Pull into the lot at Ol’ South Pancake House at three in the morning and you’ll find more cars than you’d expect. TCU students, mostly, plus whoever else in Fort Worth is up at that hour and hungry. Inside, the coffee is on and somebody at a back booth is squeezing lemon over a pancake about the size of a hubcap.
It has been that way since 1962. David Benson and his sister opened the restaurant with the idea that families could come in and eat at any hour, day or night. The original building stood right next door. In 1973 they moved to the current spot at 1509 S. University Drive, a few minutes from TCU and the Fort Worth Zoo, and the doors there haven’t closed since. David’s son, Rex Benson, runs it now.
Most people order the German Pancake, and they should. It comes out of the oven puffed up, with the sides curled high like a bowl. The server squeezes fresh lemon over it at the table, adds whipped butter and a heavy dusting of powdered sugar, and stirs it all together. What you end up with is sweet and tart at once, closer to a lemon bar than a stack of flapjacks. You can order it with fruit on top. Try it the plain way first.
The restaurant has said it goes through more than 40,000 of them a year. Sit there long enough on a Saturday morning and you stop doubting the number.
Groups tend to go for the Dutch Baby Sampler, eight smaller German pancakes topped with things like blueberries, strawberries, and cinnamon apples. It gets passed around the table and disappears fast.
Past that, the menu runs long. Old-school buttermilk pancakes, buckwheat pancakes, and corn cakes share space with Belgian waffles, French crêpes, and cheese blintzes. There’s eggs Benedict, steak and eggs, a long list of omelets, and breakfast tacos. Later in the day you’ll see burgers and sandwiches going out, and a chicken-fried steak that holds its own. Breakfast never stops, though, and that’s what keeps people coming back at odd hours.
The dining room looks like it has for years, with wood paneling, booths, and plates clattering in the kitchen. Service is quick and nobody hurries you along. When the family opened a second location in Burleson in 2021, they built it to feel like the original.
A place open this many hours for this many years picks up stories. In 2002, for the restaurant’s 40th anniversary, TCU Magazine asked readers to send in their memories. Some went back to the early ’60s, when students would bowl down the street and then walk over for pancakes. One woman wrote about getting married at midnight and holding her reception at Ol’ South, where most of her guests ordered German pancakes. The magazine also remembered Pauline Berg, a waitress through the 1990s who sang “I’m a Little Teapot” to her customers, and noted that Van Cliburn once told audiences at his piano competition to stop by for a late snack.
Sixty-four years in, it’s still run by the same family and still serving the same pancake. Not many restaurants iOl’ South Pancake Housen this part of Texas can say that, and fewer still keep the lights on all night.
The Fort Worth original at 1509 S. University Drive is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Burleson location at 225 E. Renfro St. is open daily from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Menus and online ordering are on the Ol’ South website.
