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If Cheech and Chong opened a restaurant honoring their weed-humor heyday, I'm certain it would bear an uncanny resemblance to Batter Griddle & Drinkery. Batter, which opened to much fanfare in March, is an all-hours breakfast-food emporium offering a full bar to boot. This is the rare place with the potential to appeal both to munchies-driven aficionados of the herb superb and their closest culinary affinity group—small children. Plus, those of us who have always had a weakness for breakfast at night.
The menu is an idyll of untethered imagination: buttermilk pancakes with chocolate chunks, sauce and whipped cream; pancakes stuffed with pork belly and Gruyere, sprinkled with powdered sugar and anointed with berry sauce; and the Elvis-inspired "King," stuffed with bacon, banana and peanut butter. Those are just a few of the eye poppers on a 30-strong list of griddled goods, including offbeat waffles and crepes in addition to pancakes.
Portions are generous and reasonably priced at $8 to $10. Add one of four aberrant bloody marys—the "Jamaican Jerk" is made with jerk spices and pineapple—for $7. The unheralded highlight of the menu is a simple side of bacon: four thick-cut slices cooked perfectly to a deep umber that are salty, smoky, a little chewy and just wonderful.
Sadly, that's about all the enticements at Batter, save for the earnest yet helpless servers and two chicken-centric dishes, one country-fried with a waffle and maple/balsamic syrup, and an "Asian fried" variation with garlic chili sauce and a little ginger in the waffle. Execution has been the plague of three well-spaced visits.
On our first try a week or two after opening, the requested bacon add-in for the "Mac & Crepes" was missing, leaving a mass of starch-stuffed starch. The dish was dull and uninteresting instead of "comforting and gooey" as billed. With minimal cheese in the mac, the bacon probably wouldn't have helped much. A glass of draft Jones soda arrived uncarbonated. After this was called to our server's attention, he conceded that the carbonation system was on the fritz and suggested juice—an excellent idea in hindsight.
On visit No. 2, a Friday dinner hour a month or so after the initial gambit, the place was dead. I should have figured the kitchen wasn't exactly smoking (or maybe they were) when the soft-opening menu was still being handed out. Red velvet pancakes arrived the color of toasted pumpernickel and were served with a small beaker of gluelike, white fluid that was essentially a pure sugar glaze. I probably should have seen that one coming, though I never did learn how garish, scarlet pancakes could turn out dark brown instead.
Figuring another few weeks before a third drop-in might finally bring me to my happy evening breakfast place, I gamely ordered "The Cumberbatch," which sounded a lot like eggs Benedict, subbing pancakes for English muffins, and "battered bacon" ($8) from a new ancillary menu with lots of non-breakfasty stuff on it. The bacon was touted as glazed with chipotle and honey before getting the tempura treatment. Also on our list, matzo meal pancakes described on the menu as "uniquely addictive."
I was all in, but it turned out to be a pipe dream. Even though it was on the menu, the bacon wasn't available ("They haven't really got it right yet," our server confided). Next, the chef reportedly spilled all the hollandaise for the quasi-Benedict; and, the last indignity, our server never wrote down the matzo meal cakes order. So much for that addiction.
For famished stoners and little ones, perhaps Batter's persistent spaced-out sins can be forgiven or forgotten. For the rest of us, a batch of dinner pancakes at home is probably a better bet.
EAT: Batter Griddle & Drinkery, 4425 NE Fremont St., 971-271-8784, batterpdx.com. 8 am-11 pm Tuesday-Sunday.
WWeek 2015