IHOP

This was the first one. The channel's first video, the first time either of us set foot in an IHOP, and the first time we sat down to judge a place with a camera in front of us instead of talking it over in the car on the way home. We had been here almost three years trying breakfast places and already had our ranking pretty well set in our heads; what we did not have was anywhere to put it.

We got there at one thirty in the afternoon without having eaten breakfast, which is exactly the hour when you decide that counts as brunch and let it go.

It is worth explaining how we ordered, because part of the result depends on it. Diana was going to order the Eggs Benedict with avocado and the waiter talked her into the Classic, the traditional one, the original. And when we told him it was our first time, he pushed the Dubai Chocolate Pancakes and the Dubai Chocolate Milkshake on us, which was what everyone was posting about.

A note on method, in case this is the first time you are reading us: everything gets tasted without sauce first. Sauce changes the flavor of the original recipe, and if you add it before tasting you no longer know what you are grading.

The dish of the day was the sirloin with eggs and hash browns. The steak comes with onions and mushrooms, it has a slight sweetness that is very pleasant and does not take over, and the eggs and the hash browns come along without getting in the way. For what it costs it is incredible. Recommended a hundred percent, and it is what we would order again without thinking twice.

The Classic Eggs Benedict did the job and not much more. There is no way for them to be bad, but there is no way for them to surprise you either: wherever you order them they taste the same. They are good, and that is it.

And now the part that hurt. The Dubai Chocolate Pancakes were what we were most excited about and what disappointed us most. The batter is not good and they come out dry. We poured syrup on them to see if they would pick up and they did not. The milkshake does hold up, but with a warning: what carries it is the pistachio, so if you do not like pistachio, do not even order it.

The bill came to $40.19 for two mains, the extra pancakes and a drink. Mains run around $14 and $15. For Miami today that is an incredible price, and that is why price gets a 9.5 — a 10 would be free, and the day somebody comps us a meal we will talk about it.

Service also got a 9.5, some of the best we have had. Atmosphere gets a 5, and it is nothing personal: it is a chain, it looks the same in every location, they did not kill themselves on the design.

Approved. One weak dish does not take down a place where you eat well, get treated better, and walk out paying forty dollars for two. Go for the sirloin and skip the Dubai pancakes.