The Original Pancake House - Columbia SC — Restaurant in Forest Acres

At first glance this doesn't look like anything different than a typical strip mall restaurant. We needed a hearty meal quick and my husband likes breakfast any time of the day or night. At the entrance were cozy little seating areas to either side - a pleasant surprise. Inside fairly plain generic looking. The staff were friendly and inviting.

It probably helped that we arrived after the main lunch hours, but service was fast, friendly and accommodating. The menu is astonishing and comprehensively covering breakfast fare with some good options for lunch as well .

Of course, pancakes. A stack of three offered with Evey special. But also omelets, French toast, waffles, steak & eggs, Eggs Benedict, Dutch baked pancakes, both grits and potatoes, five kinds of breakfast meats, fruit, cereal - with variations for everything. It took us awhile to decide out of all the choices! We settled on our standby favorites for an initial trial.

First to appear were our coffee and tea - with ceramic mugs! Surprise, mine was warmed. Maybe just fresh from the dishwasher, but nicely welcome just the same. We rarely find a place where he likes the coffee and I like the tea (simple thing really, but rarely experienced)- but they nailed it!

Shortly after came our main orders. Him: eggs over-easy, grits, country ham & plain buttermilk pancakes. Me: Scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon & plain buttermilk pancakes. Other than giving our order and style to cook our eggs we didn't ask for anything specific. Each individual item was perfectly cooked, very fresh and flavorful. Each item was just exactly the way we would want it, exception was the country ham was saltier than his preference. His grits were "like his mom used to cook when he was a kid." My potatoes were fluffy inside, yet crispy outside. Nothing was greasey. If your restaurant name includes pancake in it your basic pancakes should be good and these did not disappoint. Top three or four I have ever tasted! Portions were generous, satisfying without overstuffing.

I usually only give 5 stars to a place that is truly excellent, time after time, consistently over time. With a first visit I just can't say that, but I was tempted to make an exception in this case. I think we have found a new favorite place. I KNOW we will be coming back, and looking...

This was my fourth or fifth time dining here and as usual, the food was very good. However, this location seems to suffer from chronically inconsistent service. Never once have I been positively surprised by the amount of time it took to receive my order after placing it. Today was no different. For our party of three it took 30 minutes to receive my son's chocolate chip pancakes and 40 minutes to receive my eggs Benedict and my wife's eggs and pancakes. Additionally, I had ordered a side of toast which was completely forgotten and had to be brought out another 5 minutes later. I had to ask the waitress twice for a coffee refill before she remembered to bring one, my wife had to twice for strawberry syrup before she remembered to bring it, and the applesauce for my potato pancakes was completely forgotten.

The waitstaff is always pleasant, but it seems like they need better training. I also suspect the kitchen is not large enough to support the amount of seating in the dining areas. I cannot figure another reason that there is always a 25-30 minute minimum time between order placement and food delivery for a restaurant that makes primarily quick to cook breakfast and brunch dishes like eggs, toast, pancakes, bacon, etc.

The last issue I have is that the pricing on the menus is not accurate. It appears that prices have gone up between $0.30-$0.75 per dish but this has not been updated on the printed menus. It's not that I mind paying a couple of dollars more, it's just an unprofessional practice to not update menus and pricing at the same time. The menu currently listed on the website for these three franchise locations seems to be correct, while the printed menus in the Forest Acres location seem to be outdated.

If the service was tightened up a bit and orders could be delivered to tables in 15-20 minutes during peak hours this would be a restaurant that I...

TL;DR Menu and pricing are wrong, poor hospitality and service.

I've been to this restaurant several times before today and always had decent service and hospitality. Today felt no different at first. We ordered the continental crepes with bananas and strawberries as the waitress said we could receive both - the menu said $11.95 for this meal, fruit included. We also ordered the bacon lovers breakfast which is $16.99, but I added chocolate chips to the pancakes already included in the order, so I expected a slight upcharge. We felt good about these prices, and it seemed to be a newly printed menu. Then, we receive our bill. They charged us $10.25 for the crepes and added a $2.90 charge for the berries, putting that meal above the price listed in the menu. Next, there was a $3.95 charge for substituting chocolate chip pancakes to the meal that already includes pancakes. $4 for a scoop of chocolate chips is insane. We were able to speak to a head cook, where we were told we actually got more fruit than we should've and the price on the receipt is what we'd be paying. The woman then grabbed a menu, noticed the prices were wrong, yet still didn't offer a discount. We also explained the chocolate chip upcharge was a bit much, and we were asked if we received light or dark colored chocolate chip pancakes. I said we received dark but said I ordered chocolate chip pancakes and pointed at a picture of what they advertise as chocolate chip pancakes in the menu (the light pancakes), and she said the image was also wrong. So despite the menu having major discrepancies in pricing and photos, we received no grace in this transaction. Very poor hospitality. We ended up leaving $40 for the $37.50 bill. The waitress also explained the "new owner" was using Georgia prices in place of the menu prices at this Columbia, SC location. Very odd and...