Savor Scout › Food guides › Pancakes
How to find good pancakes
Good pancakes are tall, light and tangy from buttermilk, with crisp, golden edges and real maple syrup. Bad ones come from a mix, sit under a lamp and taste of nothing.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- Made from scratch — Buttermilk batter mixed in-house. Box mixes are flat and uniform.
- Fluffy and light — Tall, with an open crumb. Rubbery pancakes mean overmixed batter.
- Golden, lacy edges — Cooked on a well-buttered griddle.
- Real maple syrup — Pure maple, ideally warm. Pancake syrup is corn syrup with flavouring.
- Fresh fruit — Blueberries cooked into the batter, not canned topping.
What to order
- Buttermilk short stack — To judge the basic recipe.
- Blueberry pancakes — With real berries.
- Lemon-ricotta pancakes — Light and tangy.
- Dutch baby — A puffed oven pancake, if offered.
- Real maple syrup — Ask; sometimes it costs extra.
Where to find Pancakes
Open listings put 811 pancake houses across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.
Cities with the most
New York, NY 28 Los Angeles, CA 14 Las Vegas, NV 11 San Francisco, CA 10 Houston, TX 8 Chicago, IL 8 Denver, CO 7 San Diego, CA 6
Campuses with the most within a mile
NYU 6 New School University 5 BMCC 3 Yale University 2 University of the People 2 University of San Francisco 2
A few to start with
- Creperie — New York, NY
135 Ludlow St, New York - Crepes De Paris — Los Angeles, CA
Prominade Towers, 123 S Figueroa St #122, Los Angeles - Lola's Crepes — Las Vegas, NV
821 N Lamb Blvd, Las Vegas - Belly Good Cafe & Crepes — San Francisco, CA
1737 Post St #393, San Francisco - Melange Creperie — Houston, TX
711 Heights Blvd, Houston - Creepies — Chicago, IL
1360 W Randolph St, Chicago
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for from scratch, buttermilk, fluffy and real maple, and favours breakfast specialists over places where pancakes are an afterthought.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX