IHOP

Gravois Bluffs

Fenton, Mo

Maya

So where do you go after three full days of turkey and trimmings and the leftovers? “IHOP.” Angel declared. “I want some breakfast-y food.”

This was fine with me even though unlike her, I was not tired of the leftovers.

The IHOP in Fenton was chosen due to logistics. Maya, a sweet and charismatic Bull Terrier (not a pit bull) needed to be taken home to Valley Park Saturday evening, about the same time that we normally go out. So we’d known ahead of time that we needed to pick something in that general direction. There were many other dining options of course, but Angel’s craving was pretty specific.

So we loaded up Maya, who travels well, and headed out. We delivered her to her delightfully Swedish family and headed back to Fenton.

Gravois Bluffs also played well into another craving, the craving to do at least a little shopping. Gravy Bluffs is also home to Target, and a new H.H. Gregg Electronics and Appliance store. None of us had even left the homestead since the day before Thanksgiving. We’re not ‘Black Friday’ people.

The Place:

Gravois bluff is a large shopping area perched, as the name implies, on a high bluff overlooking Highway 141. Across the highway is a smaller, but just as busy shopping area. I only go there a couple of times a year, being shopping-center-reluctant as I am. I even buy my shoes, shirts and underpants online.

IHOP is one of many restaurants, all lined up at the front edge of the vast shopping center. Red Robin and Olive Garden are literally a stone’s throw away.

The IHOP was generally busy, but not as busy as some of the other places. Inside the bright store we were greeted and seated immediately. The aroma of breakfast, coffee and syrup (blech) wafted through the air as aromas tend to do.

Brian was there immediately to hand us menus and take our drink orders. I’d pre-decided on coffee, which meant I’d pre-decided on a breakfast-type meal of some kind. The tea at IHOP is bland, at least according to memory, but their coffee is pretty good. This meant I would have trouble going to sleep on time, but I wasn’t exactly lacking sleep after three days off from work.

The menus were colorful and picturesque. Everything looked good. There was a separate menu of new offerings. One meal stood out.

The Food:

Country sausage and potatoes. Country fried potatoes with chopped country sausage, cheese and gravy, served with two eggs and two pancakes. Add two strips of bacon for a buck and my meal still only cost 7.99.

Angel decided on the country fried steak with ‘extra’ gravy. Her plate also came with hash browns, eggs and pancakes.

Adam chose the chicken strip plate with mashed potatoes and (blech) broccoli. I don’t know what it is with this kid and broccoli.

As Brian took our order and I filled up my cup with coffee I first noticed the music. ‘Take On Me’ by A-Ha. An eighties favorite of mine. The music that followed was not eighties, but a mix of upbeat songs from several periods and artists. Not bland, but not edgy either.

Country Sausage Potatoes

Adam sipped his Pepsi, Angel tasted her sweet tea, I bathed in the steamy, aromatic pleasure of better than average coffee. I excused myself to go to the restroom, something I don’t normally do. However I’d been imbibing, heavily, the holiday punch, a wicked brew of citrus juices, mixed with red Kool-Aid packets and sugar-free lemon lime soda. It’s a family blend, we made it when I was growing up. It took it’s distinctive characteristic from dad’s strict no-sugar diet. No sugar at all, but with the right blend of juices, pineapple and orange, the stuff is plenty sweet and given a tart bite with grapefruit and lemon juice. When I make it I tend to become instantly addicted to it, which also means many more than the usual trips to the restroom.

The restroom was bright white tiles with a few red ones thrown in to give it some contrast. It wasn’t the cleanest restroom but it was far from the worst I'd seen.

The food arrived soon after I returned to the table. I was famished, having only had a turkey sandwich much earlier in the day.

The pile of food in front of me looked just as advertised, heavenly. Well, there did seem to be a whole lot of cheese. The butter balls on the pancake stack weren’t melting very quickly, the butter was rock hard so first things first, I chopped up the balls and spread them around. Since I don’t ever, ever put syrup (blech) on pancakes, the butter needs to coat them evenly.

Country Fried Steak with 'extra' gravy

We dug in. I was quite pleased with everything until about halfway in, that’s when I noticed the ratio was all wrong. There were lots of sausage chunks, and lots and lots of cheese and gravy, but not so many potatoes. When I make a similar dish it’s mostly potatoes, with only a sprinkling of cheese and only a small amount, if any, of gravy. The potatoes were all but gone, there were twice as many sausage chunks, and I was pulling globs of melted cheese and making a pile on the side of the plate. What was there was all quite good, the potatoes could have been crispier, but they weren’t bad. It was the ratio that was all wrong. My last few bites were mostly gravy and sausage and cheese, very, very unnecessarily rich. A dish like this is a certain artery clogger to begin with, I was OD’ing on it. Fortunately the pancakes provided a semblance of balance. IHOP certainly knows how to make pancakes.

Angel, when I asked her about hers simply said “Yum!” I pressed her and got a little more. “The meat was too big, it didn’t even fit on the plate.” 

“Perhaps they should use bigger plates.” I offered.

“No the meat was too big.”

She continued: “The hash browns need to be crispier, sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. Crispy is better. And the syrups are all really, really sweet.”

Chicken Strips

She’d put boysenberry on her stack.

“It’s syrup” I replied. “Syrup, by definition is going to be really, really sweet.”

She dismissed my comment as she does most of them.

Adam summed his up after a lot of thought: “No complaints.” I noted that he’d cleaned his plate quickly and helped himself to his mother’s second, non-syrup’d pancake.

Summary:

I will not choose the same dish next time, too rich, too cheesy. It probably suits some people fine though.  Better to stick with the controllable classics, and mix them together myself.

Brian, our server did a bang-up job. Friendly, dutiful and mostly attentive. He did fail on a promise to refill Adam’s Pepsi, but caught the error later and offered to let him have some to-go.

The empty plates were taken away quickly and Brian twice came by just to see how we were doing. Not overbearing, just friendly.

I could have sat there another hour or so, sipping on my coffee, but we were on a schedule. To get in a run through Target and Gregg’s we needed to rush a little, there were dogs at home that would be getting anxious soon.

All in all we were quite pleased. It was cheap at thirty six dollars and change, there was plenty of food for everyone, and for the most part it was all prepared well.

IHOP is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. They have a great variety of offerings and the price is right.

Penn Station

Fenton, Mo.

http://www.penn-station.com/

Angel has been wanting to go to Penn Station for quite a while. She’d heard good things about it from more than one person, Adam was enthusiastic, I was indifferent, it’s a sandwich place.

The Place:

Penn Station originated in Cincinnati (that’s in Ohio) back in the mid 80’s and has grown to over two hundred locations, mostly in the Midwest. Penn Station grew on the strength of its Philly-style cheese steak sandwich.

Metro St. Louis is as far west as you’ll find one (sorry, Springfield!), and there are none south of Tennessee/South Carolina. Those of you in Maryland (shout out!) will have to go to Richmond, VA. Those of you in Kentucky (shout out!) can find them in Paducah, Louisville or Owensboro, to name a few.

I went online to check the menu, yeah, a sandwich place, with one noticeable exception, fries. Subway doesn’t sell fries they just sell chips. This was a plus in the Penn Station column already. While I was online I also downloaded and printed a buy-one-get-one-free coupon.

Fenton is about twenty five minutes up the road toward STL. I pass it every working day, so the drive was boring. Penn was located in a strip mall, not the big one on the hill, another one in the valley. It sat alongside a Mexican place, a closed Italian place, and a high-end deli/coffee shop/wine shop. There were no customers inside, just a couple of workers were wiping things down, they welcomed us eagerly as we walked in and stepped up to the overhead menu.

I’d noticed on the online menu a few named sandwiches, a club, an Italian, several with chicken, I stopped looking at ‘Philly Cheese steak’. Angel ordered for us as she’s the least shy, and we grabbed our cups and ran toward the drink bar. It was as if the sun was rising above and for the tea decanter. I thought I heard Angels sing (Not ‘Angel singing’, that would be awful, I’m referring to the Herald Angels, the ones that ‘Hark’ every Christmas.)

