Pancake House Near Me on the Lower East Side: Shopsin's Slutty Cakes

Shopsin's will not seat a party larger than four, gives a 3% discount for paying in cash and charges $17.75 for a plate of Slutty Stuffed Pancakes at Stall #8 inside Essex Market, 88 Essex Street on the Lower East Side. It opens Wednesday to Friday from 9am to 3pm and weekends from 10am to 4pm, sits about a minute from the Delancey Street–Essex Street station, and remains the strangest, most personal answer to a pancake house near me search anywhere in Manhattan.

Kenny Shopsin bought a grocery at Bedford and Morton Streets in Greenwich Village in 1973 for $25,000 and gradually turned it into a restaurant. At 63 Bedford Street it became famous for a menu that ran to roughly 900 items and for a cook who decided which customers he liked. The family moved to 54 Carmine Street in 2002, into the old Essex Street Market in 2008, and into the new market building at 88 Essex Street in 2019.

Kenny Shopsin died in September 2018, and the stall is still run by his family; daughter Tamara Shopsin's memoir Arbitrary Stupid Goal, about growing up in the restaurant, is linked from the official site. Calvin Trillin wrote about the place for The New Yorker, and the documentary I Like Killing Flies followed the move out of Bedford Street, so many first-timers arrive already knowing its reputation.

The current menu, a PDF on shopsins.com updated in August 2026, lists cash price first and card price in parentheses. Special pancakes such as lemon ricotta, banana pecan brown sugar or coconut sweet rice are $9 each ($9.27 on a card). Slutty Stuffed Pancakes, the famous ones with fillings cooked inside the batter, are $17.75 ($18.28), in versions like Egypt with chocolate, peanut butter, marshmallow and banana, or S'mores.

There is more griddle work further down. The Triple Play lets you choose three pancakes for $17.75, ebelskivers, the round Danish pancake balls, are $16, and a single plain side pancake is $7.50. Then there are the dishes that only make sense here: Mac'n Cheese pancakes with chorizo or Hatch chile at $11.50 each, and Chubby Stuffed Mac'n Cheese Pancakes at $18.75.

The menu is long and dense, so read it before you sit down and decide quickly. First visit, one stuffed pancake plate per person is plenty; the stuffed cakes are heavy, and sharing a Triple Play with a friend is a smarter way to taste several batters. An honest call: the mac'n cheese pancakes are a novelty more than a breakfast, so order them for the story only if someone else at the table has a sweet plate.

If someone at the table wants something that is not a pancake at all, Blisters on My Sisters is $15.75 and is one of the menu's best-known names. Bring cash if you can: the 3% discount is printed on the menu, and paying in cash keeps a $17.75 plate at $17.75 instead of $18.28.

The rule is printed in capitals on the website: we do not serve parties larger than 4. There is even a linked poem explaining why. Do not try to get around it by splitting a group of six into two tables that happen to arrive together; Wikipedia quotes Trillin's warning that pretending to be a party of three that came in with a party of two is a very bad idea.

Takeout works differently on weekdays and weekends. Wednesday through Friday, Shopsin's is to-go only, so the weekday hours are for picking up rather than sitting down. Online ordering through its Square site is switched off on Saturday and Sunday, and the stall also turns it off when the kitchen gets busy. Holiday closures are posted on Instagram, @shopsinsnyc.

Weekends are the only days to eat at the counter, from 10am with last orders at 3:45pm. Arriving at opening on Saturday gives the best chance of a seat without waiting, since the stall is small and there are only a handful of seats at the counter. If the counter is full and you are hungry, the rest of Essex Market is your waiting room, with dozens of vendors under one roof.

For a fallback with real tables and a sit-down brunch, Friend of a Farmer at 77 Irving Place in Gramercy serves pumpkin pancakes at $21 and blueberry pancakes at $20; it is a direct ride on the F to 14th Street plus a short walk, and a calmer room if your group has grown past four.

Shopsin's own website points out that it sits right across the street from the International Center of Photography, at 79 Essex Street, which makes the museum the obvious next stop after a heavy plate. A few blocks south, Seward Park, at Essex and Canal Streets, has benches and a playground and is a quieter place to sit down for a few minutes.

Walking up Essex Street toward Delancey also passes the Lower East Side's older food landmarks, so it is easy to turn one breakfast into a longer neighborhood stroll before heading back to the subway. The market itself has deep roots: the original Essex Street Market opened in 1940 under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to move pushcart vendors off the crowded streets, and the 2019 building that now houses Shopsin's carried that public-market idea across Delancey Street with a new generation of stalls.

Address: Essex Market, Stall #8, 88 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002. Subway: Delancey Street–Essex Street (F, J, M, Z), about a minute's walk; Grand Street (B, D) is a few blocks west. Hours: Wednesday to Friday 9am to 3pm (to-go only), Saturday and Sunday 10am to 4pm with last order at 3:45pm; closed Monday and Tuesday. Contact: the official site lists email and Instagram only, no phone number.

Payment: cash gets 3% off; cards are accepted at the higher printed price. Parties: four people maximum. Ordering: Square online for weekday pickup, switched off on weekends and at busy times. Prices in this guide are taken from the August 2026 menu PDF on shopsins.com.