Midnight Pancakes

Last night I dreamed of pancakes and tonight I ate them, which made it a perfect day. We went to a diner where I intended to have a normal evening meal; it was a high-end diner where the waiters even had Continental accents. Something about the bright light, shimmering countertops and sleepy patrons told me that it would only be appropriate to eat something fluffy.

When I was young (and now I am very old) it would have been nothing extraordinary to have pancakes for dinner, but I have reached the point where complexity is a necessary attribute of nourishment.

See this passage from the gastronomist MFK Fisher:

I remember that when I was a college freshman my nearest approach to la gourmandise was a midnight visit to Henry's, the old Henry's on Hollywood Boulevard which all the world said that Charlie Chaplin owned secretly. There I would call for the head waiter, which probably awed my escort almost as much as I hoped it would. The waiter, a kindly soul except on Saturday nights, played up to me beautifully, and together we ordered a large pot of coffee and a German pancake with hot apple-sauce and sweet butter. ("Salted butter ruins the flavor," I would add in a nonchalant aside to my Tommy or Jimmy.)

She continues:

Whatever school a man may adhere to, the protestant or the philosophical, he continues to eat through the middle years of life with increasing interest ... No longer can he dine heavily at untoward hours, filling his stomach with the adolescent excitations of hot sauces and stodgy pastries ...