It was a beautiful sight to behold, there before my innocent, handsome eyes were two thermal decanters of tea. Not just any tea, but sure enough, real Luzianne tea. A sandwich place with fries and Luzianne tea? Awesome! If it was still fresh. I plopped a couple of ice cubes into my medium sized paper cup, then let the clear brown liquid slither in. I dropped in a rather fresh looking lemon wedge and took a sip.

Awesome! Penn Station was already six thousand, forty-three points above every other sandwich shop on the planet.

We made our way to a small table and sat. It was tight, but not too much so. It would have been cumbersome if we were having something that required thrusting elbows, like steak, but for sandwiches, it was fine.

The décor was clean and upscale. Black and gray, faux gray marble tops, chrome, black and gray booths and small bar, a couple of tall bistro tables and chairs up front by the window. The dining area was lit mostly by ceiling mounted spotlights. The only artwork consisted of posters of Penn station meals. There were no TV’s blasting away mindless sports events, the background music was adult rock, safe, no screaming, completely generic and ignorable.

I worshipped the tea, it was perfect. Adam had chosen the ‘sweet’ version… I don’t know why. Angel had their ‘famous’ fresh-squoze lemonade. The food arrived less than five minutes from the time we ordered.

The Food:

I’d ordered the Philly Cheese, with medium fries. Adam had the Pizza sandwich, with medium fries, Angel the chicken Parmesan and small fries. The individual orders were served in baskets lined with paper, the sandwiches were open faced and still sizzling, the cheese bubbling. The bread was not as thick as Subway’s which I appreciated. It was also slightly toasted. Folded up, the sandwich was only about three inches thick and we’d each ordered the six inch-long versions. Eight, ten and twelve were available.

The fries were made on site, fresh to order from real potatoes, skin intact. Dirty fries, awesome. They were well cooked, brown and crispy, the way a frozen fry just can’t be.

The first bite of my steamy sandwich was thoroughly delightful. Cheesy, oniony, beefy. Not too much of anything, simple, and good. The fries were as good as they looked. Angel and Adam swapped bits with each other, I didn’t want to share. Angel had asked for pizza sauce on her Parm chicken, something she said she wouldn’t do the next time. The chicken had a taste of its own, the red sauce overpowering it unnecessarily. Adam graded his: “Tastes as much like a pizza as it can without actually being one.” Overall the family rated the food pretty high. That is, until I got about halfway through my sandwich and I just didn’t want anymore. It had started out great but over the course of time a layer of saltiness had built up on my taste buds. It wasn’t the fries, I had no problem finishing them, it was the beef. Angel said I was too sensitive to salt, and I pondered that.

SALT:

Perhaps it’s true, maybe I am overly sensitive to salt. Growing up we were rather poor and couldn’t afford condiments. If we wanted something saltier we would simply drip sweat onto it. Pepper was a bit tougher. I usually add salt to nothing at home or when we eat out. I can’t recall the last time I’ve used a salt shaker at the table. I will use just a dash if I’m sautéing vegetables, but just a dash. So yeah, maybe I am a little sensitive to the mineral. So bear this in mind in all my reviews, if I complain about the saltiness, which I have frequently, it may well just be a gastronomical anomaly.

Summary:

With the coupon the bill came to twenty-one dollars and change, without the coupon it would have been around twenty six. Not bad for a really good quality sandwich meal. The place was very clean and pretty quiet as no other customers came in while we were there. The staff (I only saw two) was friendly and attentive, stopping by to ask how everything was, and fresh-squoozing more lemonade for Angel. The little things made a huge impact. The lemonade, the fresh-made fries, the Luzianne tea, the not-too-thick bread, the crisp décor, and the quality of the sandwich ingredients were all exceptional, easily surpassing Subway, RolyPoly, and in my mind St. Louis Bread Company. The only drawback is that there isn’t one closer to the house. I can get Subway in Hillsboro, and STL Bread in Festus. Fenton for me, like Richmond or Paducah for you guys might be a little far to go just for a sandwich. But if you happen to already be there, we’d highly recommend it. It’s perhaps the best all-around sandwich chain I’ve come across.