mounties for Marek, in honor of our friend Hugh in British Columbia. Marek gave the coffee a lick to see if it needed salt, or trucks, added.

So we skipped the Benedicts and the English breakfast (now that I write this, I realize that there’s some sort of Revolutionary War subtext, perhaps being played out in the parking lot skirmishes we saw when we drove up), and went straight for the pancakes. We were steered to the oatmeal pancakes, which were not very large in diameter but more than made up for it in verticality. These were some filling cakes, baby! The eggs, though, were clearly from Top Shelf Chickens. These were the best scrambled eggs I’ve had in months. And the bacon would be, might be maybe, just good enough to invite Steve from Yankeetown.

Marek wasted no time at all. Outta my way, old man. Pancakes!

I’m telling you, this was good coffee. All you can drink, and several varieties. You just have to get up and get it yourself from the bar.

I’m pretty sure that Marek’s sitting here wishing he had that pint of Greyhound from the pub picture above. I know I could go for one of those about now.

So we had this delicious, filling, eclectic, fun breakfast. We were happy. What happens next? You guessed it. Some folks go to a hockey game and a fight breaks out. Some go to a boxing match and a hockey game breaks out. Us? We go to breakfast and Monster Truck Races break out.

After we survived Big Foot and Grave Digger battling for the mastery of the entire universe, Marek decided to pay the bill. (There were, after all, about a thousand people waiting outside, as you saw above, so it’s only polite to open up the table and let someone else try the pancakes.)

He found his way, with some showing off for the baby in the high chair. From the way that kid’s eyeballing Marek, I am pretty sure he’s wondering where a kid Marek’s age got a twenty.

Next thing you know, Marek’s behind the bar, smokin’ and jokin’. Pourin’ espressos and cutting cigars. Shakin’ hands and talkin’ to reporters. Gettin’ phone numbers from the ladies. Operating. This boy’s like the Mayor of Breakfast. If he were two feet taller, I’d be working for him.

When he brought the change back I’ll admit that there was not much left of Old Hickory. A.J. (as I like to call Andrew Jackson when I have private conversations with him) was whittled down to five poor Georges. Fifteen bucks is a heap of cash for a breakfast for a crew as small as ours. It was good, real good, but that’s still a premium charge. We paid the bill and hollered “adios amigos!” … poorer, but happy nonetheless.

This was a superb Tampa Bay Breakfast. An interesting locale and decor. Unique and outstanding food. Coffee: Bold Beans, Bountiful Blackness, Bottomless But Basic. Ballistic Barista! Cary was not only cheerful and a pleasure to chat with, but she’s got this mad skillz thing with the giant chalk board and the daily special artwork. This is a solid four-pancaker Tampa Bay Breakfast, without a doubt. We’re going to bump to 4.5 because we were treated like we were already old friends; I feel like they’d remember our names if we popped in again, and that’s worth a lot to us. Because of that, we’re pleased to give this Tampa Bay Breakfast a rating of four and a half pancakes.

(We seem to be handing out a lot of fours and four-and-a-halfs lately. Are we going soft? Or are we just getting lucky and hitting some great breakfasts? I think there’s a lot of great breakfast being cooked in the bay area! Keep slinging that hash, you Barons of Breakfast! If we haven’t met you yet, rest assured … we’re coming!)

Holy Monster Trucks, we’re hungry this morning.

We visited J. Christopher’s at 14366 N Dale Mabry Hwy on 13 September 2009. This Tampa Bay Breakfast was a recommendation from our TBB Fan Joe. We didn’t realize J. Christopher’s was a chain until we walked in the door. Lucky for us, it seems to be a relatively small chain. They have a web site here: http://www.jchristophers.com/

Right away we noticed that J. Christopher’s had a polish to it that cried out that it was a chain. Not that there’s anything wrong with polish, but Mom-n-Pops tend to feel slightly less orchestrated. We were greeted at the door by a very nice hostess girl who didn’t really seem to be sure what to make of us. I think Marek was making Gucci Eyes at her behind my back. The interior was nice and open, and there was an interesting and low lunch counter. If it was in front of the kitchen we’d have sat at it, but since it was just against the wall it felt more like an affectation than a real diner counter.

