We were finishing up our late summer vacation in St. Louis and decided to go out for breakfast. I had been passing a place in the Clifton Heights neighborhood near The Hill area of St. Louis for a number of years and decided that I wanted to go there for breakfast that particular day. It was a short drive from our hotel to Chris' Pancake and Dining at the corner of Watson and Southwest Ave. near Hampton Ave. (see map).
Chris' Pancake and Dining is part of the Bartolino's Restaurants group that includes Bartolino's Osteria and Bartolino's South Italian restaurants. Bartolino Saracino was born in a small farming town near Rome and came to the U.S. in 1954 to join up with his cousins Joe and Lou Parente who ran Parente's Italian Village. He began to bus tables at Parente's learning how to speak English on the job. Bart Saracino married Roseanne LaFata whose family came from Palermo in Italy. Along with his father-in-law Nick LaFata and mother-in-law Rose LaFata, they opened LaCino's Italian restaurant in 1961. Nick worked at the restaurant while Roseanne stayed at home raising their four young boys.
Nick LaFata became ill in 1969 and passed away. Rose LaFata could no longer work at LaCino's because of the painful memory of losing her husband. Bart Saracino looked for a new restaurant location and found a building on S. Hampton on The Hill in St. Louis. Along with Roseanne and Rose LaFata, they opened Bartolino's. Their sons, John, Bart, Jr., Mike and Chris all worked in the restaurant.
In 1987, the family opened Chris' Pancake and Dining with Rose LaFata running the kitchen. "Mama Rose" worked at the pancake house until her death in 1996. The four Bartolino sons run the restaurants today with Chris overseeing his namesake restaurant.
The parking lot was full and the surrounding side streets were also packed with cars as we pulled in around 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Finally waiting on a large group to leave, we had our choice of five parking spaces in the lot. Understandably, there was about a 15 minute wait to get a table. We waited along with about a dozen or so other people in the waiting area to get a table. Self-serve coffee and donut-like cookies were made available for those who were waiting for tables.
We were seated at a table in the first of the two dining rooms at Chris'. Our server Dawn came over to greet us as we were going through the menu. She told us of a couple specials that day - Cannoli pancakes and a smoked salmon frittata. My ears immediately perked up with the Cannoli pancakes and Cindy said, "Ooo... That sounds good," when Dawn told us of the smoked salmon frittata.
They have the usual breakfast fare on the menu - pancakes, French toast, omelets, as well as entrees such as steak and eggs, pork chop and eggs, country fried steak, and corned beef hash. Breakfast is available all day long at Chris'.
In addition to breakfast, Chris' also has a full complement of appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches and burgers. In fact, some of the burgers looked kind of good. Although I wasn't quite up for a burger at 10:30 in the morning, I made a mental note to come back at some point to give one of their burgers a try.
They also had alcohol available at Chris' Pancake and dining. One of the specialty drinks they have was a BLT bloody mary. It sounded interesting, but we were going to start out for home after we finished breakfast and I didn't want to get too much of a buzz for the 4 hour trip back home.
I was looking at a couple of things - the corned beef hash and a "build-your-own" omelet featuring Bartolino family-made Italian sausage. But I kept going back to the Cannoli pancakes. When Dawn came back to take our order, that's what I order. I saw that they had blueberries available on the side for about a dollar more and she said that would be no problem.
Both of the fluffy pancakes were topped with a rich sweet ricotta along with small chocolate chips and drizzled in chocolate sauce. The blueberries, disappointingly, were more of a pie filling compote than plain fresh blueberries. I also got an egg over easy and a side of bacon with with pancakes. As soon as Dawn set them in front of me, I knew there was no way I'd be able to finish what I had. Also, it was at that point that Dawn had her only hiccup in service. She promised to bring some maple syrup back to the table for me and she disappeared for well over 5 minutes. I had to flag her down and ask for the syrup. She shook her head in disgust at herself and promptly brought out the syrup for me.
Cindy ordered the smoked salmon frittata that featured thin slices of smoked salmon and capers on top. She was very happy with her choice. It featured chopped veggies in with the eggs and a side of hash browns. She also got swirled rye toast with the breakfast. I had a bite of her toast and it was very good and flavorful. A reuben sandwich with that swirled rye bread would be wonderful.
I thought my pancakes were fine, but I probably would have ordered something else if I'd know how much chocolate there was on the pancakes. I like chocolate, but not as much as they put on the pancakes. It was good, but very rich. I think I was able to - maybe - finish one of the pancakes before I called it quits.
Chris' Pancake and Dining was what I expected it to be - good food, good service (except for Dawn forgetting the syrup), and a clean and bright atmosphere. Expect a wait anytime on the weekends but also expect a pretty good breakfast in reward for your wait.
Comments