Breakfast's special

Eggs and hashbrowns may be your go-to meal when it comes to starting the day off right, but might we suggest an alternative? This is a pancake-happy town, stacked with melt-in-your-mouth choices. Here are a few of our favorites.

A seasoned Best Of C-VILLE winner in the breakfast category, Bluegrass Grill and Bakery griddles up huge pancakes—from buttery buttermilk to wholesome buckwheat—but it’s the restaurant’s scrumptious chocolate chip stack that keeps us lining up for more.

As if the throwback charm of the Blue Moon Diner weren’t enough, you never know whose powdered-sugar face (Homer Simpson? George Costanza? Christopher Walken?) you’ll get atop your pile. Drizzle with homemade vanilla/ginger syrup before devouring.

Owner Nick Vlavianos is out of retirement at the Cavalier Diner, and its down-home feel and crunchy pecan pancakes at $5.25 for three or $5.95 for five (those last two might as well be free!) are a deal at twice the price.

I hop, you hop, we’ll all hop to IHOP for its devilishly sweet pancakes. The Cinn-A-Stack is a deconstructed cinnamon roll, if you will (oh, we will!), with cinnamon and cream cheese icing drizzled here, there and everywhere. Having that oh-so-common debate between pancakes or cheesecake? Go for the New York Cheesecake pancakes, topped with chunks of cheesecake, strawberries and whipped cream.

Want some salty with your sweet? Get a booth amongst the students, tourists and townspeople at The Tavern and choose between bacon pancakes and pigs-in-a-pancake (sausage link-swaddling cakes).

At the Tip Top Diner, go a little bit country with the corn cakes—slathered with sweet cream butter and doused in syrup.—Megan Headley

Grits in your teeth

Mom was right—a good breakfast helps you face the world with a little more cheer. Left to fend for ourselves in the mornings, though, too many of us head out with empty tummies and faint scowls, or give in to the temptation of the drive-through breakfast-in-a-biscuit and battle rumblings of guilt and indigestion for hours.

Enter the five-minute breakfast. In the time it takes to brush your teeth, wash your face and comb your hair, prepare a bowl of that rib-sticking southern breakfast classic, cheese grits.

Cheese Grits
1/3 cup quick-cooking grits
1 cup water
1 1” cube sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (the real thing just won’t do here)
1 slice country ham, cut to roughly the size of a playing card, then cubed

Bring water to a boil and stir in grits with a whisk or fork. Reduce heat to low and simmer three to four minutes. Stir in garlic powder, cheese and chopped ham. Enjoy straight out of the pan if Mom isn’t watching.—Meredith Barnes

A good egg

At Joel Salatin’s utopian Polyface Farms, it’s definitely the egg before the chicken. Happy chickens lay happy eggs, and Polyface chickens are some seriously happy chickens with 450’ to move around in and a change of scenery every three days. These happy eggs are sold at Rebecca’s Natural Foods, $4.99/dozen, when the hens are laying.

Did you know?

In the Middle Ages, peasants would serve beer with their morning bowl of porridge. Clearly, no one had yet heard of orange juice.

For more on drinking before noon, click here.