Breakfast at Tavva was never going to be ordinary
A breakfast dish inspired by one of the best Italian ingredients
A note from Val: Why these pancakes are different
Ricotta is one of my favorite Italian ingredients.
I love what it does to food. It makes cakes softer, creamier, more tender, and somehow richer without feeling heavy. Anytime I can find a way to add ricotta to a recipe, I usually do.
So when we started developing the Tavva breakfast menu, I knew I wanted to find a way to use ricotta somewhere.
That’s what led to these pancakes.
But I didn’t want them to feel like typical diner pancakes with a little ricotta mixed into the batter. I wanted them to feel completely different from the moment you take the first bite.
These pancakes are soft, fluffy, and almost custard-like in the center. They melt in your mouth in a way that surprised all of us the first time we tested them.
Tyler commented that whenever pancakes are advertised as “fluffy” on a restaurant menu, they so often end up dry and disappointing.
These are the opposite of that.
And then I took them even further.
Instead of serving them with traditional syrup, I tested them with our Italian pastry cream on the side.
It was love at first bite. My family raved about them!
The pastry cream makes the whole experience feel fresh, creamy, and completely different from standard pancakes. Honestly, it feels closer to something you’d get from an Italian bakery café than a drive-thru breakfast menu.
When Tavva opens, customers will be able to choose which flavor of pastry cream they want served with their pancakes. We’ll have our vanilla bean Italian pastry cream, our lemon Italian pastry cream, and possibly a few more flavors that I’ll reveal later on.
So no, these are definitely not diner pancakes covered in syrup.
They’re something entirely different, and I can’t wait for you to try them!