One fine Saturday morning, you awake and find that you have a predilection for some glorious pancakes with delicious syrup poured over the top in great glistening pools of shining liquid sugar.

So, you get ready and drive to town, to a nice pancake restaurant with some great Yelp reviews. You stroll up to the counter and enthusiastically beam and say “I’ll take a short stack of pancakes today!”

“Do you want plain, blueberry, or chocolate chip?” The cashier asks.

“I’ll take plain. And what kind of syrup do you have?”

The lady smiles. You catch a glint of some pointy teeth and her eyes glow a faint red. You blink and shake your head. She’s just smiling the fake cashier smile at you, nothing to worry about. No glowing eyes or pointy teeth. “Must be my imagination” you decide.

“We just have syrup. We’re offering free tours of the kitchen today. Would you like to see how it’s all made?”

“That’s weird,” you think. But for some reason those unblinking eyes have transfixed you. You hear yourself say “Hey yeah that’s cool. I’ll take the tour!”

Your spine begins tingling as you amble behind the counter, and into the kitchen. The first thing you see is a horrific beast. A beast with scales. It lets forth a tremendous bellow, and bends down toward two big black cauldrons. A stream of brown, viscous liquid begins to trickle out of its nose. Pretty soon, the trickle is a thick stream, and before you know it, the cauldrons are full.

Then you see him. A gargantuan hulk of a man lumbering towards you from behind the beast. “WHO IS THIS IN MY KITCHEN!” he thunders. He smiles a big, pointy smile, like the cashier’s, and lunges for your neck…

You scream and clamp your eyes shut. Nothing happens. You continue to exist. “That’s odd,” you think, and open one eye. You see a short, fat, and balding man in front of you, smiling quite a normal smile, apart from the fact that he’s missing a couple teeth. He’s holding out his hand. You shake it. Behind him, you see a big vat with a “Mrs. Butterworth’s” logo on the side. “Hmmm…” you think, “where’s the monster gone…”

“Ah, you must be the guy that agreed to a little kitchen tour, yeah?” he says in an uncomfortably loud voice. “Come, let me show you where all the ingredients start their journey from in our kitchen.” You go through a little door to the outside. A Sysco truck is just backing into the dock.

The driver hops out, and opens the door of the trailer. Inside is just black. You wonder if maybe you can see a faint red glow off in the distance in the trailer. The tortured screams of the lost emanate from somewhere in the back of the trailer. You shake your head, and blink. You look again, and this time all you see are boxes upon boxes of “Mrs. Butterworth’s” lurking hideously in the shadows.

After watching them unload these boxes of “Mrs. Butterworth’s” the chef takes you back inside through the little door. You walk past the big vat of “Mrs. Butterworth,” and into a room filled with putrid black smoke. The clanging of hammer on anvil can be heard. “THIS,” the owner bellows, “IS WHERE WE MAKE OUR PANCAKES!” You see a stooped minion skittishly look in your direction. You are quite sure you can only make out one eye. The minion turns back to the round shape on his anvil and continues hammering vigorously. You stare for a while, uncomprehending. Finally, you gingerly close your eyes. When you finally open your eyes, you see a standard fryer, with a standard grungy looking pancake flipper flipping pancakes madly. He has an eye-patch over one eye.

The owner then takes you to a viewing window of the restaurant. You can see rows upon rows of poor miserable sods, each with their short stack of pancakes, glopping on monster snot from rows upon rows of miserably small pitchers that could never contain enough syrup for three pancakes, even if it was real syrup. You shudder. You blink. You can still see those rows upon rows of poor miserable sods. You blink again. You conclude this must be actually happening. Your screams of sorrow echo through the kitchen as the owner lunges for your neck.

The End

This is a dramatized fictional account of something that happened to me today (Saturday). Please, please, please! If you are a restaurant owner, and you buy Mrs. Butterworth’s or some other equivalent “syrup”, which to me seems to have the consistency of mucous, please upgrade.

Like, being better than Mrs. Butterworth’s is such an incredibly low bar, I can even give you a recipe for artificial maple syrup that’s way better. It’s only three ingredients! You take water, sugar, and maple extract. You combine lots of sugar and water with a little bit of maple extract and boil it for a little bit. THAT IS LITERALLY ALL IT TAKES, YOU LAZY CRETIN! THAT IS ALL IT TAKES TO MAKE ME HAPPY. BUT NO! YOU INSIST ON BUYING AWFUL SYRUP FROM SYSCO AND SO MY TERRIBLE PANCAKE EXPERIENCES WILL CONTINUE! NO! I DEMAND CHANGE!

Look, it’s very simple, if you are guilty of this sin, and you decide you want to change, you can raise your pancake prices by a dollar or two, and make this simple recipe, or better yet, actually buy real maple syrup. Then you can advertise “WE DON’T MAKE YOU PUT MONSTER SNOT ON YOUR PANCAKES.” I bet you would become a millionaire overnight.

And I don’t want to hear the excuse of “oh it costs too much” NO! I don’t believe it for a second. Here’s why. Cracker Barrel sells pancakes for $9. NINE DOLLARS. And they give you real maple syrup. The pancakes I ordered today were about $12. There is no way on earth that upgrading your syrup for your pancakes will break your bank. Even if it would, I would be happy to pay the extra $2 for four ounces of pure maple syrup.

Listen, this is my final offer. If you read this, and you decide to repent of this egregious horror. and start to offer syrup better than Butterworth’s, you can email me at kent@kentfriesen.com. I will personally fly out to your location (or drive) and support the cause of Better Syrup for a Better World by buying an order of pancakes with syrup superior to Mrs. Butterworth’s and its ilk.