Pancake House Near Me in Manhattan Beach: Uncle Bill's Since 1961

Uncle Bill's Pancake House opens at 7am every day at 1305 Highland Avenue, on the corner of 13th Street in downtown Manhattan Beach, and its posted menu lists a stack of three buttermilk pancakes at $12.50. The restaurant has been cooking in the same converted beach cottage since 1961, closes at 2:45pm, and sits about a quarter mile uphill from the Manhattan Beach Pier, which is why it comes up first for so many South Bay locals who search pancake house near me on a Saturday.

The official history starts with a house that stood on the lot before the turn of the century. The first business license on the site was issued in 1946, and in 1961 a man known as Uncle Bill McElroy opened the pancake house. P. Allen VanAmburgh bought it in 1973, and the VanAmburgh family still owns it today. For years the south half of the building was a barbershop, until 1999.

In 2000 the restaurant took over the old barbershop space and opened its outdoor patio, which is when the dining room stopped relying mostly on the counter. Southbay Magazine's June 2026 profile describes the result: a blue-trimmed beach bungalow with a small blue door, blue swivel chairs at the counter, and walls covered in family Christmas cards and photos of longtime regulars.

Pancakes come as a stack of three unless the menu says otherwise. Buttermilk is $12.50, buckwheat and pumpkin spice are $14 each, chocolate chip is $14.50, and blueberry and macadamia nut are $15. The strawberry version is different: two buttermilk pancakes with fresh strawberries and whipped cream for $14.50. In October the pumpkin spice stack is the one that fits the season, and at $14 it costs only $1.50 more than the plain buttermilk.

If you want eggs with your stack, Cakes & Eggs costs $14. The menu's best-known savory dishes are the potato plates: Potatoes Stroganoff at $14.50 and Potatoes del Riego at $17.50. J.D.'s French Toast is $17. An honest call: the macadamia nut pancakes are the most Southern California item on the list, but the plain buttermilk stack is the cleanest way to judge the griddle on a first visit.

Southbay Magazine says the cottage welcomes hundreds of people on any given weekend morning, and the small room makes that obvious by 8:30am. The surest strategy is to arrive at the 7am opening on Saturday or Sunday, or to come on a weekday, when the room is noticeably calmer and a single diner can usually slip onto a counter stool without waiting long.

Takeout works by phone or by walking up to order, but the homepage warns that during peak hours the kitchen cannot take call-in or walk-up orders at all. So a weekend plan to grab pancakes to go only works early. If the line is too long, The Original Pancake House on Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach, about ten minutes south by car, is a reasonable fallback, though it closes on Tuesdays.

The staff is part of the appeal. Southbay's profile names long-tenured employees Gloria, Greg and Maria, and a server named Summer who has worked there for nine years, while Mira Costa High School students host on weekends. Many tables are regulars from the surrounding streets whose photos are among those pinned to the walls.

That mix of long-serving staff and teenage weekend hosts is part of what Southbay calls anchoring generations, and the counter is the best seat in the house if you are on your own: it is fast, it looks straight at the griddle, and it is where the restaurant served most of its guests for its first four decades. Larger groups have fewer options in such a small building, so a party of six on a weekend should plan around the 7am opening or a weekday visit rather than expect to be seated together at peak time.

Uncle Bill's is open every day from 7am to 2:45pm, but the official site lists a few exceptions. On December 24 and December 31 it closes early, at 1:30pm, and it is closed on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. That matters for visitors planning a holiday-week beach breakfast, since those are some of the busiest mornings of the year in Manhattan Beach.

Because the kitchen stops before 3pm, this is strictly a breakfast and lunch place. If you are arriving in the afternoon after a beach day, plan to eat elsewhere and come back another morning; the pancakes are not available for a late lunch. The same goes for sunset plans: by the time the beach crowd comes off the sand in the evening, the griddle at Uncle Bill's has been cold for hours.

From the corner of Highland and 13th Street, the Manhattan Beach Pier is about a quarter mile downhill to the west. Walking it after breakfast is the obvious move: the pier stretches over the surf, with the Roundhouse Aquarium at the end, and the beach on either side is one of the most popular stretches of sand in the South Bay.

At the base of the pier, the Strand is the paved beachfront path lined with houses, popular with walkers, runners and cyclists. Heading north or south along it for twenty minutes and then climbing back up to Highland Avenue makes an easy loop that brings you back near the restaurant and the shops of downtown Manhattan Beach.

Address: 1305 Highland Avenue, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266, at 13th Street. Hours: daily 7am to 2:45pm; closes 1:30pm on December 24 and 31; closed Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Ordering: dine in, call ahead or walk up for takeout, except during peak hours when phone and walk-up orders are paused.

Prices in this guide come from the menu PDF posted on the official site, unclebills.net. Be careful when searching: a similarly named Uncle Bill's Pancake House chain operates in New Jersey and has its own website, which has nothing to do with this Manhattan Beach cottage.