The $59 Pancake Philly Is Obsessed With

The Honey Butter Hoe Cake at Sao / Photograph by Phila Lorn

Welcome to Just One Dish, a Foobooz series that looks at an outstanding item on a Philly restaurant’s menu — the story behind the dish, how it’s made, and why you should be going out of your way to try it.

At Sao, Phila and Rachel Lorn’s new-ish crudo and oyster bar on East Passyunk, much of the menu arrives cold and pristine. There are thick slices of bluefin tuna glossed in olive oil and lemon, plump day boat scallops with chili jam and ponzu hidden under a messy mix of slivered apples, pepitas, and green Thai basil, and deftly shucked oysters on an icy tray, served alongside some of the most electric mignonettes and hot sauces in the city.

And yet, the dish people can’t stop talking about isn’t raw at all. The Honey Butter Hoe Cake — a thick corn-based pancake crowned with a heap of cold smoked trout salad, a generous dollop of roe, and, if you’re feeling flush, a half ounce of Golden Osetra Caviar — is Sao’s runaway hit.

Nearly a decade ago, while visiting Rachel’s sister just outside of Boston, the couple made the pilgrimage to Neptune Oyster Bar. The tiny, always-packed institution is best known for its briny oysters, buttery lobster rolls, and the Johnnycake — a savory pancake topped with smoked bluefish, crème fraîche, and sturgeon caviar. The Lorns ordered and didn’t forget it. “We got the cake and it was on my mind since then,” Phila told me. “We are students in this industry. I am immediately inspired by things, and I keep it to myself until I can pay homage to it.”

When the Mawn owners started planning their second restaurant, Phila called Neptune and offered an extra hand in the kitchen. “I said, ‘I’m so in awe of your restaurant, I want to go over there and give you some free hands, I just want to see the operation.’” The person who answered the phone, though, said, “We don’t do that” and hung up on him.

Phila didn’t stew over the hang-up, but it did motivate him. “When that happened, I was like, ‘All right, game on,’” he told me. That spark translated into obsessive refinement and became Sao’s signature.

The Sao hoe cake, Phila says, is “like a corn muffin and a pancake had kids together.” It starts as a cornbread-style batter, then they fold in dashi — a seaweed-based soup stock that’s a foundation in Japanese cooking — which adds an umami backbone before the whole thing gets a sweet bath of honey-butter sauce. The chef makes the sauce starting with honey. “Once that starts to bubble, we’ll fold in some butter and do a pan emulsification,” he says. The syrupy concoction gets poured over the crispy-edged cake, which soaks it all in.

The hoe cake is then topped with a generous scoop of chilled smoked trout salad, made with dill, Japanese mayo, chives, and lemon juice — then finished, for anyone who orders the add-on, with a mound of smoked trout roe that gleams like teeny orange jewels, and then finished, for anyone who orders the add-on, tiny pearls of Golden Osetra Caviar.

I’ll be honest: I’m skeptical of caviar on everything. In some cases, it’s become a bit of a trick (like adding shaved truffles or fat uni) for masking mediocre food. But it belongs here. It’s earned its place and, in its own trick, somehow gives an extra spark to a dish that’s already perfect. Phila agrees. “I actually hate the trend of blanketing things with the luxury things that I didn’t grow up eating,” he says, “but in this circumstance, it really makes sense — it introduces a popping texture and smokiness that really works with the butter and the cake,” he says.

Getting the dish right took repetition. Phila credits pastry chef Davina Soondrum. She went through nearly a dozen versions — adding, adjusting, tweaking — until the base cake could hold its own before a single topping was added. “We wanted the cake itself to be good alone,” says Phila. “The moment I knew it was correct was when Rachel ate it, stopped, and looked up at me. I was like, ‘We got it.’”

“I gotta keep it real with you,” Phila tells me, as if he ever keeps it anything else. The hoe cake “sort of went viral.” People come in already knowing what they want, and most, he says, go all in on the optional caviar add-on. It’s a $35 upcharge that makes the honey-butter hoe cake a $59 dish. The chef understands the impulse to order it, especially when reservations are hard to come by. But he also admits that he’s a little surprised that they sell like literal hotcakes. “As an owner, I think, goddamn, that’s an expensive pancake.”

He’s right: $59 for a pancake feels absurd. Still, watching the plates stream out of the kitchen, sending up a whiff of brine and browned butter, it’s obvious why they’re so popular. Once you take a bite, it’s hard to argue with the price.