This is on my block.  I am not sure how I feel about it.

WHERER MY I HOP

....oh, there it is.

I love iHop.  One of the few places here in the city that doesn't fill the pancakes full of disgusting cornmeal. Why do cooks in NYC put cornmeal in pancakes?   It's the only place in the country that does this.  As for the pissing and moaning about suburbanization of the city, I suppose the pocketbooks will decide.  If people won't eat there, they will close.  If people do, then there must be a demand that the mom-n-pops (with cornmeal) aren't providing. 

Uh no New York isn't only place that does this.  Adding cornmeal is a North East thing.  If you go through New England you'll find pancake recipes where the entire batter is made from cornmeal.  The recipe goes back to a time where the settlers didn't have much flower and cornmeal was used as a substitute for flower.  I'm a native NY'r and every diner I've ever eaten at used flour and maybe some cornmeal mixed in so I don't where you get pancakes.

Did they also not have much flour to bake with?

Good to know.  I haven't traveled the NE all that much spending most of my life in the south, midwest, and west coast.  In all those other places cornbread is served with butter as an alternative  dinner bread, but never as pancakes. I think in the south a similar flat cornmeal based breakfast food is called corn fritters, but I'm not partial to cornmeal with syrup so I've never tried them.  I had never experienced cornmeal in pancakes until moving to NYC a few years ago, but almost everywhere I have ever ordered them since moving here I get a flat cornbread (some with more some with less cornmeal) served with syrup called pancakes.  There are a few places in the city where you can get them without cornmeal but those are few and far between. I have eaten in several places in NJ, PA, and upstate NY and I never got cornmeal in the pancakes, so perhaps its a NYC and upper NE thing as I haven't traveled to CT, MA, etc. Nevertheless iHop doesn't put it in theirs so they are a welcome treat when I am craving pancakes. 

talk about neighborhood jumping the shark .......

"There is a God"?  This is just more proof that gothamist writers are NOT real NYers.  NO real NYer would ever rejoice in this news. Why would you even want a job writing about a city you clearly hate?

All these Blackberry toting, Appletini slurping, displaced yunnie suburbanites would prefer if the city didn't have a single privately owned business and that every restaurant and store was part of a national chain, so they can eternally feel like they're back in good ol' Strip Mall, USA, which is exactly where they belong. 

Somewhere in China, factories are already bidding on the contract for the great plastic dome that will one day cover Manhattan, when it officially becomes the largest mall on the planet.

You take your hipsterness too seriously. 
I've been in New York for 20 years- half my life. 
I've been PINING for an IHOP, a SONIC and a ChikFilA. 

Just when i'm about to get the hell out of this city, this. I may have to hold out a little longer.

.......MCDJ, mad NYers love the shit out of IHOP.

IHOP at Times Square would ensue chaos

@ONE_LESS_FIXED_GEAR you said it. Waffle House tops IHOP any day of the week.

To hell with IHOP.  Gimme WAFFLE HOUSE, baby.  Now we're talkin'.

No end in sight to the suburbanification of Manhattan.

Oh, goodie!  Chicken & waffles for the masses!!!  Yeyyyyy!!!!

Way East 14th St is exactly where this cholesterol fest belongs. 

something something midwest something something

Just what we need, another lousy chain outlet.  There are plenty of 24 hour diners in NYC where you can get a better carb fix in the middle of the night.

Yes, but hip Japanese NYU students will now not need to travel all the way up to Harlem to order a "Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity."

Thats what I order at the massage parlor.