How thick is too thick?

Visiting diners is one of my favorite things to do when traveling. I adore a stack of fluffy pancakes with a ball of whipped butter melting into the top as I pour thick syrup over the stack. One of my favorites was in a small diner in the heart of Philadelphia (I think it was Broad Street Diner, but it was many years ago). However, I have not yet encountered the latest trend in pancakes: extra thick cakes that look almost like cakes.

Trendy restaurants across the world – from Toronto to Pueblo, Mexico to the Philippines – are adding these lux pancakes to the menu, usually baked in a pan, instead of made on a griddle, and featuring one or two cakes per order instead of a stack of several pancakes. Most feature gently rounded edges and are topped with items not usually found on traditional cakes, such as lemon curd and berries, or pancetta and a poached egg. At New York City’s Golden Diner, people wait hours for their chance to sample the honey butter pancakes.

These thick pancakes are not to be confused with the fluffy Japanese soufflé pancakes, which are altogether different. These cakes are denser, more like a regular pancake but a lot thicker. One of the drawbacks to these cakes is that they take more time to make than a traditional pancake, owing to the taller profile and that most are cooked using a combination of stovetop and oven/broiler.

An ultra-thick pancakes seems like something that would be easy to replicate at home, although so far I don’t see any recipes in the EYB Library. The only recipe with “thick” in the title is Thick ricotta pancake with roast rhubarb from Australian Gourmet Traveller (dating back to 2015!), which doesn’t look like any of the photos in the article. There are also oodles of baked pancake recipes, mainly for Dutch baby pancakes, which are wonderful but not the same. Has anyone tried one of these thick pancakes at a restaurant? I’d love to know if they are worth seeking out the next time I travel.