Two Pancakes

A culinary coup

I’ll never forget every single restaurant where my husband and I ate our first year of dating, and that’s because that year was 2020 so there were like, five of them total. One of the two brunches I can recall took place at Vivian’s Millennium Café. Though it sounds like one of the worst restaurants at Disneyland, it’s located conveniently in Studio City and mostly serves pancakes.

Leave France its patisseries! Leave Italy its trattorias! Leave Japan its yatai! Let this country have what it deserves: restaurants that dump fried dough on a plate for you to then drown in butter and sugar until you can’t feel your hunger or your sadness!

Vivian’s Millennium Cafe is a respectable addition to the venerable legacy of the “pancake place.” I’ve only eaten on the patio, which emanates from a charming tumble-down porch situated under an old avocado tree. I know its an avocado tree not because I’m good at trees but because there’s a lot of literature at Viv’s about that particular avocado tree. It’s OLD and BIG! (How OLD and how BIG is it?! Well so big that the aforementioned porch was built around it. Yup, it’s a tree-in-an-edifice situation, folks!) I’m not sure any of the avocados served at Vivian’s Millennium Cafe are actually sourced from the tree and I didn’t want to ask, what with the tree within earshot.

The porch is adorned with art a la Maxine. Remember Maxine? I didn’t (to me she’ll always be “Old Cathy”) but google old lady cartoon and she’s the first result.

Turns out there’s a man behind Maxine—like every good woman!

Anyway, there were a lot of paintings on wood in that particular 80s / 90s style—ladies in bright colors, with big hair, wearing kooky outfits. Were these painted by Vivian herself? I could have asked, but I didn’t.

We arrived for a late lunch but because it was Saturday it was brunch. The other patrons, at that point, were: a huge poodle in the care of two older men that looked “surfy”; a couple of women, one of whom carried a tiny fake Birkin bag, which I knew was fake because neon lettering on the side of it said “THIS BIRKIN IS FAKE JUST LIKE U”; a couple clearly dining with a set of parents-in-town; a beautiful young angel on a date with a potato man; a group of young adults who had just gone to Universal Studios and were planning their return trip; and a woman discussing her latest Tarot reading as her companion held a tiny, growling chihuahua on her lap.

I ordered eggs, avocado (from the tree?!), and two pancakes. I’ve never eaten one full diner pancake in my life but as it turns out being constantly tired and burning six hundred calories a day breastfeeding created a little bit of a different situation. My husband had barely tucked into his meal (no pancakes, just mash) before mine vanished down my gullet. Once it was gone I had a thought no one has ever had in human history: “I bet I could eat another pancake.”

I decided not to tempt fate and enjoy this victory. I watched my husband shovel down his breakfast (that’s not a comment on his table manners, but just how you have to describe anyone eating this particular type of breakfast) and sipped my coffee, which was the kind that tastes like it was made a week ago from toxic sludge. And as I did I thought about how the last time I was there my husband wasn’t my husband yet and now one pandemic later we were back—him spilling unidentified breakfast mash on top of our baby’s head, me barely full from two enormous pancakes.