August 18, 2025 Issue

I love pancakes. Helen Rosner’s “Three Plays on the Pancake,” in this week’s newyorker.com issue, is pure bliss. She says, “Three relatively new takes on the pancake have captured my attention recently, as modern classics of the brunch canon very much worth seeking out.” The three takes are: the heirloom-masa pancakes at Hellbender; a modern-classic stack at S&P Lunch; and the pancake soufflé at Pitt’s. Her pancake descriptions are crazy-good. Of the heirloom-masa pancakes, she writes, 

These are true, literal pancakes: made not on a griddle but in individual cast-iron pans, which define the pancake’s shape, constraining its boundaries and creating a distinct crispiness to the outsides that plays in beautiful counterpoint to the soft, almost meltingly creamy insides. A serving of two pancakes arrives under a brutalist slab of butter so substantial that I thought, at first, it was a thick slice of cheese.

That “brutalist slab of butter” made me smile. When was the last time you saw butter described as brutalist? My guess is never.

Rosner’s description of the pancake soufflé is delectable:

Here, as in a proper pancake, the round, custardy flavor of egg is a keypiece of the over-all story, along with white-sugar sweetness and an edge of buttery-toasty flour. Upon arrival at the table, a server dramatically slashes into the top of the quivering soufflé and pours maple syrup into the crevasse, letting it seep into all the airy puffs and bubbles of the tender interior.

Mmm, I’ll have one of those, please. 

Postscript: A shoutout to Janice Chung for her vivid pancake photos illustrating Rosner’s piece. They're the visual equivalent of Rosner's sensuous prose. There's even a shot of the "brutalist slab of butter."