The Underappreciated Eating Establishment Series: IHOP

Obviously kosher.

It was the kind of breakfast you take a picture of. Especially if you’re a nerd about food like I am. But as my boy D Hardcore says, “Generally, all people are geeks about something.”

When D and I sauntered in to IHOP last Thursday morning I was a flapjack away from syruping my pants. Is that IHOP logo dishware I see? A coffee pot flipped open, waiting for the fill, at each individual table? A mini bar boasting four fruity varieties of melted maple sugar???!!! I had a suspicion the International House of Pancakes was trying to romance me. This suspicion was further confirmed once D and I settled down with our menus and let the IHOP soundtrack permeate our pancake-obsessed brains. “Three Times A Lady,” “Unbreak My Heart**, ”Lovely Day.” FUCKING PERFECT. This is the music your grandfather would seduce your grandmother to, present day.

Or maybe I just relate the whole IHOP experience to the elderly because before Thursday morning, the only IHOP meals I remember vividly were taken with my grandparents in Florida. And it was always a “breakfast for dinner” trip. I was never thrilled with the idea of consuming breakfast in the evening, but I also willingly combined lox spread and tuna fish on a cinnamon raisin bagel (the Jewish appetizing sampler) at eight in the morning, so what the hell did I know. Besides, my Poppy LOVED his steak and eggs (can’t take that away from the man) and when you eat at 4:00pm on a Sunday, it can probably even be classified as brunch (if you’re a lazy New Yorker). Or linner, yeah yeah, I know.

One very important development that came out of these night trips to the International House of Old People was the Jones children’s love of coffee. Poppy drank his coffee light and very sweet and whenever he emptied a half-and-half into his mug he would fill the tiny empty container with sugary brew for his grandkids to sip. Our enjoyment of this ritual began more with the novelty of drinking from a thimble-sized cup than from the coffee itself, but eventually The College Man and I were sucked into a lifetime of incessant caffeine consumption, and at a ridiculously early age (5 and 9, maybe). I’m surprised the two of us aren’t five feet tall. And one thing I never realized about the mini-coffee routine is that in order to pass on a pint-sized café to each of his grandkids at the beginning of a meal, Poppy had to suck down enough coffee to free up THREE cream containers - and he only put one in each cup of joe. No wonder the man went to the bathroom so often. I’m surprised he wasn’t chattering like a wind-up toy by the end of the meal.

The three Jones kids were still ordering off the kiddie menu when IHOP was in the Florida restaurant rotation and we pretty much ordered the same thing every time. The College Man fed his love of sausage and other unidentifiable, encased pork products, whereas Rachel and I mostly stuck to the Funny Face, a massive chocolate chip pancake finished with a whipped cream and maraschino cherry smile (dessert for dinner).

Side note: Maraschino cherries taste like balls of Nyquil covered in Sweet n’ Low. Those things are nasty. All her life, Rachel has been eating maraschino cherries for two.

My tastes have expanded a bit since I was nine, and in an attempt to stray from the Funny Face (which I haven’t been able to order for 11 years anyway) I approached my latest IHOP excursion with a few goals in mind. I wanted to eat basically every breakfast food I have ever had a hankering for in one sitting, and by ordering only one selection off IHOP’s insanely inclusive combo menu. I wanted to nail down the perfect combination of breakfast’s sweet and salty offerings. Fuck the West Side brunch. I wanted eggs AND pancakes. Chocolate chip pancakes. I wanted to sit down in an IHOP and drink my own full mug of delicious coffee.

I thought it was going to take me about forty-five minutes to choose the right breakfast combo off IHOP's eight page menu, but it turns out The Breakfast Sampler, first option on the menu, is the breakfast I’ve been searching for my entire adult life. Two eggs (over easy, of course), bacon, sausage, ham, hash browns, and two buttermilk pancakes. I submitted my order to the waitress and bumped my flapjacks up to chocolate chip. Best $1.59 I ever spent. D Hardcore went with the classic “Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity, ” which pleased me to no end, basically because I wanted to mention the RTF&F in my blog. Again, everyone’s a geek about something. D’s breakfast was missing the hash browns and traveled a little lighter on the salty meats, but the gist of the meal was the same. Eggs, then pancakes. His stack was topped with blueberries and a massive dollop of whipped cream.

