Lisa Paradise: Whether you prefer them thin and tangy
or you lean towards sweet and savory
topped with crispy fried chicken,
you can't go wrong with a stack of pancakes.
And these pancakes are so popular
people are willing to wait hours to get a bite.
Customer: I'm originally from the Midwest,
and you know those home-cooked meals
that really hit you deep down in your soul?
They bring that here to New York.
You can come in and see a celebrity.
You come in and get a great meal.
It's the entire experience.
Lisa: Weekend brunch in New York
is honestly its own institution.
It is hard to find a restaurant here
that doesn't have a brunch menu,
and Bubby's has been doing up brunch for decades.
And today I am eating the very best
that brunch has to offer, fried chicken and pancakes.
Walking into a restaurant named for Jewish grandmothers,
one could only expect a homey vibe
and hearty, well-cooked food.
And Bubby's doesn't disappoint on either end.
Customer: You know, you feel like you're coming home
and you're getting a great meal every time you come.
Customer: My typical order, I always get a side pancake.
Lisa: You get a side of pancakes?
Customer: Just one pancake.
Lisa: Every time you come here?
Customer: Every single time. [laughs]
Customer: Oh, man, I don't even....
Customer: Yes! They're so good. You can't miss them.
Ron Silver: I eat at Bubby's every day.
Lisa: That's Ron Silver.
And after 30 years of owning and operating Bubby's,
even he can't get enough.
Ron: Brunch is a great thing.
A long, drawn-out meal.
And eating all these sort of sweet, savory foods together,
it sort of reminds you of the day after Christmas.
[festive music]
[record scratching]
Ron: That is just an impossible
amount of pancakes to figure out.
Lisa: There are two kinds of pancakes on Bubby's menu:
a plate of wafer-thin, super tangy
sourdough pancakes that are served plain,
or the more classic, fluffy, slightly sweet
James Beard variety, which derive both
their name and recipe from the culinary legend,
of whom Ron is a massive fan.
Ron: These pancakes,
the recipe is James Beard's recipe,
and I swapped out some of the milk for sour cream.
And I think I was pretty young when I made those
the first time, maybe, like, 24,
so I was maybe more cocky at that time.
Willing to play with his recipes.
Lisa: The James Beard pancakes at Bubby's
begin by whisking together eggs, sour cream,
sugar, and a little melted butter.
Then it's time for the dry ingredients,
flour, baking soda, and salt,
followed by a splash of milk.
The batter is poured onto a piping hot griddle
that's been doused in melted butter.
Then it's left to sizzle and bubble
before each pancake is flipped just once.
Then it's doused once more in butter
to ensure a perfectly crispy, buttery exterior.
Customer: The fluffiness of it. And it's like,
it almost dissolves as I put it in my mouth.
It's very easy to eat.
This is kind of of our third date.
She told me about it.
And so we decided to come here for our third date.
So that's how I heard about it.
Customer: Thank you. [laughs]
Lisa: Bubby's sourdough stack begins with this:
a sourdough starter from 1890.
Eggs, sour cream, sugar, salt,
and melted butter are whisked together.
Then flour is mixed with the 130-year-old starter
and some buttermilk for a punch of tang.
Finally, the batter is left to sit
to ferment for 24 hours
to let the signature sour flavor really develop.
The thin batter is poured onto the grill
and, like its fluffy counterpart,
flipped only one time before serving.
Customer: The thing about these pancakes are,
breakfast, lunch, or dinner, they're always good.
Man, it just, my mouth is already watering,
and I already ate that for lunch.
Lisa: Ron opened Bubby's on Thanksgiving Day in 1990,
when his friend, who rented the space,
took a three-week vacation.
Ron decided to cook first and ask permission later,
serving pies and Thanksgiving leftovers.
By the time his friend returned,
Bubby's was already a hit, and the restaurant
has been going strong in the same space ever since.
Ron: There was a place across the street
that was very busy, and it was a pancake house,
and they had a line around the corner.
And I sort of remember standing outside one day
saying, well, if I could just get that line
to come over here, then we would be really busy.
Lisa: And although Bubby's has kept the array of pies,
by developing a new menu based on American comfort foods,
it managed to get that line and then some.
Customer: It was about, like, 45, 50 minutes.
Customer: I wanna say, like, 35 minutes.
Customer: About an hour.
Lisa: An hour? Customer: Yeah.
Lisa: And was it worth, like, killing 45 minutes of time?
Customer: Oh, yeah. I love it here.
I just love the atmosphere.
It's always so energetic.
And it's just such a nice place to bring your friends.
Lisa: We're having kind of a crazy brunch.
We're doing two different kinds of pancakes.
On this side I have the James Beard pancakes.
Of course, they're topped with fried chicken.
You don't have to have them topped with fried chicken,
but in my opinion, what's the point of going to brunch
if you're not gonna get some sort of fried chicken?
And then on this side, I have the sourdough pancakes.
I've never had pancakes
that are this thin before in restaurants.
I've had them at home when I really mess up pancakes.
Let's do the sourdough.
Typically, if I was gonna eat pancakes,
I would, of course, put butter and syrup on them.
But I really wanna try them plain first,
'cause I'm curious what the sourdough starter does to them.
That was too big.
They're really sour.
Like, they're really sour, and they're really sweet.
I mean, obviously you say sourdough,
you expect them to be sour,
but I'm surprised at the complexity of the flavor
and the way that it builds in your mouth.
Because when you first take a bite,
it does taste like a pancake,
and then the more you chew it the more it has
that, like, bready, pretzely, sourdough feeling to it.
They give you the thinnest pancake you've ever seen,
and they still squish in that really satisfying way.
I watched them make this, and I still have no idea
how you get that consistency with something so thin.
I'm here for the fried chicken.
You basically get half a fried chicken
on top of pancakes, which I am fully down for.
Oh, it's juicy!
Oh, this is juicy. This is crispy.
Don't look at me while I have this moment.
The chicken is brined for 24 hours.
And you can tell.
It is so incredibly juicy.
I think you can really taste, it's peppery, it's salty,
and then it pairs perfectly with the pancakes,
because the pancakes are sweet but not too sweet.
They have a little bit of syrup on top of them,
because why not?
With the crunchiness of the chicken
and the fluffiness of the pancake
makes for a perfectly textured bite of food
that is everything that you want from a Saturday brunch.
Be it sober, hungover, 10 mimosas in, it doesn't matter.
This is the ideal that you look for
when you look for a weekend brunch.
There is a crowd outside.
I'm nobody!
I'm gonna go up on all their blogs, like, "Who's this?"
And people are gonna be like, "Literally no one."
Yeah. [laughs]