Pancake House Near Me in Gramercy: Friend of a Farmer's Pumpkin Pancakes

Pumpkin pancakes with toasted walnuts cost $21 at Friend of a Farmer, 77 Irving Place in Gramercy, and on Saturdays and Sundays you cannot book them: weekend brunch is walk-ins only, served every day from 9am to 4pm. The restaurant sits on the stretch of Irving Place that runs up to Gramercy Park, about four blocks from 14th Street–Union Square, and in autumn its seasonal griddle section is the reason people searching pancake house near me head for this townhouse.

Carrie Morabito opened Friend of a Farmer in 1986 as, in Edible Manhattan's words, a tiny, six-table café serving baked goods, sandwiches and homemade preserves. Her husband Terry is a builder, and the couple's sons, Taylor and Weston, now run operations. Over the years the business grew into the two-story townhouse it occupies today, and a second location opened on West 71st Street on the Upper West Side.

The family shows up on the menu itself. The griddle section lists Weston's Blueberry Pancakes, Carrie Dee's Apple Pancakes and Taylor's Tasty Toast, names that match the founder and her sons. The restaurant has never spelled out the connection in print, but regulars tend to read the menu as a family tree, and it fits a place that still bakes and preserves in-house.

The autumn pick is the pumpkin pancakes with toasted walnuts at $21. Weston's Blueberry Pancakes, described on the menu as bursting with fresh blueberries, cost $20, as do Carrie Dee's Apple Pancakes with homemade apple chutney. The menus change four times a year, so the pumpkin version is a seasonal reason to come in fall rather than a year-round fixture. If you are torn, order the pumpkin stack and the apple pancakes for the table and compare: the walnuts give the pumpkin plate some crunch, while the apple chutney leans tart rather than sweet.

Outside the pancakes, Taylor's Tasty Toast, a brioche French toast with berries, is $19, and cornbread waffles are $19 too. Hungrier tables go for the Boomer Special at $28, scrambled eggs with a choice of sides. An honest call: chicken pot pie at $33 is a dinner-weight plate, so skip it at brunch unless you plan to make this your only meal of the day.

The rule is printed on both the official site and Resy: no weekend brunch reservations, walk-ins only. On weekdays the same brunch hours can be booked through Resy, which in October 2026 still showed open morning tables from 9am. That makes a Friday at opening the easiest way to sit by a fireplace with a plate of pumpkin pancakes and no line outside.

On Saturday and Sunday, aim for the 9am opening, before the Union Square Greenmarket crowd drifts north. If the host quotes more than 45 minutes, a walk to Gramercy Park and back passes the time, or you can switch plans entirely: Café Luluc in Cobble Hill serves a $16 fruit pancake plate all day, and an F train from 14th Street gets you there in about 20 minutes.

Groups of five to twelve have to call rather than book online, and the Gramercy location does not take event bookings for weekend brunch, so large birthday brunches are better planned for a weekday or for the Upper West Side branch. Happy hour runs from 3 to 6pm Monday through Friday, but it is served only on the patio and at the bar.

Dinner starts at 5pm and runs to 9:30pm daily, which means the same kitchen turns from pancakes to pot pie over the course of an afternoon. The hours posted on the reservations page in October were still labeled summer hours, so the times in this guide reflect what the restaurant itself currently lists.

The official About page describes custom tapestries, handcrafted wood beams, concrete tables and wood-burning fireplaces, all meant to suggest a warm countryside room in the middle of Manhattan. In late October that atmosphere does a lot of the work, because the fireplaces and the seasonal menu arrive at the same time of year, and the pumpkin pancakes land on tables that look more like a country inn than a block a few minutes from 14th Street.

The 9am weekend opening suits families and early risers who want a table before the walk-in line forms, while the weekday patio and bar happy hour draws an after-work crowd from the offices around Union Square. Because the room is spread across two floors, it handles pairs and small groups better than most brunch places in the neighborhood, as long as you stay under five.

Irving Place runs north directly into Gramercy Park, the gated private square whose keys belong to residents of the surrounding buildings. You cannot go in without one, but walking its iron-fenced perimeter past the townhouses and the National Arts Club takes about ten minutes and is one of the quietest loops in this part of Manhattan.

Heading the other way, three blocks south on Irving Place bring you to 14th Street and Union Square, where the Greenmarket sets up on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. In October the stalls are piled with apples and squash, which makes a fitting stop after eating pumpkin and apple pancakes for breakfast.

Address: 77 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003. Subway: 23rd Street–Baruch College (6) or 14th Street–Union Square (4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R, W), each a few blocks away. Hours: brunch 9am to 4pm daily; happy hour 3 to 6pm Monday to Friday on the patio and at the bar; dinner 5 to 9:30pm daily.

Reservations: Resy on weekdays; weekend brunch is walk-ins only; parties of five to twelve must call. A second location is at 68 West 71st Street. Prices in this guide come from the brunch menu on friendofafarmer.com, which also lists a 2026 Thanksgiving dinner at $125 per adult for anyone planning ahead.