Clown prints

Some of my favorite experiences have happened pretty much by accident. Finding a killer burrito joint or a funky-cool motel always seems so much sweeter when you stumble on one on a fluke instead of finding it in a guidebook.

I still haven’t learned you can’t force serendipity, though. So I convinced my husband that it would be a great idea if we played what I call restaurant roulette. The idea was that we would hit a neighborhood and pick a restaurant at random. I was convinced we would find something really cool and unique and I would write a scintillating review about it.

Watt Avenue, around the former McClellan Air Force Base, where pawnshops and cash-advance joints dot the landscape, seemed like a good albeit bleak place to begin. One enduring landmark there is the Regency Theatre, still showing porn movies after all these years, couples welcome. Farther down Watt is my favorite sign in town, “Lou’s Burgers,” on top of a smaller sign advertising “Radiators Mufflers.”

One bright spot is Taqueria El Portal, previously reviewed in these pages. But there was little else of promise out there. We looked briefly at the Pit Stop BBQ, but the parking lot was ominously empty. The Arbat Deli was hopping, but the Eastern European market does not sell prepared foods. We finally settled on Pancake Palace, partially out of a misguided fondness for classic American diners.

The restaurant also had a full parking lot. Well, McDonald’s had a full parking lot too. But McDonald’s doesn’t sell lottery tickets at the cash register.

Pancake Palace was once sister to Pancake Circus on Broadway, a beloved Sacramento institution. Although it was bought out five years ago, the restaurant still uses its original menus. Other remnants of its past include clown wallpaper and a display of demented-looking papier-mâché clowns in a smudgy case in the back of the restaurant.

The prices are also a throwback to an earlier time. Steak and eggs were $6.99 on special, while chicken-fried steak served with eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy was a mere $5.49. Our son ordered the kids’ pancake breakfast for $3.10. What he got was more than even a starving teen could eat—two enormous buttermilk pancakes served with scrambled eggs. The pancakes were fluffy and came with two scoops of butter and two containers of syrup.

Both steaks were tasty. The grilled steak was a little chewy but flavorful, while the chicken-fried version fulfilled the two main requirements of chicken-fried foods: It was fork tender inside and crispy outside. Taste is not really the issue, though. The biscuits were flaky, a definite positive, but the gravy slid into so-so territory by not having any discernible flavor. A little browned sausage would have made all the difference. The hash browns were limp and meagerly browned, one of my pet peeves. But portions were generous and the waitress brought refills of drinks without being asked.

My husband dinged the restaurant pretty severely for its lack of cleanliness. “If this was ‘Russian roulette,’ my brains would be splattered all over the wall and it would be weeks before anyone noticed and cleaned it up,” he said. I didn’t think it was that bad, but then, a childhood spent in West Africa and Southeast Asia has left me with a devil-may-care attitude toward all but the most lethal bacteria.

On the positive side, the banter flying between the waitresses and the customers in the Pancake Palace was first-rate. At the table behind us, the conversation veered wildly between cats that attack and a winter so cold one man’s mustache froze off. In fact, he said, he took a cup of hot coffee and upended it—but it froze and evaporated before it hit the ground.

Bemused by the image, we paid up and got out. Did I learn my lesson? Not really. I’ll still play restaurant roulette. But next time I’ll remember the corollary to finding really cool restaurants: You have to eat some mediocre food, too.