The Egg Factory Pancakes & Cafe

"Eggstra-Fantastic"

-Meals Under $10, Daily Herald Dining Guide

Scrumptious, sensibly priced food fills the menu at The Egg Factory

Cuisine: Eclectic breakfasts, sandwiches and entrees
Setting: Bright and comfortable stylish cafe

Price Range: Breakfast items $2.95 - $7.95;
Salads/Sandwiches $3.95 - $6.95;
Full entrees $5.95 - $7.95

There is a well-known adage that you should breakfast like a king but
eat like a pauper for dinner. The culinary bounty at The Egg Factory
bestows such a royal treatment on breakfast that it's not easy stopping
at just one selection. After all, a solid breakfast is the most important meal
of the day, right? A listless donut or hapless coffeecake is not going to cut it at this Mount Prospect restaurant.
The Egg Factory has a number of strengths: a creative menu, welcoming decor and great orange juice. It also has plenty of smiling faces. Friendly and available for questions, the waitstaff and hostess must have been trained by Disney. For our late Sunday morning visit, everyone was welcoming, upbeat and, dare I say it for non-morning people, cheery. Although there was a 10-minute wait to be seated, the brick-accented lobby had ample space with benches. The service that day was quick and efficient, and tables were filled promptly.
The pancake house has a pleasant, casual decor. Sunlight streams though large windows and reflects off Tiffany lights and stained glass trimmings. The natural wood with burgundy color scheme used throughout the restaurant presents a clean and pleasing setting.
Owner Pascalis Shiakallis divided his 220-seat restaurant into distinct sections. There is a private room for groups, a mix of booths and tables in the two adjoining dining areas; and at the core, there's a juice bar. Each morning, oranges are squeezed fresh for a full-flavored wake-up beverage.
The Egg Factory has an ambitious menu that offers generous portions at reasonable prices. Though breakfast is its forte, the restaurant doesn't stop there. Fluffy omelettes, sizzling skillets, classic crepes, Belgian waffles, French toast, homemade blintzes, gourmet pancakes and hearty egg specialties are just for starters. After 11 a.m. the lunch menu adds meal-sized salads, pita wraps, charbroiled burgers and 14 savory sandwiches. There is strip steak, chicken breast, six pastas, and fried calamari and shrimp. Several entrees come with soup or salad. American fries or rice pilaf, and fresh mixed vegetables.
We began our meal with the tender calamari because it was so unexpected in a pancake café. The breaded and fried appetizer was average in quality but generous in quantity. The squid also comes in marinara sauce over spaghetti, as a salad and as a full fried entrée. I followed it up with peach pecan pancakes. Five large pancakes stretched across a platter with bright peach slices and pecans scattered across the top. A dusting of powdered sugar made for an eye-opening presentation. The pancakes were fluffy and the topping liberal. I barely resisted also ordering the pancakes with berries poached in Cherry Kijafa wine and grenadine syrup and the French toast of cinnamon raisin bread dipped in batter and grilled.
The Gypsy skillet was a base of American cubed fries topped with tender chunks of baked ham, mushrooms, green peppers, onions and melted cheddar cheese with two extra-large eggs over easy on top. The flavorsome and filling entrée was coupled with two buttermilk pancakes.
Since it was challenging to decide what to eat, we felt obliged to watch other diners' selection whiz by in the waitstaffs' hands. The six-piece fried shrimp entrée with French fries, mixed vegetables and a salad looked like a great value, as did the whitefish Florentine and Alaskan red salmon specials. There was also a fresh albacore tuna salad, piled high in a large ripe tomato offered with cottage cheese, sliced carrots, hard boiled egg and sesame toast. Fourteen different omelets allow choices of crumbled feta cheese, fresh spinach, ham and charbroiled chicken breast. Chicken also stars with Canadian bacon and melted American cheese in a toasted sandwich.
The signature apple pancake we ordered "to go" was savored later at home. Over an inch in height, the pancake had a nice balance of cinnamon and soft apple slices to flavorful batter and crisp topping. What made it exceptional was a slim sweet swathe of caramel sauce over the top. Delicious!
After such bounty, desserts come up lacking. There is apple pie and vanilla ice cream with four toppings. If you must, add the French vanilla ice cream to the apple pancake for a small extra charge.
No breakfast review could be complete without a word about the coffee. It is Superior Royal Kona fresh-ground regular and decaf served with real cream - refreshingly plain coffee.
Shiakallis honed his skills for this restaurant when he owned the Woodfire Chicken restaurants in Itasca and Deerfield, but felt a restaurant like The Egg Factory was more to his taste. With such a stylish, scrumptious and sensibly priced start to a day, he must be a morning person to have done the job so well.

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"It was the best Apple Pancake I've ever had!"
-Samantha
Palatine, IL

"The French Toast was amazing!"
-Lisa
Arlington Heights, IL

"Your sandwiches are excellent. The Chicken Feta Sandwich is my favorite"
-Chris
Wheeling, IL

"The food was great and so was the service"
-John
Chicago, IL

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