A few reasons why everyone should indulge in the IHOP breakfast:

1. Toppings (blueberries, chocolate chips, etc) are both BAKED INTO and loaded ON TOP OF IHOP’s amazingly fluffy pancakes. This makes all the difference in the world. There’s no strategic saving of chocolate chips for the last bite here. My pancakes were tinged brown from their chocolate stuffing. Pancakes as envisioned by Willy Wonka.

2. The Whipped cream topping. For breakfast!

3. Hash browns that are actually cooked until they’re WELL DONE. I am so sick of raw breakfast potatoes. Note to the cooks of New York: EVERYONE likes potatoes well done in the morning.

4. Crispy bacon. See hash browns.

5. Unlimited coffee in self-serve percolators. No waiting for refills. Unlimited creamers for easily amused grandchildren.


Okay, so D and I consumed the better part of a breakfast fit for four and hopped on the train downtown. Hardcore, the lucky bastard, didn’t have to work until 4pm but I plopped down at my desk at 11:00am ready to give birth to the entire IHOP menu. “We need hammocks where we can lay and rub our bellies.” D said to me before we parted ways.

I was faring pretty well until about 3:00pm when I decided, although I was barely hungry, to eat a salad and add some greens to whatever was already swimming around in my body. And this seemingly harmless lunch was what put me over the edge. In fact, I wanted to post about my IHOP breakfast last week but I couldn’t even think about pancakes until I woke up this morning. I decided at around 4pm on Thursday that I would wait another year until I ate at IHOP again.

But when I do, you’re all invited. I’ll make you each a little coffee of your own.


**Toni Braxton, I SO owned your album.

The College Man: Observing the High Holidays

Voicemail left on my phone at 2:29 am this morning:

The College Man: Yooooooooooooo. Happy 4/20. (Almost singing) Haaaappy 4/20! Heh heh. It's your brother, in case you haven't figured it out.

After hanging up, The College Man surely completed his sacred 4/20 ritual by gorging on matzoh, macaroons and other kosher-for-Passover products. Nothing quenches the munchies like unleavened eatables.


L'Chaim bitches!

Purell: An Office Obsessed

Almost exactly a month ago I started work at the new gig, and not in the most ideal first-day-of-work state. Pummeling through that first week, I was about as sick as I get - hacking cough, runny nose, the chills, sweats, visions of death, "daymares" about babies named Moses...the works. I rolled up in the dub room blowing my Jewish honker about once every five minutes, my damp, transparent tissues forming a snot pyramid on the corner of my desk while I waited for the arrival of my new garbage pail. So I wasn't all that surprised when my lovely co-worker K-Boogie asked me an hour into my first shift if I had "gotten [my] bottle of Purell" yet. When I answered no, she handed me an economy size pump bottle of the clearish goo - ten pounds worth of antibacterial power-slime. But I did kind of look like I was bitten by the monkey in Outbreak at the time, so I figured K-Boogie was dropping a subtle and valid hint that I might want to try and contain my germage for the sake of the office. Turns out people in this office are just freakishly obsessed with that Purell shit.

Purell has always seemed pointless to me. Perhaps the sticky, antibacterial gel is useful in airplanes, porta potties and other unfortunate places in which access to running water is lacking, but I still have issue with the fact that hand sanitizers don't eradicate bacteria. These products simply KILL the little guys, leaving thousands, millions of dead bacterial cells on the surface of your skin. YUM. But my coworkers seem convinced that applying this shit seven and eight times a day keeps them healthy in this science experiment of an office environment.

A few different arguments have been presented to me to emphasize the value of Purell use and the product's indespensibility in the workplace. The dubbers are particularly devoted to the preventative slop, and have recounted frequent incidents of unsanitary practices committed by other officemates as grounds for conversion to frequent, water-free sanitation. They are particularly emphatic in their descriptions of men who leave the bathroom without washing their hands (unapologetically) and blatantly sick coworkers who refill their water bottles by sticking the nozzle right up and around the communal tap after they've put the container to their germ-ridden lips.

"I open the bathroom door with a paper towel now." my coworker T-Money told me one day. "And I buy water bottles to bring to the office. I won't drink from the water cooler anymore."

I don't know if it's out of disbelief that these incidences occur as frequently as the dubbers propose, or if it's just sheer laziness, but I couldn't give a rat's ass about what lingers on the communal water dispenser. Both before and after these germcentric, germphobic conversations I have grabbed the door handles in the bathroom, full palm to metal, and I drink about twice a day from that infected cooler. I never really saw the logic in worrying about those little things. The dude that doesn't wash his hands in the bathroom before he opens the door also touches the coffee pot you're gonna pick up ten minutes from now, so what's the difference if you pick up his ass-paramecium now or later? You ingest, on average, somewhere between 7 and 10 spiders a year. You won't die from a little bathroom bacilli.

Another point I have made in the Purell debates is the familiar argument that hand sanitizers kill off both harmful and benign bacteria and the lack of exposure to these germs that we have been living with for centuries (peacefully and realtively healthily I might add), makes us more suceptible to their negative effects. By attempting to create an unnaturally sterile environment in the workplace, one essentially makes him/herself more vulnerable to attack by bacteria in the future. Instead of bathing in Purell these people should be going to the gym to build up their overall immune system. Or playing in dirt for Christ's sake.

I personally like the tactic employed by an old coworker in the Citi. "The Popcorn Man," as he was called, visited the counter flanking my cubicle every day for the entire month of February to stick his bare hands into a massive tub of Popcorn Factory Popcorn. A few notable things about this tin o' corn:

1. It arrived in the office in early December.
2. Almost everyone in the office contributed their special brand of microscopic creature to the tin's cheese and caramel-covered contents.
3. At least one woman attributed her rapid-fire 24-hour virus to her consumption of the popcorn. Chances are there were many more silent victims.

Did this seemingly poisonous substance kill The Popcorn Man? Hells no! The Popcporn Man just kept on coming, dipping his adventurous paws right in there. Sure enough, like the Dread Pirate Roberts with his Iocaine powder, The Popcorn Man developed an immunity to the contents of that snowflake-adorned petri dish, one cup at a time. I believe that man could work in a classroom full of snot-covered first graders and never get a cold. He could have sex with Pam Anderson and not catch the Hep-C. If New York were struck in Biological warfare, The Popcorn Man would be the only one left standing.

So as I enter my second month at the new yabbo, on the verge of an illness as irritating as the first one, I look up to The Popcorn Man for guidance and inspiration. My coworkers will tell me I'm sick because I refuse to lather up with their gooey gunk. They'll tell me Purell's 62% ethyl alcohol content will kill off the germs that plague me. But I'll embrace my illness and I'll touch the goddamn doorknob sans papertowel, because that's what The Motherfucking Popcorn Man would do. And that guy's gonna live forever.

The Crossover Bridge: Blackalicious at B.B. Kings, 4/1/06

So I saw Blackalious at B.B.King's this past Saturday with Jay-Z, Ken Tailey and Ken's friend Gravy. It turns out Gravy knows more about cheesy 80's romantic comedy than any man should, but he did earn major points by showing much love to the consistently overlooked, Some Kind of Wonderful. Eric Stoltz (yes!) stars as a Keith, an artist/mechanic (he's good with his hands) and social misfit who lusts after the "hottest girl in school" (who frankly, needed to show a little more skin). There is a montage shower/date-prep scene soundtracked by a tune of the same name as Lea Thompson's softly sexy yet unattainable screen persona "Miss Amanda Jones." And Mary Stuart Masterson plays Keith's dykish tomboy of a best friend Watts, who alternately bangs her drumsticks and insults Keiths's dream girl to hide the fact that she wants the kid's cock and a pair of diamond earrings on which the idiot spent his entire college tuition (his "future"). This film marked the climax of eighties cinema, my friends. Gravy, you kick ass for knowing it.

80's movies don't have much to do with the actual Blackalicious performance, unless we're talking about the dress code of the audience. I was sort of expecting a hipster-heavy turnout at the show because of a Blackbook article I scanned a couple weeks ago, which made it apparent that Blackalicious is the default "favorite rapper" of nearly every up-and-coming indie musician.* I didn't expect to see a solid sea of cropped leggings, mismatched garments and matted, overgrown locks, however. I mean, who wears a blazer to a Blackalicious concert? And where were the homies at? Blackalicious is now to indie music what J5 was to the jam band scene. The group brings smooth, easy hooks, intricate, literary lyricism and messages more palatable to trust fund hipsters** than say, Ghostface's "Whip You With a Strap" (one of the more poignant and compelling jams on his latest, Fishscale). It's wasn't too hard to picture the misplaced audience grooving to the liberal slang of "Paragraph President." But the crowd (aside from the front four rows of devotees) remained fairly stiff and composed. Too bad these kids only know how to dance to Joy Division.

Perhaps I'm not giving this concert experience its due. Gift of Gab was spot-on, as he always is when he shows up (two out of four times I've seen Blackalicious he's been mysteriously absent), spitting out classics like "Chemistry Calisthenics" and his Speedy Gonzalez freestyle with equal effortless flow. Plus, you can't undervalue the company of Ken Tailey, who does an awesome hip-hop shuffle to "Deception," while hollering, "Laaaaaa-da-di-da..." But two months ago I saw Big Daddy Kane take the stage at the Nokia Theater and motherfucker! That place was rank with down-and-dirty energy. Fists pumped the air and lyrics spilled out the mouths of worshippers - natural, uncontainable. Sweat and heat and sauce and love mixed in that pit below the stage and you felt on fire in the middle of it. Now, Big Daddy Kane was no doubt the highlight of the night (the headliner was the awesome-on-record, mediocre-in-person MF Doom), but all that hip hop show seemed to have in common with the one I just saw was a familiar smell and happy cloud of smoke overhead.

Again, this isn't to say that I didn't enjoy myself or that Blackalicious didn't put on a great performance. The encore, always the highlight of their shows brought longtime tour companions The Lifesavas and other openers and guests out in a freestyle free-for-all, ending with a choice exhibiton of Gift of Gab's slick rhymes. But the line that stuck in my brain was one he called out mid-set:

"...I cross the bridge to Brooklyn..."

When met with a deafening roar from an audience of mini Julian Casablancas', I couldn't help but remark underbreath, "I'm pretty sure he didn't mean Williamsburg."

*Side note regarding the "Favorite Beatle" category: None of you fuckers give Paul McCartney ANY fucking credit.
**I want a trust fund.

Requests in April snow

This morning Miss Stacia received an e-mail request from famous photographer Dustbin Cohen. "Tell me a story," he wrote.

Okay Dustbin, for you, the story of the underdressed girl who walked to work:

One morning after the gym a lovely young lady on the UWS put on a light sweater, a pair of sheer, capri stockings with motorcycle boots and an a-line corduroy skirt. She looked out her window and thought to herself, "it's sunny outside, if not so warm. I think I'll walk to work." Fooled by the glowing rays streaming through her window, the underdressed girl tentatively put on a scarf followed by her light/midweight jacket - outerwear that would prove to be a bit too cropped and pocketless to protect from the weather to come.

As the underdressed girl set out from her cozy abode, she relished in her seemingly fitting choice of garments. She felt light and comfortable, as she should, setting out for a fifty block walk. The underdressed girl fell into a robust stride, gliding over blocks in an easy fashion, forsaking the regular isolation of her headphones for the soothing calm of the late morning city streets.

