Bubby's pancakes make it the best brunch in NYC

• Bubby's began as a pie shop in 1990, but has since grown to be a key brunch spot in the ritzy New York neighborhood of Tribeca, drawing in high caliber celebs for casual eats.
• The brunch is famous for its pancakes - including the sourdough pancakes which use a 130 year old starter, and the stack named for James Beard - loaded with sour cream, the tangy fluffy stack is a must try.
• Editor's note: Insider visited Bubby's in February 2020. The TiBeCa location is currently open for takeout and delivery daily from 8 a.m. - 9 p.m. Please visit their website for more information: https://www.bubbys.com/

Lisa Paradise: Whether you prefer them thin and tangy or you lean towards sweet and savory topped with crispy fried chicken, you can't go wrong with a stack of pancakes. And these pancakes are so popular people are willing to wait hours to get a bite.

Customer: I'm originally from the Midwest, and you know those home-cooked meals that really hit you deep down in your soul? They bring that here to New York. You can come in and see a celebrity. You come in and get a great meal. It's the entire experience.

Lisa: Weekend brunch in New York is honestly its own institution. It is hard to find a restaurant here that doesn't have a brunch menu, and Bubby's has been doing up brunch for decades. And today I am eating the very best that brunch has to offer, fried chicken and pancakes. Walking into a restaurant named for Jewish grandmothers, one could only expect a homey vibe and hearty, well-cooked food. And Bubby's doesn't disappoint on either end.

Customer: You know, you feel like you're coming home and you're getting a great meal every time you come.

Customer: My typical order, I always get a side pancake.

Lisa: You get a side of pancakes?

Customer: Just one pancake.

Lisa: Every time you come here?

Customer: Every single time.

Lisa: What makes them better than other pancakes you've had?

Customer: Oh, man, I don't even....

Lisa: You're speechless over pancakes?

Customer: Yes! They're so good. You can't miss them.

Ron Silver: I eat at Bubby's every day.

Lisa: That's Ron Silver. And after 30 years of owning and operating Bubby's, even he can't get enough.

Ron: Brunch is a great thing. A long, drawn-out meal. And eating all these sort of sweet, savory foods together, it sort of reminds you of the day after Christmas.

Ron: That is just an impossible amount of pancakes to figure out.

Lisa: There are two kinds of pancakes on Bubby's menu: a plate of wafer-thin, super tangy sourdough pancakes that are served plain, or the more classic, fluffy, slightly sweet James Beard variety, which derive both their name and recipe from the culinary legend, of whom Ron is a massive fan.

Ron: These pancakes, the recipe is James Beard's recipe, and I swapped out some of the milk for sour cream. And I think I was pretty young when I made those the first time, maybe, like, 24, so I was maybe more cocky at that time. Willing to play with his recipes.

Lisa: The James Beard pancakes at Bubby's begin by whisking together eggs, sour cream, sugar, and a little melted butter. Then it's time for the dry ingredients, flour, baking soda, and salt, followed by a splash of milk. The batter is poured onto a piping hot griddle that's been doused in melted butter. Then it's left to sizzle and bubble before each pancake is flipped just once. Then it's doused once more in butter to ensure a perfectly crispy, buttery exterior.

Customer: The fluffiness of it. And it's like, it almost dissolves as I put it in my mouth. It's very easy to eat. This is kind of of our third date. She told me about it. And so we decided to come here for our third date. So that's how I heard about it.

Lisa: Amazing, eat pancakes at your wedding!

Customer: Thank you. [laughs]

Lisa: Bubby's sourdough stack begins with this: a sourdough starter from 1890. Eggs, sour cream, sugar, salt, and melted butter are whisked together. Then flour is mixed with the 130-year-old starter and some buttermilk for a punch of tang. Finally, the batter is left to sit to ferment for 24 hours to let the signature sour flavor really develop. The thin batter is poured onto the grill and, like its fluffy counterpart, flipped only one time before serving.

Customer: The thing about these pancakes are, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, they're always good. Man, it just, my mouth is already watering, and I already ate that for lunch.

Lisa: Ron opened Bubby's on Thanksgiving Day in 1990, when his friend, who rented the space, took a three-week vacation. Ron decided to cook first and ask permission later, serving pies and Thanksgiving leftovers. By the time his friend returned, Bubby's was already a hit, and the restaurant has been going strong in the same space ever since.

Ron: There was a place across the street that was very busy, and it was a pancake house, and they had a line around the corner. And I sort of remember standing outside one day saying, well, if I could just get that line to come over here, then we would be really busy.

Lisa: And although Bubby's has kept the array of pies, by developing a new menu based on American comfort foods, it managed to get that line and then some.

Customer: It was about, like, 45, 50 minutes.

Customer: I wanna say, like, 35 minutes.

Customer: About an hour.

Lisa: An hour?

Customer: Yeah.

Lisa: And was it worth, like, killing 45 minutes of time?

Customer: Oh, yeah. I love it here. I just love the atmosphere. It's always so energetic. And it's just such a nice place to bring your friends.

Lisa: We're having kind of a crazy brunch. We're doing two different kinds of pancakes. On this side I have the James Beard pancakes. Of course, they're topped with fried chicken. You don't have to have them topped with fried chicken, but in my opinion, what's the point of going to brunch if you're not gonna get some sort of fried chicken? And then on this side, I have the sourdough pancakes. I've never had pancakes that are this thin before in restaurants. I've had them at home when I really mess up pancakes.

Let's do the sourdough. Typically, if I was gonna eat pancakes, I would, of course, put butter and syrup on them. But I really wanna try them plain first, 'cause I'm curious what the sourdough starter does to them. That was too big. They're really sour. Like, they're really sour, and they're really sweet. I mean, obviously you say sourdough, you expect them to be sour, but I'm surprised at the complexity of the flavor and the way that it builds in your mouth. Because when you first take a bite, it does taste like a pancake, and then the more you chew it the more it has that, like, bready, pretzely, sourdough feeling to it. They give you the thinnest pancake you've ever seen, and they still squish in that really satisfying way. I watched them make this, and I still have no idea how you get that consistency with something so thin.

I'm here for the fried chicken. You basically get half a fried chicken on top of pancakes, which I am fully down for. Oh, it's juicy! Oh, this is juicy. This is crispy. Don't look at me while I have this moment. The chicken is brined for 24 hours. And you can tell. It is so incredibly juicy. I think you can really taste, it's peppery, it's salty, and then it pairs perfectly with the pancakes, because the pancakes are sweet but not too sweet. They have a little bit of syrup on top of them, because why not? With the crunchiness of the chicken and the fluffiness of the pancake makes for a perfectly textured bite of food that is everything that you want from a Saturday brunch.

Be it sober, hungover, 10 mimosas in, it doesn't matter. This is the ideal that you look for when you look for a weekend brunch.

There is a crowd outside. I'm nobody! I'm gonna go up on all their blogs, like, "Who's this?" And people are gonna be like, "Literally no one." Yeah. [laughs]