Stacked breakfast is all about price

• Name + address: Stacked Pancake House,1739 Walkley Road, Unit F004

• Diet: Meat, vegetarian

• Prices: $7-$55

• Wheelchair accessibility: Yes 

• Website: www.stackedpancakehouse.ca

With soon-to-be more than 120 locations nationwide, the Canadian breakfast chain Stacked opened its first Ottawa location earlier this year.

Regular readers will know that I put my food prejudices out there as a form of full disclosure. So when I say that the North American style of pancake (I exclude Dutch pancakes and crepes) fills me with a revulsion greater than almost any other food, I recognize that I’m a lone voice.

Stacked is, of course, a reference to pancakes, but I’m sticking to a classic breakfast with coffee.

I happened to be out early one morning, and feeling a bit peckish, I decided to forego the usually excellent A&W breakfast sandwich and have a sit-down breakfast for a change. I remembered that Stacked had opened in the same Herongate mall and I popped in.

It was before 9 am so I took advantage of the $6.99 breakfast special, which came with a choice of toast, potatoes, two eggs and a choice of protein.

From the outset, I need to stress that the service was very friendly and professional and I made a mental note that if it was always this way, it was worth going back for.

I placed my order and I had barely enough time to look around the very clean and modestly decorated space, when my food arrived. This was in fact faster service than at any Tim Horton’s.

It all looked properly cooked and the plate presented well with the addition of fried onions topping the potatoes. 

I'm not certain when this became a trend but the practice of throwing breakfast sausages in the deep fryer, presumably to save time, needs to stop. The result is never good as it has the effect of excessively releasing moisture from the meat.

Not that these sausages were anything to write home about. They were standard fare, including the fact that they were largely composed of bread filler as so many breakfast sausages are. 

The eggs were also large scale commercial but had been cooked perfectly to order and were fine once I got my toast in them.

The home-fried potatoes had also been cooked from frozen but tasted clean, albeit a bit dry. Something fixed by the addition of onions and a little ketchup.

Everything here suggested a classic diner experience including the generic coffee. It’ll be a grand day when a breakfast joint offers a surprisingly good coffee.

I’ve only been the one time so it’s too early to make any encompassing pronouncements but Stacked, offering only breakfast and lunch, fills a void I suppose. They offer a good breakfast special at an unbeatable price and with good service in clean environs they also inspire consumer confidence.