Where to Find Pancakes (and Cajun Food) in the City

Today happens to be Fat Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, traditionally the Christian calendar day preceding Lent. The secret forces of starch have essentially rendered this religious holiday into something called Pancake Day, however, which has since snowballed into Pancake Month: a thirty day flapjack frenzy created by a deeply sinister two man consortium of sinister maple tree tappers (one is a ventriloquist). Don’t believe Metromix when they tell you Aunt Jemima had nothing to do with this, too.

In addition to the free short stack offer at IHOP through 10 p.m. tonight, there are a bunch of other Shrove/Fat Tuesday deals going on around the city, where pancakes gradually give way to drunkenness, or at best a healthy mix of the two: Grub Street brings news of an all you can eat Cajun buffet at The Delta Grill, for instance, and Magic Hat beer floats at Virgil’s Real BBQ. Blondie and Brownie have got the sweets du jour covered, including special pancakes topped with roasted fruit and cinnamon sour cream from Clinton Street Baking Co. and the mashups at Shopsin’s. Metromix has a real purty gallery of flapjacks striking various poses around town, including Prune’s Dutch-style pancake and ten other options. And finally, an unbilled special: the world famous Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook has "voodoo music" by The Woes (MySpace) and free gumbo tonight.