The breakfast staple is having a moment, despite the fact that it really never went away. The still-subtle uptick of PancakeContent on Instagram is creating the conditions for ever-growing cravings for pancakes.
I am sorry to tell you this, but the cycle weathered by other comforting, wheat-based foodstuffs β to be embraced, memed, and disavowed in a ritualistic self-loathing pattern β is beginning again. Avocado toast is over. Jam-slathered brioche is done. This is not because fancy pancakes are new. The lemon-ricotta pancake is a brunch staple at higher-end restaurants; Dutch baby manias regularly sweep America.
Sqirl has been serving a deeply weird and wonderful buckwheat-cactus pancake slathered in a cacao-nib pudding for years. Pancakes never went anywhere. They are just here to be rediscovered, like sunny-side-up eggs, and bacon, and toast β all of which, incidentally, have experienced mass fetish cycles over the past 15 years. I am eternally hopeful, but all my friends tell me: no. But a food fetish commands the attention of a much larger portion of the discourse, including people with somewhat sane relationships to food.
A trend can become a fetish, but the fetish is less about novelty than emotional appeal. These fetishes probably existed before the internet, but blogs and social platforms, especially Instagram, have accelerated the cycle and supercharged their conversion from genuine enthusiasms to conspicuously consumed objects. The most fetishized dish of all, avocado toast, neatly combines both fatty gluten comfort and a vague yet powerful suggestion that white people finally found the proper use for avocados.
Signs that pancakes are emerging as the new comfort carb, an on-ramp to fetish status, abound. A stack of pancakes presents pleasingly organic, asymmetrical ovals when shot from above, especially if they are scattered with strawberries; a vertical stack offers teetering, syrup-drenched abundance.
