If there’s anything IHOP is known for, it’s putting stuff between pancakes. And sometimes their grizzled waitstaff. There’s no way they can rival Waffle House, which is king of kings at nasty servers, but going to IHOP at 3 in the morning is just like going to Wal-Mart at 3 in the morning – you just get the dregs. Oh yeah, one more thing they’re known for is INSANELY EXPENSIVE apple juice. It’s like ten bucks for a kiddie cup. I’d rather have vuvuzelas pointed at all three of my ears than pay that again.

At the end of last year we tried out IHOP’s Holiday Hotcakes and they were pretty great, but honestly anything with eggnog is pretty great. The new deal at IHOP is called Pancake Stackers and it consists of buttermilk pancakes, a layer of “cheesecake filling” in between, and your choice of fruit compote and whipped topping to seal the deal. You can get it by itself, or with a meal, albeit a very high calorie one. The meal comes with eggs, hash browns, sausage or bacon, and the pancakes, coming in at a whopping 1,250 calories.

Now as insanely high as that sounds, and it is, there are a few things to consider here. We all know that breakfast is supposed to be the biggest meal of the day, supplying you with the nutrition you need to actually get through the day. So if you’re a somewhat active person and you eat this meal for breakfast, you’re probably not gonna feel it as much as someone who doesn’t exercise and strolls in for dinner and leaves with this in his stomach. What is not reconcilable, is the 2,750 milligrams of sodium, which is 450 more than the recommended daily intake. Ouch. The price of the meal is about $8.55, which is practically enough food for little enough money to make this dish an assassin.

But I digress, the focus here is pancakes. First of all, you know how IHOP pancakes are in quality. The best, the fluffiest, and the tastiest. Now that cheesecake filling, on the other hand, is a different story. I couldn’t even see it in between the pancakes. As for the taste, I definitely didn’t recognize it as cheesecake. It was tangy and slightly sour like cheesecake, but the core flavor wasn’t there. The strawberries seemed like they had been sitting in strawberry syrup for a while, as they were incredibly soft and delicious. One thing they could’ve done to spice this dish up a bit is alter the pancake formula to make it taste more graham cracker-y or pie crust-y, or at least sprinkle bits of it on top. That’s a pretty obvious slight. The price is $4.95 for just the pancakes. They’re good, but that’s all.