Free Range Pancake House
15421 US Highway 27 NorthI realize I treat my body poorly. I don’t get nearly enough sleep. I don’t eat right. I rarely exercise. Because of that, it’s not unusual for me to be able to function normally if I don’t get a lot of sleep or enough to eat.
Tuesday was one of those days. It was a wild day at work. I got called in for an emergency assignment overnight. Got home at 4:30 AM. Got up at 7:30 AM to get my kid to school then headed in to work for my normal dayshift at 8:30 AM. I had gotten about an hour and a half of sleep and had to function for a day that didn’t see me clocking out until 9:30 PM.
A co-worker and I were in Marshall. We were working out of our car that day and not driving back to the office to finish up the work. We needed to find a gas station for a bathroom, gas, and some drinks and we ended up at the Johnny’s right off the Interstate.
We decided to park there for a couple of hours for the work we needed to do on our computers.
It was about 1:30 and I hadn’t eaten anything other than some candy and snacks from the gas station. I have to wait for my colleague to do what he needs to do before I can do what I need to do so I was just kind of sitting in the car scrolling through Tik Tok.
Right next to us was a diner. I was kind of hungry so I looked them up to put a to-go order in.
Free Range Pancake House is right off the I-94 interchange at US Highway 27 in Marshall. The free standing building is on the north side of the highway heading away from town. The building shares a parking lot and the big highway sign with the large gas station next door so it’s easy to spot even before you get off the Interstate.
I put in an order in using their online system a little after 1:30. My receipt said my food would be ready about about 2:05. I hung out in the car for a while then headed in.
The restaurant looks like any roadside diner across the country. There’s a large waiting area right inside the door where the cash register and hostess stand are. It was pretty late on a Friday afternoon so getting a table wouldn’t have been a problem if I was dining in.
The dining room is pretty large and covered with chicken related decor. It’s a bright, homey dining area that has the feel and comfort of your grandma’s kitchen. The space is kind of divided up in to two areas with a large dining room with larger table configurations in the middle. It’s surrounded by another area with more booths and smaller four tops that can be pushed together for the after church Sunday breakfast crowd.
I walked in right at 2:05 when my order was supposed to be ready. I told the waitress I had a carry out order and she just looked at me and said, “you’re gonna have to wait a bit.” I thought she was just busy at the moment but then saw her talking to someone else and pointed at a to-go bag sitting on the counter. My order wasn’t ready yet.
I took a seat on the bench by the door and waited. It was another 20 minutes before I saw a waitress filling the to-go bag with a Styrofoam container. I heard a different waitress tell a table who had been waiting for a while they’re short in the kitchen so that’s probably why it took as long as it did.
I decided to go back to the car to eat. I had kept it pretty simple ordering the Breakfast Smash burger with a side of fries. The cost of the meal was right around $15 before tip.
I popped open the box to find a lot of food. I thought it was best to get the fries out of the way first so I went to town on the out-of-a-bag steak fries. When it comes to frozen food service fries, this is one I actually really like. The outside can get really crispy while the inside of the fry stays light and airy. I pulled out the little packets of salt and pepper that came with the silverware because these needed a little more flavor. I finished off what was in the box and was almost too stuffed at that point to dig in to the burger…….almost.
The Breakfast Smash is an Angus Beef patty topped with bacon, an egg, hashbrowns, and cheddar cheese. I, for some reason, made this a double and added on an extra beef patty for a upcharge. The patties weren’t smash burgers in the way I think of smash burgers. These were clearly frozen food service patties, which is fine, I was just thinking they were going to be thinner, fresh patties smashed on the grill. Because they were actually frozen patties, the sandwich was a lot bigger than I expected. The sandwich is really good crossover between breakfast and lunch. I got the egg cooked to a medium well so I wouldn’t make a mess on myself in the car. The bacon was nice and crispy…the way only a pancake house can make it. The hash browns were super crispy all the way through as well. There was a lot to this sandwich but a lot that worked together to make a burger that hits the spot both for breakfast and for lunch.
Free Range Pancake House is a pretty classic roadside diner. It serves breakfast all day so even if you’re not a morning person, you still have a spot to grab some pancakes.
I’ve driven by this place more times than I can count and never really considered stopping. We’re never in the area for breakfast so it’s never really been on my radar. I stopped for lunch just because I happened to be sitting in the parking lot and I love a good diner burger.
SW Michigan Dining 