Photo by: Megan Westervelt

Remember those pancakes mom used to make? The ones that were soaked in syrup and were so warm and soft that they seemed to melt in your mouth? The ones that had to be the best in the world? Jeanette Mueller’s are better.

Jeanette Mueller, in case you are now planning on staking out her house around breakfast time next Saturday morning, is the tiny, but tough owner of the Cozy Cottage restaurant on 2423 S. Downing St. And there’s no need to stalk her.

She will serve you up a stack of her amazing, homemade buttermilk pancakes, for which her little breakfast and lunch joint is particularly famous, for less than $10 any day of the week. That is, if you can get a seat.

Cozy Cottage is small. Cramped if you’re hung over, intimate if you’re not.

There are only seven tables and she handles them all herself. She has owned the restaurant since 2006.

Her son, Mike Mueller, cooks using his mom’s recipes, which don’t include any “mixes or sauces,” he said.

“Most of the stuff we make on our own. It is what gives us the character that you won’t find at other places,” he said.

People may come in for her amazing pancakes or fish and chips, but they keep coming back because at her restaurant, her customers are like family, she said.

“Because Mike and I treat people like they’re in our home, it becomes more of a family place,” she said.

She went into the food service business in 1979, after her husband walked out and she was unable to make enough money to care for her young children.

“My degree was in occupational therapy, but the kids were very little and I had to make more money to raise them. So I asked, what are my God-given talents and it was cooking and serving people. I’ve been doing it since I was this high,” she said, indicating with her hand less than two feet from the floor.

She opened a few restraints and after her son graduated from college tried owning a bar for ten years.

“We tried doing different things over the years, but were always brought back to the restaurants, specifically break fast and lunch,” he said. And this time around they seem to have made it work.

He said the restaurant has been embraced by the community and that Cozy Cottage has quite a few regular customers.

For her, Cozy Cottage’s success is simple.

“I enjoy serving food and I care about what you eat. This is a caring, giving kind of place and that’s what’s so special to me,” she said.

HoursMonday through Friday – 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.Saturday – 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.Sunday – 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Cozy Cottage serves breakfast and lunch.