The Magic Pan is a small American chain of fast-food and take-away creperies using the recipes of a now-closed chain of full-service restaurants that specialized in

crêpe A crêpe or crepe ( or , , Quebec French: ) is a very thin type of pancake. Crêpes are usually one of two varieties: ''sweet crêpes'' () or ''savoury galettes'' (). They are often served with a wide variety of fillings such as cheese, ...

s, popular in the early 1970s through early 1990s, which peaked at 110 Magic Pan locations throughout the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

History

The first Magic Pan was a small place on Fillmore Street in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

established by Hungarian immigrants Lazlo and Paulette Fono. Later, they opened a larger place in

Ghirardelli Square Ghirardelli Square is a landmark public square with shops and restaurants and a 5-star hotel in the Marina area of San Francisco, California. A portion of the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as Pioneer Woolen ...

. The

Quaker Oats Company The Quaker Oats Company, known as Quaker, is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by PepsiCo since 2001. History Precursor miller companies In the 1850s, Ferdinand Schumacher and Robert Stuart founded oat mills. Sc ...

acquired Magic Pan from the Fonos in 1970, and it became the company's primary restaurant chain. Quaker Oats sold the company to an

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

-based company, Bay Bottlers, in 1982. In 2005, the Magic Pan name was re-introduced by

Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) is a restaurant group currently comprising 120 or more restaurants mainly located in the Chicago metropolitan area. It was founded by Rich Melman and Jerry A. Orzoff in 1971. History The first restauran ...

as a

fast-food Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredient ...

crepe stand in Northbrook, Illinois. This resurrected version of Magic Pan does not have the crepe-making machine used in the original chain. Instead, it uses recreations of the original recipes. The revived chain opened a second location in the food court of the Mall of America near Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Paradies company currently operates Magic Pan in U.S. airports including

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

and

Washington National Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport , sometimes referred to colloquially as National Airport, Washington National, Reagan National Airport, DCA, Reagan, or simply National, is an international airport in Arlington County, Virginia, across ...

.Magic Pan
- FlyDenver.com

Food

Among the menu items were chicken divan, "chicken elegante", crepe suzette, crêpes filled with spinach and mushroom

soufflé A soufflé is a baked egg-based dish originating in France in the early eighteenth century. Combined with various other ingredients, it can be served as a savory main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé is the past participle of t ...

, strawberries and sour cream,

Chantilly cream Whipped cream is liquid heavy cream that is whipped by a whisk or mixer until it is light and fluffy and holds its shape, or by the expansion of dissolved gas, forming a firm colloid. It is often sweetened, typically with white sugar, and ...

, coffee chocolate sauce ice cream, and "cherry royale". The restaurant designed an automated system to make crepes at a crepe station, consisting of a motorized conveyor that would heat metal pans. An attendant would dip the bottom of the pans in the crepe batter, to ensure an even coating. And then turn the pans upside down while placing them on the gas flame conveyor, so the thin crepes actually cook on the bottom of a clean & greased pan that's facing upward. The ‘conveyor’ was a gas flame heated circular “wheel” about normal table height that slowly turned and held eight pans maximum at one time.

References

External links

Magic Pan Crepe Stand
- official website
- Magic Pan Alumni website on LinkedIn The Magic Pan Project
- Magic Pan Employee Social Network {{DEFAULTSORT:Magic Pan, The Restaurants established in 1964 Restaurant chains in the United States 1964 establishments in California Companies based in San Francisco Companies based in Oakland, California Restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area