The Pancake House — Restaurant in El Cajon

Pictures & Google reviews made the place seem pretty good, but we were pretty disappointed. The quality of the food was not equivalent to the price we paid, in a bad way. I ordered a basic hamburger with a side of seasoned fries and a cup of soup. The soup was chicken noodle and microwaved instead of made on a stove, which meant the noodles were overcooked & there wasn't much flavor beyond the salt. The "seasoned" fries looked like they had a good amount of seasoning but didn't taste much different from regular fries. The hamburger was good, nothing special, but nothing to complain about either. My companion ordered a veggie omelet with hash browns & pancakes. The veggies had clearly been cooked or fried before being added to the eggs, which since many vegetables take longer to cook than eggs anyways that's not really a big deal, but the veggies tasted strongly of whatever oil they were cooking with. The cheese was just a single square slice of low quality that you can buy at any grocery store, like American Cheese for sandwiches. Hash browns took up more than half the plate and the top was cooked, but the middle and bottom were cold & not cooked. Both of our orders weren't very good taste wise is basically what I'm saying. Finally the service was... subpar. The waitress never once checked on us after delivering our food, never asked how was the food, if we need a refill on our drinks, if there was anything else we wanted, nothing. Even though we made eye contact with her more than once, she literally turned and walked in the opposite direction or walked right past our table without acknowledging us even though we lifted a hand towards her & started to talk as she was passing by our table. We also didn't learn that they were out of Pecan syrup until after my companion got their pancakes delivered, would've been nice to know when we ordered or when we sat down. Maybe they didn't want to hear anything negative about the food, & maybe it was obvious that my companion didn't like their food since they only took a couple bites & left the rest of the plate untouched, but that doesn't excuse ignoring us until we're literally ready to leave... Yeah, we...

My boyfriend and I chose to give this place a try since it was the cheapest in the area. Yes even cheaper than IHOP and Denny's. It would be about the same in quality. But I was wrong.

I give props to the service. They were very nice, friendly, and attentive. Actually some of the best costumer sevice I've had in a while.

Looking at the menu not only would you think you're at the Omelet Factory not the Pancake House. But you would understand the poor quality of food. There's way to much and no congruity.

I decided to get the MonteCristo sandwich. It came with eggs. My boyfriend had the French toast. My scrambled eggs were cold. The sandwich was not a montecristo. What I had was a few pieces of lunch meat ham, a peice of melted Swiss chesse, in between 2 slimy soggy slices of french toast. I'm 43 and I've never sent back food. I grew up and lived most my life lower income, even homeless for a couple years. Because of that I get anxiety at the thought of food waste. However I couldn't eat it at all.

They kindly allowed me to order something different.

I ordered a biscuit and sausage gravy plate. The food was hot this time. The 2 items that were good - biscuits were a 5 stars (probably the best I've had) and the sausage. But everything was else bland. Gravy had no sausage tasted like cream. the potatoes were under cooked and No onions or peppers in them.

My conclusion is if they cut the menu and focus on fewer things with similar ingredients they could make...

We used to come this place a lot. But we came on Nov. 21 and ate dinner and the waitress told us to come on Nov. 24th Thanksgiving they are having Ham and Turkey dinners for $18.99 but they close at 2:00pm. So we arrived before 1:00PM to have a nice Thanksgiving dinner. When we got there we were told the dinners were $21.99 and they were out of cranberry sauce, soup and pumpkin pie. So we asked to talk to the manager and he said first come first serve and the waitress misinformed us. And the manager said he would take $1.00 off a meal. Big deal. The food wasn't very good to say the least. The turkey was processed meat the green beans were canned the potatoes were boxed and the stuffing was boxed. Very salty.And then the waitress was rude after we told her of the unfair service she said if we don't like it don't come back. What I see another restaurant gone down hill. Customers are treated terrible anymore.I do understand our state and country is in a bad way but to treat your customers rudely on thanksgiving just shows the kind of business this...