IHOP doesn't make a pretensions of being something it is not, but I'm always disappointed when I go there since I know that I could have had better food if I just stayed home. Probably the biggest piece of this is that their pancakes have a nappy taste to them which could probably be characterized as "slightly off dairy". Steak N' Shake's pancakes suffer from this as well but they don't have the word 'pancake' in their name. As well, their bottles of artifically flavoered corn syrup? Yuck.
Anyway, I did love the coffee carafe that they would drop off, I wish more places would steal that idea.