Brownstone Diner and Pancake Factory

Last year a group of folks from the education department went on a research field trip to Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.
The most important part of the itinerary?
 Where to eat, of course.
Felicia found the Brownstone Diner and Pancake Factory on an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Man, i love that show.
How can you go wrong with a phrase like pancake factory?
We were there mid-morning on a Sunday - which has to be the busiest time of the week for pancakes - and the place was hopping, but we only had to wait about 20 minutes to be seated.
Boy, was it worth the wait.
Brian had me try his Irish Benedict - Eggs Benedict with corned beef hash in place of the Canadian bacon - because i'd never heard of such a thing. It was oddly delicious; there is a lot going on in one bite, but the result is cool.
There are plenty of non-breakfast choices and several of the group went with lunch food, but in a place that styles itself as a pancake factory I felt there was only one choice.
Well, make that 32 choices.
 Yep, there are over 30 pancake options, including breakfast wraps that use a pancake instead of tortillas to hold of the goodness together.
Crazy.
I decided to order my favorite pancake specialty: pigs in a blanket. Instead of little breakfast links wrapped in the giant fluffy pancakes, the piggies in this dish were mondo italian sausage sized, but made with breakfast sausage spices resulting in each pig in a blanket being huge.
 Did i mention that there were four of them in a serving?
Hands down, it was the best pigs in a blanket that i have ever had. The pancakes were fantastic, the sausage had a savory bite that was enhanced by the syrup and the pig:blanket ratio was exactly the way i like it.
There was no way i could eat it all in one sitting, so for $9 i had brunch and  supper.




If you find yourself in Jersey City, i highly recommend stopping at the Brownstone Diner and Pancake Factory.

we join our program, already in progress

So i'm back in Maryland, but still have a few days before i go back to work.
Florida was good and i have a bunch of pictures which i will share in blog-sized bites over the next few days.
But first - an adventure!
Last night (Monday) my friend Matt picked me up at the airport around 7pm; he'd had my car all week as he is home from CA for the holiday, carless and my car would have just sat all week. Once we got back to my apartment it was decided that an adventure was in order.
Sometimes i just get something stuck in my brain and lately i've been thinking about Lucy the Elephant. Several years ago when Rob and Rachel were still dating they took a trip to the Jersey shore and returned with pictures of a building shaped like an elephant.
Last night i decided that i wanted to see it. Matt and i weren't sure exactly where she was was or whether she would be lit at night for me to take a picture, but were we to be stopped by such details?
NO!
Off we went.
Only to get through the tunnel and realize i didn't have my license - yikes; now that is a detail that could stop us. So it was back to the apartment, retrieve the license from my carry-on and back through the city.
It was a nice night for a drive : really clear and not much traffic (except for the pesky construction right before the Delaware Memorial Bridge which took almost 25 minutes to get through). We played a fun New Jersey driving game called Count the WaWas (14, in case you we wondering).
There were many things that during a day trip we would have stopped to photograph, like the giant rocking chair and the pyramid of tires, but given the ambient light we passed on by. Finally as state route 563 (can you believe that the road that leads to a giant elephant is my favorite number?!?) dumped us in Margate [formerly South Atlantic City] we spotted the water tower that told us we were in the right place.
I knew she was somewhere near the water so we went to the south end of town and then drove north until we spotted Lucy

The pictures don't really capture how huge and surreal she is; of course the fact that the town was completely deserted cause it was 2am on a Monday night/ Tuesday morning in December might have added to the sense of non-reality.
The sign clearly said she was open, but as Matt shows us her gate was locked up tight. And yes,that is what people look like if they hang out with me too long : been up for over 20 hours, jacked up on caffeine and BBQ potato chips and freezing cold  
Where're your gloves, goofball? This isn't California.
If you'd like to see better pictures of what Lucy looks likes in the daytime, Rob has pics posted on his website here, at the bottom of the page (interesting note, in Rob's pics her toenails are red, white and blue, but this morning they were green and white - i wonder how often they pedicure her).
We then drove up through Atlantic City with me pointing out the streets that are on the Monopoly board (Matt hadn't known that the game is based on Atlantic City) and what color they are coded in the game.
Then it was south to Dover, DE to drop him at his dad's house and then back over the Bay to home in time for bed at 6am.
I like not having to go to work.