Oh, I could tell you I went to Le Lapin Mort, that tiny little incredible restaurant that everyone is going to, and that the aioli-infused carpaccio on a bed of squid-ink vermicelli isn't as good as it was last week. But only .006 percent of you will ever go there. Let's talk chains.

So I'm at a franchise restaurant we all know and love -- let's just call it Pankin's Percakes, and leave it at that. (Do try the percakes; best in town.) It's one of the few places where a grown man feels comfortable eating pancakes for supper. Not French toast -- that would be decadent. But pancakes soaked with Tripleberry Syrup, a scoop of that fluffy I-can't-believe-it's-actually-butter stuff, some eggs, hashed browns, and one of the gristle 'n' nitrite confections we lovingly call "breakfast meats" -- man, that's dinner. Unless you had it for breakfast. In which case, go for the steak and eggs.

If it's still on the menu, that is.

I bring this up because I go to Pankin's infrequently, so there's always a new menu with new items. Understandable: You lose your audience if you don't innovate. People throw down the menu and bark, "Denny's has sausages stuffed with eggs and bacon wrapped around waffle wedges! Innovate, already!" And then they have the short stack.

Most of these innovations I skip, because when you enter certain restaurants you have a specific item in mind, and you will not be dissuaded just because they spent a lot of money focus-testing a Crab Hollandaise Scramble with Fennel Muffins. Even if your server is named Fennel Muffins. It may be lovingly described -- "sea-kist' crab is carefully blended with choice sauces, infused with French sea salt, then photographed and manipulated in Photoshop until it looks nothing like what you actually get" -- but chances are you were thinking "patty melt" the moment you pulled into the parking lot.

So I'm at Pankin's, thinking: Where is the melt? What have they done to the menu now? Ah: there's the melt section. Frisco Melt, Tuna Melt, Turkey Melt, Chernobyl Melt (Tabasco and Russian dressing), Smelt Melt (seasonal) and so on. Something new: a melt topped with deep-fried onion fragments, served with fries. It was like the theoretical antithesis of vegetables; let a piece of lettuce touch it and all matter will be annihilated for a 50-parsec range. Perhaps it's there to make you feel good about choosing a melt that doesn't spackle your aorta. I'll just have the patty melt.

Except it was gone.

I mention this for one reason: When I twittered, on the spot, about the absence of the patty melt at Pankin's, there was a great disturbance in the Force; the outcry was prompt and heartfelt. When I brought up the matter of the missing melt with the waiter, I had the impression he had heard this before -- indeed, the new menu was like a new version of Windows. It doesn't warn you that your meal may be at risk of viruses, but you know what I mean: Features you had come to love and depend on were gone.

So what was behind the change? Perhaps someone struck the basic patty melt from the menu, and told himself, "I'm just like Steve Jobs when he decided not to include a floppy drive." Then the complaints rolled in. Then the e-mails began. One morning, a note from the personal assistant: the boss wants to see you. Oh cripe, oh cripe, Did he say why? Something about you going and the melt coming back, I don't know.

The waiter said they could still make me one. Apparently there were partisans in the kitchen eager to strike a blow for the cause. While we discussed the loss of the patty melt, another waiter heard the conversation and drifted over: It's coming back, he said. It'll be on the next menu. How he knew, I can't say, but I believe him. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. I ordered it with pleasure. And fries.

It was OK.

Daughter had the percakes, and said they were excellent. Wish I'd had them. I really wasn't in the mood for a patty melt.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858

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