Road trippers flip out for Harrie’s Pancakes, but are they any good?

Visitors to Graskop have a substantial to-do list: see a few waterfalls, visit God’s Window and other view sites, and pop over the mountain to Pilgrim’s Rest. The Blyde River Canyon is a bit further north, but right in town there’s Harrie’s Pancakes.

Harrie Siertsema has been flipping his pancakes since 1986 and the Mpumalanga eatery — one of four branches in the country — is a fixture feature on the tourist map.

I take or send most houseguests there. Others go repeatedly because they claim I underfeed them. Either way, it's a must to visit, at least once.

With guests being rare this year until now, I recently took two friends to brunch at Harrie’s. 

The menu is simple: six sweet pancakes and 11 that have a savoury filling. There are also two soup options, two breakfasts, and the usual drinks including wine and beer. At R98, the biltong and mozzarella pancake is the most expensive - none are more than R100.

I had the Dutch bacon and cheese pancake (R85) the tourist favourite, because I'd never had it before. My friends had the bobotie pancake (R85) and the Thai-style chicken curry pancake (R95).

We tasted all round, and the chicken was voted the best, although not particularly Thai.

The bobotie was a reasonable one, with almond flakes on top, but it lacked any trace of the usual egg custard topping.

The bacon pancake had a very generous amount of grated cheddar inside and on top, but the effect was somewhat dry. I would like to try it with a Welsh rarebit-style hot cheese topping.

The slightly fluffy pancakes are good and work better with fillings than crepes would.

The presentation, apart from a bowl of chutney and different for each pancake, was too simple. Some garnish, even a few shreds of red cabbage, would work visual wonders.

Still, we enjoyed our brunch and were too full to even share a cinnamon pancake for the fun of it, so these are very minor criticisms.

Service is fast, and you are in and out in easily under an hour. So it's the perfect pit stop for travellers on the move, be they in private cars or tour busses.

No wonder that in normal times the tourist busses doing the Panorama Route take up much of the parking outside Harrie’s at lunch time, disgorging strangely dressed people with cameras.

We will welcome them back next year. Meanwhile, us locals will enjoy our pancakes in peace.

• Harrie’s Pancakes has branches in Graskop, Dullstroom, Tshwane/Pretoria and Cullinan. Visit harriespancakes.co.za for more info.