A couple hundred gallons of pancake batter are prepped and ready to pour for a breakfast of epic proportions in Springfield, Massachusetts this weekend. WAMC spent some time with the team working to put on “The World’s Largest Pancake Breakfast.”
If you want a couple pancakes, there’s always your local diner. If you want a couple thousand though, you might have to stop by the hospital first. That’s how it works in Springfield, at least for the last day or so.
A crew at Mercy Medical Center has been filling and chilling a hundred five-gallon buckets of pancake batter – all in preparation for the annual “World’s Largest Pancake Breakfast” happening downtown Saturday morning.
While kitchen workers prep and serve patient meals and cafeteria offerings for staff, Mercy’s culinary team has also been moving one bucket after another into cold storage.
Helping them mix the batter for a short time Friday was this year’s honorary event chair, Springfield Fire Department Commissioner B.J. Calvi.
Head of the fire department since 2018, Calvi opted for tried-and-true, wrist-spinning whisking – attempting to maneuver through a giant bowl over two-feet-wide.
Mercy Chief Development Officer Geoffrey Hoyt, meanwhile, tried to mimic a blender, spinning the whisk between two hands.
“Look at you go!” the fire commissioner remarked.
“I’m not used to a bowl this big,” Hoyt replied.
It was a bit of a photo-op: Calvi’s main work is ahead of him on Saturday as he and other volunteers serve plates of two large pancakes and a side of bacon to a couple thousand visitors outside the MassMutual Center.
It’s a long-running tradition in The City of Homes – one that celebrates the city’s founding and also brings people together, organizers say.
On Friday afternoon though, Calvi was just focused on keeping things airy and free of lumps.
“Got to make it light and fluffy,” he told WAMC, laughing.
According to Hoyt, Mercy has been taking part in the event for three decades, whether it’s pancake batter mixing or sponsoring the event.
Organized and put on by the non-profit Spirit of Springfield, one could argue the event goes back to the 70s, when the city marked the nation’s bicentennial with a Main Street community breakfast.
A breakfast was held again ten years later to mark the city’s 350th anniversary, and the tradition picked up from there.
The Mercy CDO says it’s another example of what makes the city of over 150,000 residents special.
“This is just one, primary example of just how close-knit the community is and how involved and passionate people are who not only live and work here, but their kids go to school here,” Hoyt tells WAMC. “They come here for their healthcare, they come here for their education, and so, all of those things combine - it's where we live, it's where we work, where we play and this is yet another example of just … how great the city of Springfield is.”
According to organizers, the batter - donated by the Performance Food Service company and MGM Springfield – will make its way to Main Street with 200 pounds of Cabot Creamery butter and a thousand pounds of bacon donated by Smithfield Foods.
At least 300 volunteers will assist with serving the massive meal, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Road closures on and along Main Street will start around 4 a.m. Saturday to accommodate it all.
