Legendary Fairway Market is known for its cheese, its coffee, its massive cold room (at the 125th Street location), and most importantly, its value. The prices are so good, in fact, that the Fairway at 74th/75th and Broadway has become the site of a weekly pilgrimage for HungryMan and me since we moved to New York– we stock up on good cheese, produce, and fish, and leave the store laden like two mountain burros. But very happy burros.

A few months ago, we realized that the stairwell near the cashiers actually led to another part of the supermarket, one that houses a massive (and cheap) array of organic foods and green-goods. What’s more– there’s a restaurant up there. Now, in truth, we’d heard about the restaurant once or twice but had just never managed to piece together that it must be upstairs. The restaurant somehow, despite the fact that its entrance is really hidden away inside the bustle of the market, manages to attract a very large crowd. Each time we’ve gone, it has been filled to capacity. Actually, filled to bursting is a better description– at least, that’s the scene we discovered yesterday, when we joined our friend Chilena for brunch.

I admit that we arrived with an agenda. Another foodie friend waxes lyrical about the pancakes at Fairway, so we figured that this brunch would be the perfect chance to taste them for ourselves. With that in mind, I ordered the pancakes alone ($6.95), and HungryMan ordered the Big Boy Special Plate ($10.95), which includes not only pancakes, but two eggs and bacon.

So what about the pancakes? We have come to expect very wide, head-sized pancakes from New York restaurants– but instead, we were served smallish cakes about three inches in diameter. Even more unusually, Fairway pancakes are not as tall as you might predict. We think this is because they use less leavening in the recipe, and perhaps even a bit less buttermilk. But they do not suffer for the reduction. In fact, I think that these pancakes are improved by both their size and their squat profile; sometimes when cooks try to create a pancake of architectural proportions, they end up serving a rubbery mess that, yes, supports its own weight, but that tastes like something that can support its own weight. The attention in the Fairway pancake seems to be much more on showcasing flavors: especially butter and a very pleasant toastiness. Served simply with a little fruit, or as more of an ensemble player alongside very fresh eggs and papery slices of bacon, these might be the most perfect brunch food we’ve had in a long time.

Chilena must have sensed that this was a patty-themed meal, so she opted for the crab cakes ($14.00) as her brunch selection. Unwittingly, she acted as the perfect counterpoint to our own choices, opting for something from the more savory side of the brunch menu. Normally, that’s HungryMan’s job, but today, he had his face buried in a stack of pancakes, so we had to outsource the task. Chilena stepped up and was also able to add a new level of expertise to her assessment of her dish– in a previous life, she worked in Alaska at a seafood cannery, so the woman really knows her shellfish. With that in mind, it means even more that she was so pleased with her food. Almost all of the crab meat in her cakes was lump crab– a good sign– and was not over-cooked. There were flecks of chives, pepper, and dill mixed into the meat, giving a little color to the mayonnaise and egg base, but never overpowering the sweetness of the crab. The mesclun salad that came with the cakes was dressed with a basic vinaigrette– nothing extraordinary– but it was a good way of balancing the heft of two very solid, very chunky patties. I don’t often think that a $14.00 plate for lunch is a good value, but I would absolutely order these crab cakes on a future visit, given what I saw and tasted at this meal.

Now the real problem becomes which to choose: the pancakes or the crab cakes?

Fairway Café, 2127 Broadway (between 74th and 75th Streets), 212-595-1888 Ext. 145