The menu is truly expansive. Being that we started out hungry enough to eat a Monster Truck, this is a Good Thing.

Did we have coffee? Yoooobecha we did, and it was good. The coffee met all the cumulative coffee core criteria. Crikey!

Get a load of the suspension on this Monster Truck.

Marek put in his order. “Oh father, would you be evah so kind as to procure for me this fine day a pancake fine enough to perchance ease the echoing sensation I feel within my vacant belly?”

And that’s what we did.

And more. The bacon was tasty, but quite missed the mark on Steve’s scale. The eggs were superb and the home fries were nicely done. And they had blueberry pancakes. Now our faithful readers will remember that blueberry pancakes are my favorite. And these had a special twist, “granola crumbles.” They were huge, and simply delicious. A nice twist on an old favorite. (They could have used more actual blueberries, but now I’m just being picky!)

The syrup was warmed up. But more interestingly, they had a local hot sauce. I love hot sauce, and I love it more when it has an 813 area code on the label. It was tasteeee on the eggs!

When we were done, Marek washed it all down with another dose of high-test go-juice.

Marek tried to pay, but he was a little distracted by his trucks. Truuuuuucks! Plus, he’s a little jetlagged from our trip last week, so we’ll cut him the slack for today.

When it’s all said and done, we’ll have to say that this was a superb breakfast. Tasty, immense, and timely. The staff were all exceptionally friendly and professional and didn’t leave us to languish while still appearing to leave us alone to enjoy. There are two marks against this Tampa Bay Breakfast: It’s a chain, which we didn’t realize, and it was off the charts for cost. While we did have a huge serving of a great breakfast, for the two of us plus a tip we needed to call in close air support from Colonel Jackson and his twenny dollar express. That’s a lot of cash for a breakfast. We’ll forgive the expense because it was so good, but we’re still going to dock a half a pancake point for being a chain (yes, we’re biased for the mom-n-pops of Tampa Bay!). If it weren’t a chain we’d have to lay down a 4.5, but we’ll settle for a 4.

We give this Tampa Bay Breakfast a rating of Four Pancakes.

We visited Nicki’s Omelette and Grill at 6805 W Hillsborough Ave on 4 September 2009. This was our first visit to Nicki’s and we’d always thought it was another place with the same name, but it turns out that it’s a small chain with another location on North Dale Mabry.

The menu was extensive, but also a little expensive. The kids’ menu is a nice touch, especially since it came with crayons!

Nicki’s is a nice layout with a great lunch counter.

This was a special Tampa Bay Breakfast as we had the five-star guess reviewer with us … Mom!

Right away this started out good. Our nice waitress brought Marek a book to read while we were sorting out the menu.

Did we have coffee? You bet your sweet coffee cup we did! And it was pretty good.

Check out the suspension on this truck!

Breakfast came and we were surprised at the size. Despite this being the most expensive breakfast we’ve had, the servings were quite large.

They had blueberry pancakes! And they were pretty good. The bacon was fine, but not up to Steve’s standards. The eggs were quite nice and a lot, too — must have been big chickens!

Marek wanted a bit more syrup.

When we were done, Marek paid the bill. I bet no one could have guessed that he would do that!

When it was all said and done, we felt that the food was really good but a bit overpriced. The folks were really friendly, but it wasn’t really obvious that folks were regulars or just stopping by (no “howdy Jeb, what’s new, Sue?” that we heard.) We had a nice time, especially with mom.

We’re waffling (get it, “waffling”!) between a 3 and a 3.5. The food was 3.5 but the price was more like 2 and three quarters. Since mom was with us, it was that much better so we’re going to say 3.5. We’re pleased to give Nicki’s Omelette and Grill a 3.5 pancake rating.