I have been admiring the new IHOP stuffed french toast from their TV commercials. They sounded yummy to me.

So when we were in the middle of Saturday's downpour, Chris and I decided comfort food was in order. IHOP popped to mind.

We looked over the menu carefully, but they weren't listed. We did, however, find out that the International House of Pancakes is a California company, started here. That made me like them slightly better.

I do try to maintain a snobbish avoidance of chain restaurants, but the fact that it is a local chain is slightly better.

Chris would prefer to eat at the same three chain restaurants every day of his life. Fortunately, our relationship is more than just what we eat.

We asked Maricela, our waitress about the stuffed french toast. Apparently, there is a separate flyer-type dealy that explains your stuffed toast options.

There is the regular option, and then the Big option which has two extra pieces of fatty meat. The Super option included a total of six pieces of various fatty meat.

I thought two pieces was enough, so I got the regular. Cause I was mostly interested in the toast, anyway.

Well, the toast was like two pieces of bread sealed on all the edges. You might think it would be difficult to seal two pieces of bread. It is. IHOP's solution was to deep fry it shut.

They must have deep-fried it, and then warmed in up again on a grill, because one side had an extra browning on one side.

Well, they had fruit and whip cream on the top. THe filling seemed to be cream cheese with a lot of powdered sugar mixed in. Mine did not have a lot of filling, which is probably good, because it was very sweet. Since there wasn't too much, it tasted pretty good.

It reminded CHris immediately of the State Fair's deep-fried twinkies. We hadn't actually tried the deep-fried twinkies, but we could imagine.

It was good. Although the grease sat on my tummy the rest of the day. I'm glad I didn't opt for the 6 pieces of fatty meat.