This place is truly a hidden treasure for sure and the food is unique and scrumptious.
While searching for something new to eat breakfast, I came across Shopsins in my search on the web as one of the 5 top places to eat breakfast. My curiosity got the best of me. So I took a look at some of the reviews on Yelp. The reviews had me intrigued and a bit nervous to go, but I had to experience what everyone was writing about for myself. This place was compared to "The Soup Nazi". You can easily annoy the cooks or waiter by the way of ordering, your behavior, or if you are a bit rude to them. It can result of being asked to leave after getting cursed out. I immediately wanted to be there. I wanted to experience the opposite to what customer service is suppose to be about traditionally. My sister and I went there about 12pm. We weren't surprised by the line there. This place do not sit more than 4 people in a group. There is 18 seats (9 tables) and 3 seats at the bar. We waited about 30 minutes to get seated. We sat at the bar next to a very annoying and obnoxious man who was in front of us waiting on line.
Now this is not part of the review but I have to mention how this one man annoyed the crap out of us. I need to get this off my chest... As soon as we sat down, he immediately got up and went behind the counter to help himself to a cup of coffee as if he was part of the staff. It was the way he was sashaing comfortably behind the counter that bother us. He was trying to make conversation with the kitchen staff. The waiter asked if he was having the same meal as yesterday, he said yes directing a smugged smirk at the both of us. We kind of felt that's not what he really wanted to order but he just wanted to show us  how "Cool" he was with the staff because they remember his food order the day before. Such a Shopsins Groupie. He kept looking at us with the look in his face as if he were saying, ha, look at me, I'm VIP.
Dude, You had to stand in the same long line with us to get seated! If you were so VIP, they wouldn't have made you wait 30 minutes for a seat.
Anyway, getting back to what's important. The restaurant. OMG! The menu is so overwhelming. It's huge, looks like a page out of a dictionary. So much unique and interesting things to choose from. After we were finally seated and placed our order, we waited for about an hour for our food to come out. Before even ordering, the waiter told us that he couldn't take our order just yet because he can only place four orders at a time to the kitchen but he can bring us drinks if we wanted. So we waited a good 20 minutes before placing the order. But with that kind of menu, you really need that much time before placing an order. So no problem with that, we were just happy to be seated. Also, the waiter was very kind to us. We didn't really expect he would be rude to us anyhow because let's just face it, my sister and I are very adorable Afro-American identical twins. By observing our surroundings, not too many of our kind frequented there. We love the fact that we stood out from the typical patrons which are locals from the LES. So we pretty much expected the staff to be cool to us. While waiting, we dared not to show any ounce of impatience on our face. We just kept smiling like it was an honor to be waiting for them to serve us. (In which it really was. Food is AMAZING) We chose the mac & cheese pancakes with duck sauteed onions sliders. Side of turkey bacon (in which we were kind of reprimanded by a joke for not ordering regular bacon. it was funny to us) a stack of pancakes with pistachio, bananas, and something else that I can't remember right now and a side order of eggs with cheese. (I didn't ask for cheese on my eggs but somehow we felt that this is what they assume we wanted because lets face it, us black folks put cheese in almost everything.) I didn't send it back because I was really nervous to do so. I happily ate it without any complaints whatsoever.
We enjoyed how the kitchen staff were loud to one another by screaming and cursing at each other. The banter amongst them were enjoyably unprofessional and made us laugh. We loved every minute of our visit. We cleaned our plates. One of the cooks came out to get coffee and handed us some hand towels with a citrus scent. We complimented him on the delicious food and told him it was well worth the wait. He was very thankful. From reading some of the previous reviews here, I believe the actual main cook is the father of the cook we talked to. He sits it the famous big old chair mentioned here on Yelp. He was there, sitting in that chair right behind me. He would take his break there and get up to cook orders as they came in. When we were done eating and ask for the check we ask him if they take credit cards. UH-OH! we caught the annoyed look in is eyes. They use square for credit card purchases & slowed up is work. I told my sister let's pay cash so we can end this experience on a good note. We did, & left a really nice tip. Will definitely come back again.