Stacking up Sixty years after the Original Pancake House opened its doors, customers are still flipping for their flapjacks By: David Sanderson  Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 14, 2018

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2018 (2198 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Earlier this summer, the Original Pancake House hosted a pancake-eating competition at The Forks Market as part of the local institution’s 60th anniversary festivities.

Jeff Liba, chief executive officer for Variety, the Children’s Charity of Manitoba, doesn’t waffle when asked where winning the celebrity-laden affair stacks up on his list of lifetime achievements.

“It’s always nice to win but it’s probably not something I’m going to brag too much about,” he says with a chuckle.

Liba, who polished off 14 full-size flapjacks in the allotted 10-minute time limit, didn’t think he stood a chance on the morning in question, especially after he checked out the competition and spied Winnipeg Goldeyes star outfielder Reggie Abercrombie seated four chairs down from him.

“For sure I never thought I’d be able to out-eat a guy like Reggie but I guess it’s like those hotdog-eating contests in the States where’s it’s not always the biggest person who comes out on top,” Liba says, describing himself as “tall and skinny.”

And what did Liba do to toast his victory? Besides loosening his belt, that is? Well, despite the fact his cheerleading co-workers were convinced he was going to suffer some ill effects after eating so much, so fast, that didn’t turn out to be the case. In fact, because it was close to noon when the event wrapped up, he suggested they celebrate by heading out for lunch.

Winnipeg businessman Wallace Guberman opened the city’s first Original Pancake House at 1049 Pembina Hwy. in 1958, not long after he came across a like-named enterprise in Portland, Ore. For the first several years, the Winnipeg operation was loosely associated with its American counterpart but since the mid-1960s, it has been wholly independent.

In a 2006 interview with the Free Press, since-retired senior manager Harvey Hoch, hired as a busboy at the flagship restaurant in 1959, recalled the concept was a runaway hit from the get-go. Every Friday and Saturday, he said, the after-theatre crowd lined up for tables into the wee hours of the night.

It’s a safe bet Guberman, who died in 2004 and whose adult children now own all four Winnipeg Original Pancake House outlets, couldn’t have envisioned a day when customers would be able to place a take-out order for pancakes via an app on their cellphone.

“I know, eh,” says Robert Walker, the chain’s general manager, when a reporter remarks “I’m not saying yours aren’t top-notch but seriously, how tough is it to make pancakes at home?” after noticing a Skip the Dishes driver leaving the Pancake House’s Clarion Hotel location with a slew of orders packed inside his insulated carry-bag.

“We joined (Skip the Dishes) about three years ago and I never would have guessed we’d get as many orders as we do,” Walker says. “But when you think about it, if you wake up late and are in the mood for breakfast but don’t feel like dirtying a bunch of pans, it’s a heck of a lot easier to give us a call than to do it yourself.”

If you haven’t been to the Original Pancake House in a while you may not recognize the joint. Sure you can still get over 30 different types of pancakes, including traditional, oven-baked and crepe-style. But study the menu further and you’ll spot a host of new-fangled selections such as breakfast tacos, southwest fiesta salad and a concoction billed as a hot chicken waffle sandwich, which Walker, licking his lips, describes as a crispy chicken breast tossed in Buffalo wing sauce, wedged between two jalapeno cheddar cornbread waffles, topped with pickles, lettuce and ranch sauce.

“We’re continually trying to come up with new recipes; this weekend for example we’re introducing tater tot bowls, something we’ve been testing in the kitchen for a while,” explains Walker, who got his start with the company in the late 1980s, catching on as a cook at the old Polo Park location. “There are a lot of big-name restaurants entering the breakfast market now: traditional lunch-and-dinner places that are looking for ways to expand their business. The same is true with us, except just the opposite. Breakfast has never been an issue here so what we’re aiming to do is grow our evening clientele by offering burgers and such.”

On that same topic, Walker says there are no two ways about it, he and his team were concerned 12 months ago when American conglomerate International House of Pancakes opened a brand-spanking new 200-seat restaurant — their first in Manitoba — at the corner of Kenaston Boulevard and Sterling Lyon Parkway.

“In this industry you have to accept that there’s always going to be competition. But given their instant name recognition and people’s natural curiousity about a place that hadn’t been in the city before, we would have been crazy not to think it was going to have an impact on our sales,” says Walker who, not unlike thousands of other Winnipeggers, paid a visit to IHOP during its first month in operation, albeit in his case, he did so — how can we put this? — syrup-titiously.

“Did we take a hit? Sure, we did. But it wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be which, I like to believe, goes back to 60 years of trust in a locally-owned company.” 

“Jeez, where do I start?” Walker says when pressed for a list of famous-types who’ve chowed down at the Original Pancake House during its 60-year run.

“Off the top of my head there’s (the late) Paul Walker from the Fast and the Furious movies, Nia Vardalos from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, singer Carly Rae Jepsen, Chef Lynn Crawford from the Food Network and members of the rock band Megadeth,” he says. “Of course, we constantly have Jets, Bombers and Moose players throughout the year and The Forks often gets visiting football and baseball teams.”

Besides all that, there are the parents and grandparents who show up with their kids or grandkids in tow, telling staff they came there with their mom and dad, and are following suit with their own offspring. For a while, Walker contemplated doing away with the decades-old practice of selling toys in his restaurants’ lobby area, thinking it was “a lot of real estate to be giving up.” But after noticing the amount of Windex his managers were going through, thanks to four-, five- and six-year-olds pressing their noses up against the glass display, pointing to the Beanie baby or spinning top they wanted their parents to buy for them, he decided, “You know what? That’s not going anywhere.”

One more thing; if you’re one of those long-time, Pancake House regulars who has lodged a complaint with Walker, telling him the Giant Apple Pancake, still the No. 1 seller, isn’t as large as you remember it being when you were a tot, that’s 100 per cent not the case, he says.

“I promise you it’s the same size it’s ever been. Because of health regulations and because it was always hanging over the edge and touching the table, we started putting it on a bigger plate about five years ago,” he says with a laugh. “Not everyone believes us but I swear it’s the god’s honest truth.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca