Chace’s Pancake Corral

IN THE YEARS before I discovered the Smiths, I filled my suburban summers with competitive swimming. Swimming appealed to me, with its water-insulated aloneness. The outdoor pool I broke the surface of every morning at 6:30 a.m. sat on Bellevue Way, which offered up a big gasp of car exhaust with every breath intake. My sisters and my one friend also swam. I think my mom figured that if she was up driving one of us at 6 a.m., then we all should suffer. After practice, and 45 minutes of vicious exchanges about vaginal lip size punctuated by towel snaps in the showers, we were hungry. Lucky for us, the Bellevue institution of 44 years, Chace’s Pancake Corral, was located across the street.

Besides being the best-named restaurant on the Eastside (right up there with the Eating Factory), Chace’s boasts an impressive herd of pancakes. When my sister, Miss Love, and I revisited our favorite place to get the Kessler Special–milkshake and potato pancake breakfast, French toast on the side–we were delighted to find it completely unchanged and alive on an early weekday morning.

This is the exception rather than the rule on the Eastside. Usually, when filled with Super 8 memories of historic childhood spots, I go back only to find condos, Tony Roma’s, and parking lots. It is disturbing, but common, to find that the entire landscape has vanished and morphed. As Bellevue files away at its soiled self, eliminating important monuments such as Lollipop Park (the ramshackle amusements that were located in the Bellevue Square parking lot of Frederick & Nelson), it is unable to stamp out its bloody soul. Real humans–in fact, quite a lot of us–grow up in suburbs, and are shaped by suburbia’s weird spirituality.

Gas stations, mini-marts, and all manner of roadside businesses have come and gone, but Chace’s still squats, windows and wood paneling in place. Mr. Chace himself still graces the walls as a strapping young man on the UW Crew in the 1930s, next to golf towels and old photos of Bellevue. The best aspects of Chace’s–the waitresses and the menu–are the same. I mean it: the same waitresses. I think Chace’s daughter even remembered us from our nickel tip and milkshake days. Chace’s waitresses are magical. They do not age and do not allow coffee levels to get below half-full.

Chace’s menu features the exact same items, in the exact same typeface, for only slightly higher prices. “Teenager’s Plate” ($4.70) features two large pancakes, one egg fried in butter, and two patties of Bud’s delicious country sausage. “Ladies’ Plate” ($4.60) doles out one egg, two strips of bacon, a half order of hash browns, and one slice of toast for the ladylike appetite. The Pancake Corral section of the menu whimsically captures 12 different pancake options in lassoed circles, presenting a bird’s-eye view of breakfast treats all wrassled up. No matter how long I study the Pancake Corral, the “Joe Adams Assortment: For the Undecided” ($4.80) satisfies my chronic inability to commit. Buttermilk silver dollar pancakes, as well as buckwheat (heavily fortified with wheat germ), potato, and strawberry pancakes all arrive on one plate, with just the right amount of each taste.

However, the morning my sister and I returned to the wild east of pancakes, I veered right out of the Corral and ordered the “Hash Brown Omelet” ($4.80) in a fit of adultness. Served up with salsa, sour cream, cheddar cheese, and an English muffin, their hash brown and egg creation cannot leave much room in a belly. But I added a side of sausage patties in loving memory of those Chace’s milkshakes for breakfast (R.I.P.). While a cup of coffee edges toward the expensive side ($1.20), as noted earlier, the coffee level in that cup never dipped lower than halfway, which is more than I can say for every breakfast joint I have slurped Yuban in lately. Ignoring the allure of “Pigs in a Blanket” ($5.45), Miss Love got down to business and ordered “Real Potato Pancakes” ($4.80), our all-time favorite, a memorable commingling of sweet and savory, fried. As the Corral description attests, these latkes are “deliciously flavored with a Secret Recipe” (chives?) and slathered with sour cream. It’s impossible to articulate exactly why, but these pancakes confound and delight. I could eat them all day.

Seventeen cups of coffee and a mere 35 minutes later, Love and I exited the warmth of the Corral, chewing on our complimentary gumdrops, another important detail maintained by the good folk at Chace’s. We embraced ecstatically and drove off in our cars, past the turquoise pool, past the flat gray parking lots.

Chace’s Pancake Corral

1606 Bellevue Way SE, 425-454-8888. Mon-Fri 5:45 am-2:30 pm, Sat 6 am- 3 pm, Sun 6:30 am-3 pm. No liquor. $.

Price Scale (per entrée)

$ = $10 and under; $$ = $10-20; $$$ = $20 and up