The Original Pancake Heart Attack

*cough cough* Hang on while I wipe the dust off of this thing... *sneeze*

Okay. That's a little better.

With the impending move, we've been eating out more often, partly because we're hitting some of our favorite restaurants one more time before we leave, partly because we're busy, and partly because we've been eating whatever we have on hand instead of buying more groceries, and there are only so many cobbled-together meals a person can eat. We usually eat out about twice a month, so it sounded like a good idea when we embarked on this feeding frenzy, but now...not so much. I am so sick of eating.

This morning, faced with indecision, cranky kids, and fatigue, we decided to visit a new restaurant for breakfast: The Original Pancake House. It sounded good; it had to be a better start to a day full of work than the donuts Jasmine asked for (but never eats); and it was packed when we got there. Almost fifty dollars later, we were thinking that those donuts wouldn't have been such a bad idea.

We didn't order anything fancy. I got a vegetarian omelette with homefries because I didn't want a heavy, meaty, sugary breakfast. Adam got their signature apple pancake. The girls shared an order of crepes with strawberries. Add on two cups of coffee, two cups of juice and a cup of milk, and the final total, after tip, was nearly fifty dollars for three orders of food. And it wasn't even very good food--at least, not that good. But what struck us most about everything was just how big the orders were, which explains the ridiculously high price we paid for breakfast. None of us finished our orders, and we barely ate any other meals the rest of the day. (We ended up eating just salads for supper because our bodies were going into shock from the lack of veggies that has come with all this eating out.) Out of curiosity, we poked around online for the nutrition information from our breakfast, and Hot Cal showed us exactly why none of us wanted to eat again for the rest of the day, or maybe ever, and why American has such a problem with obesity.

I had a vegetarian omelette with cheddar cheese. That can't be bad, right? It was 820 calories and 18 g of saturated fat. And that's just the omelette; it came with a side of fried potatoes. In trying to find out how on earth they packed that many calories into a vegetarian omelette with skimpy cheese, I found that they put six eggs into their omelettes. Six eggs. Six. That's half a dozen. For me, that's about a week's worth of what I usually eat. Who on earth eats six eggs for breakfast in one sitting? Predictably, the cholesterol count was shocking: It has 1120 mg of cholesterol--that's 373% of the daily recommendation. For breakfast. Seriously, who eats like that? All four of us probably could have ordered that omelette with a bit extra toast and been satisfied.

The girls had an order of crepes. That's just crepes with strawberries. That came it at 1040 calories. It had 33 g of saturated fat--that's 165% of the daily value. The plate had three crepes; Jasmine ate one and Evie at a half of one. No wonder the girls didn't eat that much the rest of the day.

Adam's apple pancake was huge. Not surprisingly, it came it at 1530 calories. In a pancake. It had 525 mg of cholesterol (in a pancake) and 13 g of fat (in a pancake).

One other item they offer is a bacon and cheese omelette. That monster comes in at a whopping 2190 calories. It has 159 g of fat (244%), 62 g of saturated fat (310%), and 1435 g of cholesterol (478%). In one omelette. Why? Why do they have to serve the food in such gigantic portions? Does an apple pancake need to be made with 1530 calories? Does an omelette need six eggs? Why couldn't they have just offered smaller portions and charged us less instead of giving us overpriced mounds of food that we ended up throwing away? Especially in light of the news about America's expanding waistline, you think they'd focus a bit more on reining in the out-of-control nutritional specs of their food, or perhaps suggest that people share these items instead of bringing out a giant meal for each person.

The Original Pancake House was, by all accounts, a big disappointment. We should have gone to Round Rock Donuts and waited in line for an hour instead. If you want a good breakfast, skip the artery-clogging OPH and go to First Watch. They know breakfast over there, and the OPH could learn a thing or two from them.