Golden Diner Pancakes Recipe

Golden Diner's pancakes are thick, domed and raised with yeast, served under honey maple butter and a syrup with a dash of soy sauce. For pancakes in that style, rest a batter of buttermilk, yeast, sugar and flour for an hour, add egg, oil and baking soda, cook one thick pancake at a time in a small skillet and finish all three in a 350°F oven.

How Golden Diner's pancakes are made

Golden Diner is chef Sam Yoo's restaurant in Manhattan's Chinatown, opened in 2019, and the chef has published the recipe for its pancakes through NYT Cooking, as Simply Recipes reported in December 2025.

That article walks through the method: yeast is blended with flour, buttermilk and sugar and left for an hour as a pre-ferment; more flour, baking soda, eggs and oil follow; the pancakes cook in a non-stick skillet and finish in the oven. On top go a butter beaten with honey, maple syrup and salt, a syrup of honey, butter and maple syrup with a dash of soy sauce, and a little lemon zest.

The recipe below follows that description of the method with this site's own amounts. It is not the chef's recipe, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Golden Diner.

Recipe

Honey Butter Pancakes in the Style of Golden Diner

Thick yeasted buttermilk pancakes cooked in a small skillet and finished in the oven, with honey maple butter and a honey maple syrup with soy sauce, in the style of Golden Diner in New York. Three large pancakes.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

20 min

Cook

25 min

Total

1 hr 45 min

Serves

3

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• For the batter:
• 1 cup buttermilk (lukewarm)
• 1 teaspoon instant yeast
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, for the pan
• For the honey maple butter:
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• For the syrup:
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

Instructions

1. Whisk the buttermilk, the yeast, the sugar and 1 cup of the flour in a large bowl. Cover and let it stand in a warm place for 1 hour, until bubbly.
2. Whisk the egg and the oil into the batter. Mix the remaining 1/2 cup of flour with the baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon of salt and fold it in, just until no dry flour is left.
3. For the honey maple butter, beat 4 tablespoons of butter with 1 tablespoon of honey, 1 tablespoon of maple syrup and 1/8 teaspoon of salt until pale and fluffy.
4. For the syrup, warm 1/4 cup of maple syrup, 2 tablespoons of honey, 2 tablespoons of butter and the soy sauce in a small pan, stirring, until the butter has melted.
5. Heat the oven to 350°F. Melt a little of the butter for the pan in a 6-inch non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Pour in a third of the batter and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until the underside is deep golden and the edge has set. Turn it and cook for 2 minutes more.
6. Move the pancake to a baking sheet and repeat with the rest of the batter. Bake the three pancakes for 5 minutes, until cooked through.
7. Top each pancake with a spoonful of the honey maple butter and pour the warm syrup over it.

Nutrition

Calories:

775

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Yeast and baking soda together

The yeast has an hour to make the batter bubbly; the baking soda, added at the end, reacts with the acid in the buttermilk when the batter hits the pan. Between them the pancake rises without whipped egg whites.

Fold the second half cup of flour in gently. The bubbles from the hour of resting are what make the pancake tall, and hard stirring knocks them out.

One pancake, one small pan

A 6-inch skillet holds the batter in and makes it rise upwards. In a large pan the same batter spreads into an ordinary pancake.

• Medium-low heat. A pancake this thick needs time; on high heat the outside is dark before the middle is set.
• Turn it once, when the edge looks dry and the underside is deep golden.
• The oven finishes it. Five minutes at 350°F cook the centre through without more colour.

Without a small skillet, use greased 4-inch ring moulds in a large pan, or make six smaller pancakes and skip the oven. Thin pancakes that need no special pan are the Trader Joe's protein pancakes on this site.

The butter and the syrup

The honey maple butter is whipped, so that it sits on the hot pancake as a soft cap before it melts. The syrup is thin and warm. Half a teaspoon of soy sauce is too little to taste as soy; it salts a syrup that is otherwise only sweet.

For the lemon zest named in the description, grate a little over the buttered pancake at the end.

The night before

The batter can rest in the refrigerator overnight after the first step, in place of the hour at room temperature. Take it out half an hour before cooking and go on from the second step.

Other pancakes on this site are the Thai coconut pancakes, cooked in a pan with round wells. Another breakfast on this site is the Kodiak French toast sticks.