Why you should experience Original Pancake House Shinjuku in Tokyo, Japan.
Original Pancake House Shinjuku is an indulgent pancake restaurant where Shinjuku's metropolitan character, Portland breakfast tradition, oven-risen Dutch Babies and Japan-developed soufflΓ©-like pancakes bring two distinct eras of pancake culture onto the same table.
Set inside Lumine Est Shinjuku near Shinjuku-dori and just steps from Shinjuku Station's East Exit, the seventh-floor restaurant carries recipes descended from a Portland institution founded in 1953. The Dutch Baby rises dramatically in the oven before receiving whipped butter, powdered sugar and fresh lemon at the table, creating a signature built as much around its final preparation as its scale. Japan-exclusive Fuwafuwa Pancakes introduce another style through meringue whipped after the order is placed, producing a tall, airy stack finished with whipped butter and house maple syrup. The result is a Shinjuku pancake restaurant where a seventy-year American breakfast lineage and Japanese reinterpretation coexist through radically different treatments of batter, butter and heat.
What you should know about Original Pancake House Shinjuku.
Original Pancake House Shinjuku is best known for carrying the recipes of Les Highet and Erma Hueneke, who founded The Original Pancake House in Portland, Oregon, in 1953 after drawing on years of culinary experience and extensive knowledge of national and regional pancake traditions. Their menu developed around exacting ingredients and techniques, including hard-wheat unbleached flour and an old-fashioned sourdough culture made from potatoes, flour and sugar for batters intended to produce light, fine-textured pancakes. The family business expanded through franchising to more than 100 American locations, carrying specialties including the Dutch Baby and Apple Pancake across the country. Japan entered that history on June 4, 2013, when franchise operator Fookγ« opened the country's first branch at Kichijoji Marui and committed to reproducing the American recipes and techniques. Harajuku followed in March 2015 as the second Japanese location. Original Pancake House Shinjuku opened in July 2016 on Lumine Est's seventh floor as the fourth Japanese branch, arriving with ten pancake combinations developed specifically for Shinjuku alongside the established American repertoire. The Japanese operation subsequently created Fuwafuwa Pancakes unavailable at the American restaurants, giving the imported concept a second culinary lineage developed inside Japan.
The Dutch Baby begins as German-style batter expanding against oven heat until its perimeter turns deeply browned and crisp around a soft, chewy center. Whipped butter melts across the hot surface at tableside before powdered sugar settles into the folds and squeezed lemon cuts through the richness with fresh acidity. Fuwafuwa Pancakes move in another direction through freshly whipped meringue, producing a delicate interior that yields beneath whipped butter and house maple syrup. The classic pancakes bring a denser structure through batter matured for three days using the Japanese operation's proprietary method. Strawberry Pancakes layer that matured base with house strawberry sauce and fresh berries, bringing fruit acidity into the butter-and-maple repertoire. Original Pancake House Shinjuku gains its culinary range from these contrasting transformations of batter, allowing oven expansion, meringue aeration and multi-day maturation to produce three markedly different pancake experiences within one restaurant.
How to fold Original Pancake House Shinjuku into your trip.
Original Pancake House Shinjuku works as the sweet centerpiece of a Shinjuku route connecting Edo-period worship, Tokyo's surviving yose culture and the garden landscape created from a feudal estate.
Begin at Hanazono Shrine, whose history predates Tokugawa Ieyasu's 1590 arrival in Edo and whose later association with theatrical performances makes it especially fitting within Shinjuku's entertainment district. Continue to Shinjuku Suehirotei, where the lineage of yose entertainment reaches back to 1897 and the surviving wooden auditorium keeps rakugo performance unusually close to its audience amid modern Shinjuku. Conclude at Shinjuku Gyoen, whose grounds developed from the Naito family's Edo estate into an imperial garden before opening to the public after World War II, combining Japanese, English landscape and formal French garden traditions. Original Pancake House Shinjuku closes the progression above the station with another imported tradition reshaped in Tokyo, connecting Highet and Hueneke's 1953 Portland recipes to the meringue-driven pancakes created specifically for Japan.
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