But as soon as the underdressed girl hit Times Square the sky fell black and the wind started thrashing at her near-bare legs. Invisible droplets threatened her freshly lined eyes and her hands, gloveless and without shelter, began to crack and numb in the cold. Tourists everywhere flung up umbrellas in vain, attempting to combat an enemy that approached not only from the sky, but from Broadway’s incessantly flashing side corridors. The underdressed girl, shivering a mere ten blocks from her destination, considered cutting short her odyssey and taking refuge for one quick stop underground.

But the underdressed girl persevered. Though her mountain climbing legs were damp and cold, she chugged away at the pavement, clacking wood to stone ten blocks further, stopping only to commune with the Korean deli manager to purchase her usual banana and hazelnut brew.

Now the underdressed girl sits at her desk, her toes still a bit frigid from the journey. She is grateful to be inside. A flood of coworkers report, one right after the other, of the snow falling from the skies. And the underdressed girl sits at her desk and dreams of summer dresses and open toes.

Meet the (New) Coworkers: Rishchard Orleans

It's been a tough transition month over here at Collections are Dangerous. I've had to adjust to waking up at 10:00 am instead of 7:00am, to wearing jeans and sneakers instead of corporate couture, to eating Wendy's instead of Grilled Fiesta Chicken Lean Cuisines. Frankly, I'm exhausted from all the letting loose.

But I'm finally back in the groove, ready to dish on the peeps I've been getting to know over the past few weeks, people who will certainly inform and inspire future prolific postings by Miss Stacia.

Let's start with Rishchard Orleans, the thirty-something Williamsburgite (originally from Louisiana) who sits directly behind me and is my companion for the final hour of my wacky 11-8 schedule.

A few things you should know about Rishchard:

1. He is the drummer in a stand-up-comedy band called Tickle Dracula (also known as Scratch Mummy, Massage Wolfman and Indian Burn Frankenstein).
2. His wife picks out his clothes for him, and has impeccable taste (I also hear she's a dead ringer for Drew Barrymore.).
3. When he puts a rubber band around his forehead, cinching his unruly coif, he looks a bit like Michael Flatley .
4. He's on a no-cookie diet. Things he CAN eat on this diet include barbequed pork and brisket, hamburgers, burritos and more barbequed pork.
5. He doesn't like it when you call his mother a whore.

Rishchard and I initially bonded out of necessity - we are two of the only people in our department who are in the office past 7:00pm and frankly, it gets dull enough to floss by about ten after seven. But we came to find that we actually have a lot in common, including a love of smoked meats and reverence for Michael McDonald.

For some reason, my conversations with Rishchard often revolve around my religion. I can't say whether this is due to my penchant for poking fun at my own people or Rishchard's closet jealousy of Those Who Have Been Chosen. There are a couple things we have decided to agree upon regarding Judaism and tolerance in general, however:

1. Neither of us would protest if uber-frightening, barely legal duo Prussian Blue was "compromised" as Rishchard put it, in some way in the future.
2. Both of us think jokes emphasizing Jewish stereotypes are funny.

Since Monsieur Orleans is not a born Jew, which is kind of a qualification for harping on the offensive social attributes of a people, Rishchard and I decided to inagurate one another into our repspective heritage circles. As a result, Rishchard and I are now both Scottish Jews. We will wear kilts and drink Manischewitz at every wedding we attend from this day forward.

And as an honorary Jew, Richshard now has full-reign to participate in Jewish jokes of all kinds. I can't remember exactly how this little Semetic diddy got started, but just yesterday Jew Orleans and I rewrote the (Raffi?) children's classic "I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee.":

Miss Stacia: I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Won't my mommy be so proud of me. No, wait. I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Pick up quarters, underneath the tree.

Rishchard: Shouldn't you use the word guilty?

Miss Stacia: I'm am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Grandma makes me feel oh so guilty. I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. On Shabbat cannot use energy.

Rishchard: How about, I am a little Jewey Bumblebee. Something, something something, usury.

Miss Stacia: HA.

Rishchard: Yeah, that comparative religion degree's really paying off.