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Ken’s House of Pancakes opened its doors in 1971 under the joint ownership of Ken Pruitt and Bonnie Twitchell. It became the first, and only 24-hour business on the East-side of the Big Island. Success soon followed the opening, with the appeal of being able to sit down and eat at any time of day or night! Also aiding in the success of the restaurant was the attached Tapa Room Cocktail Lounge, allowing adults to unwind with a tasty cocktail before, during, and after dinner.
Hours
However, there are more exciting options in Hilo nowadays, so I wouldn’t automatically return here. But I wouldn’t rule out a return visit, either. I’d probably stick with the omelets and pancakes if I do come back, though. It wasn’t quite as good as I remember, but that could be due to my now different taste and the rose-tinted glasses effect. There are still chunks of snow crab leg meat in there, along with smaller strands of meat, and I like that the omelet, while fully cooked, wasn’t overdone.
Destination Hilo 'Ohana
When she showed off the pristine page, it looked like it was only missing a few batter splotches to break in the book. My other complaints with the fried noodles were more personal, with the largest complaint here being the use of green bell peppers. Who the hell puts green pepper in fried noodles?! I also wasn’t a fan of the celery or carrots in here.
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“Meatballs don’t always have to be meat,” writes Paola Briseño-Gonzalez in her latest story for L.A. Then she gives us a recipe she developed for brothy shrimp meatballs with Sungold tomatoes. On Sunday at the festival, “Koshersoul” author Michael Twitty and “Fieldwork” author and Michelin chef Iliana Regan had an impromptu conversation at the booth about the challenges of writing their very intimate memoirs. Elizabeth Poett said her go-to recipe from her “Ranch to Table” book is blueberry yogurt pancakes.
Main Menu
When I was a kid, my standard order at Ken’s House of Pancakes was the Really Real Snow Crab Omelette (snow crab, green onions, hollandaise) or the Da Braddah Omelette (bacon, ham, Portuguese sausage, green onions, and cheese). Both are $20 today, and all omelets come with your choice of rice or hashbrowns PLUS pancakes or toast. You can also get cottage cheese, tomatoes, or pineapple in place of the pancakes/toast. Pratt’s new home is adjacent to Shriver’s two homes, each valued at over over $10 million, carving out a family compound of sorts in the neighborhood. Ungar has designed several multimillion-dollar mansions, including modern farmhouses, in Los Angeles.
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Still cookbook crazy in a digital world, plus the Koreatown bakery where fans wait up to two hours for cake, a new croissant contender, new brunch and lunch picks, and why a vegan restaurant will start serving meat. Nowadays, Ken’s House of Pancakes is still owned by the Ching Family. It is still managed by Debra and Ric, and is still pumping out delicious meals including pancakes, burgers, fries, omelets, milkshakes, and other local favorites. It’s the good food, great staff and awesome community that keeps this place going. Ken’s is, was, and will continue to be a mainstay not just in Hilo, but throughout the entire Big Island.
In fact, the primary flavor profiles here were salt and black pepper. When I was a kid, I LOVED going to Ken’s House of Pancakes with my family whenever we visited Hilo. Learning that Mrs. Island Miler has never been, I made it a point to get here during our last trip to the area. Alas, things weren’t quite what I remember them to be.
Menu
During Mrs. Island Miler’s inaugural visit to Ken’s House of Pancakes, she went with the Really Real Snow Crab Omelette with rice and pancakes. I wanted to branch out and try something different, opting for the fried noodles. Ellwood, born as Jon Nelson Burke in Texas in 1922, was an informally trained but influential Los Angeles–based architect whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s, according to a biography by Architectuul.
Ken's House of Pancakes
He gained fame through his eye-catching designs and quirky personality, bolstered by his ambitions in acting, modeling, and self-promotion. He designed several homes in Los Angeles, and the destruction of one of the few that remain is part of the considerable backlash. The move to demolish came shortly after Pratt purchased the mid-century home in an off-market sale for $12.5 million in January 2023. The house is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, across the street from Pratt’s mother-in-law, former first lady of California Maria Shriver. The historic house will be replaced by a modern farmhouse designed by architect Ken Ungar, Architectural Digest reported, and is now in the early stages of construction. Until its completion, Pratt is waiting it out with his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, in a $32 million estate in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
Overall, I’m glad we paid Ken’s House of Pancakes a visit. It was nice to check the place out again – it’s been at least 20 years since I’ve last been – and to introduce it to Mrs. Island Miler. Sadly, I feel like the quality has diminished a little here, though the cuisine is far better than the stuff we had at our hotel.
Trips to Hilo often included one or more visits to Ken’s House of Pancakes for brunch, with their tasty omelets, fluffy pancakes, and decadent coconut syrup. It was the perfect start to a day, which would usually include a visit to a black sand beach or adventures in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. But the experience often leaves me unsatisfied. It’s also how I come across recipes I wouldn’t have thought to put into a search field. Ken’s House of Pancakes is a dying breed of restaurant – a true old-school diner that hasn’t changed much over the years.
It can be pretty jarring if you’ve never been in a place like this. However, what caught me off-guard (I guess I never noticed as a kid) is that the restaurant is open-air – there’s no a/c here. I suppose this wasn’t as big an issue 30 years ago when our weather was cooler, but it gets pretty hot nowadays, as was the case during our visit. In 2004, the house changed hands to its last owners, couple Sam and Hilda Newman-Rolfe. Even though I have hundreds of cookbooks — so many that I have stacks on every step up the staircase in my front hall — I frequently find myself online looking for recipe ideas or basic cooking information.
A well-loved cookbook is a well-worn cookbook. We shouldn’t be afraid to get our cookbooks dirty. “Cookbook sales in the U.S. grew 8% year-on-year between 2010 and 2020, with sales numbers boosted even further by the pandemic,” wrote Kate Gibbs in a 2022 story in the Guardian.
During our conversations leading up to our trip, I learned that, despite being there several times as a kid, Mrs. Island Miler had never been to Ken’s House of Pancakes. It was also the only restaurant in Hilo (at least, in the before times) that was open 24/7 and known throughout the islands for its pancakes and omelets. Chef and farmer Mollie Engelhart, after specializing in serving vegan food at her Sage Vegan Bistro locations, made the risky decision to change the orientation of her restaurants in the name of regenerative agriculture. As Stephanie Breijo reported this week, she is renaming her restaurants Sage Regenerative Kitchen & Brewery and will add some meat dishes to the menu from animals raised using regenerative farming practices.
If you’re staying in Hilo, it’s pretty hard to miss Ken’s House of Pancakes. They’re at the intersection of Mamaloha Highway/Hawai’i Belt Road, Kamehameha Ave, and Banyan Drive. This places them across Queen Liliuokulani Gardens and the Naniloa Golf Course from Hilo’s hotel district, several blocks down from the Edith Kanakaole Stadium, and near the threshold of Hilo International Airport’s Runway 8. It is especially potent when thinking back to one’s halcyon days as a kid – not a care in the world except for what video game you’ll play after finishing your homework, whether your VCR will tape the show you scheduled it to, etc.
Food memoirs and cookbooks are consistently among the strongest areas of the book industry. Our signature items include the Apple Pancake, a single large pancake smothered with sautéed apples and cinnamon sugar baked to perfection, to create a deliciously rich cinnamon sugar glaze. In contrast to the omelet, the fried noodles were a complete disappointment. While the noodles retained a nice al dente texture, they were quite wet/oily. Worse, though, is that the entire dish was incredibly salty. The HUGE slices of Spam scattered throughout didn’t help with this.
