Don't go there to dine/if you can't do the swine/don't do it...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

M, P, & IMS.

Tonight I went to Waffle House. Now for those who aren’t familiar with it through it’s “edible artery clogging food at low prices” or its famous jukebox songs about waffles in all genres (bluegrass, disco, several kinds of country, etc.) a Waffle House is basically a rectangular glass and brick box that serves waffles and other breakfast foods 24/7. It’s for people who find IHOP snooty or for people like me who happen to like the atmosphere (which I really do).

So tonight I ordered pork chops and eggs. Behind me is sitting a blonde- I would estimate 20 something, slightly heavy, neither attractive nor un, well dressed in a pretty blue blowse girl drawing a pastoral scene on a sketch pad. When I place my order I hear her say “oh god not again” in a super disgusted voice, making me wonder “did I fart and not realize it or kill her baby once or something?” and when I’ve finished ordering she asks the waitress “Ma’am, would you please warn me before his order comes out?”

“The fuck whatwardly?” I think. The waitress asks her, absolutely true this, “Warm you with what hon? You want some hot coffee?” She says “NO! WARN me… w-a-r-n me! I’m horribly allergic to pork and even the smell makes me sick. I don’t want to be here when his pork chops come out I’ll go outside and smoke.” (It’s about 35 degrees here, incidentally, and she’s wearing a pretty but thin blouse, no jacket.)

I turn around and say “I can move to another table if that will help…” and she grows a bit nicer. “No, it’s not you, I was raised Seventh Day Adventist and we’re not supposed to eat pork but my parents did and now I’m so allergic the smell makes me sick.”

O-kayyyyy.

The smell of pork makes her sick, so she comes to a Waffle House, which could practically be the Americanization of the Monty Python “spam” sketch. “We’ve got pork sausage, eggs, grits, pork, and toast, and we’ve got pork chops, salad, hash browns with pork, bacon, eggs, and tea, or there’s the bacon, ham, and hash-browns covered with pork chops, bacon, jalapeño’s, onions, chili, pork sausage, and cheese, and then there’s the all pork platter with bacon, ham, more bacon, sausage, pork chops, iced tea, pork chops and pork chili, or there’s today’s special of chestnut soup, sautéed scallop, fire roasted halibut with a side of tagliatelle, all served with artichoke tomato and wild rice pilaf and covered in chili, onions, cheese, bacon, pork chops, and ham”. The Waffle House chain is to hogs what the Ottomans were to Armenians, this would be like someone with allergies to penicillin dating the Beatles on their first American tour.

Anyway, the pork chops arrive (about 12 seconds later, the reason I love Waffle House) and she went outside to smoke, shivering in the freezing weather. The waitress just kept looking at her “I feel sorry watching her out there so cold. Must be awful to be crazy. Reckon all of them 7 Day Adventurers are or is it just her?”

She waited until I was finished eating and came back inside. At which point the waitress brought me a complimentary side order of country ham. I wasn’t hungry but my dogs loved it. The girl never left the table again.

So any crazy diner experiences on your end lately?

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None to share, here - but thank you kindly for the “O-kayyyy” image. I may have to make it my wallpaper. A fine image to go with a fine story. Like Merlot and lamb.

I’ll try to stock up on diner stories soon - MN has finally gone smoke-free, and I may be able to enter them again. When I have money. And a hankering for pork.

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In case you didn’t notice, it moves. :slight_smile:

Soon to be a TV series , incidentally. I’m guessing a pretty short-lived one.

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I did the Waffle House thing sometimes back in my college, taxi-driving days. My most vivid memory was sitting in one at 3:00 A.M. during on of the rare ice/snow storms in the DFW area and it was so cold inside the place that the snow that people tracked in wasn’t melting very fast. I’m with you, though, about IHOP. They try awfully hard to be pretentious, but they miss badly.

5

If Waffle House franchised to post Civil War states, it just wouldn’t be the same, right?

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Waffle house, with their infamous waitressaurases. Ah, memories…
A few weeks ago my best friend and I went to Red Lobster. A couple was sitting in the booth behind us, with a screaming newborn. It was pretty disturbing, even for someone that has had kids and is somewhat inured to crying. My friend was making jokes about it that weren’t kind, but they were jokes and they were funny. A few minutes into it, they get their food boxed up and leave. As they were getting up, the young dad threw the most hateful glare at my friend. Oops.

7

I love Waffle House. I usually go with my mom after she gets home from work in the morning. The last time we went, we got into a straw fight with the man at the next booth down from us and listened to two old men debate whether or not Rhode Island could divorce lesbians, sparked by this story.

And the hash browns were delicious. Not a bad way to start a Sunday.

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They tried it once. One was to be opened in Pennsylvania… in a little town called Gettysburg.

Rabid fans of “The Special Lady Waitin’ at the Waffle House” were justifiably pissed and went up there to protest it. Three days later the fields were scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, and diced for miles around with the blood and gore of 50,000 men, BUT WE KEPT OUR PRIDE AND OUR HASHBROWNS!

(And that’s the history they don’t learn you in schools.)

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Q: Ya ever heard of ‘lil round top’?
A: Keep Dubya outta this…

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How can you go to Waffle House and not have pork? I mean, you have to get the hash browns, and you have to get them scattered, smothered, covered and chunked at a minimum.

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Man, they don’t even have Krispy Kreme in this godforsaken frozen wasteland. You’re dreaming if you’re hoping for a Waffle House.

Fucking heathen yankees.

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I hope you left that waitress a good tip, she sounds like a swell gal.
now I want waffles and bacon.

13

Krispy Kreme tried to muscle in on Dunkin’ Donuts’ turf but got whupped back to wherever it came from. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Now them’s fightin’ words. Just goes to show that Yankees can’t recognize quality cuisine. I mean, if you’ve been to a Krispy Kreme when the “HOT” sign is on, and you still go back to Dunkin’ Donuts, then you been drinkin’ out of the Mystic River for too long, and it done hurt your brain.

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She’s a Seventh Day Adventist and rather that smell pork, she’d rather go outside and smoke? :smack: A few Sunday Schools short of a Communion, that one. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I like the Waffle House’s atmosphere too. But whatever I ate there in Arizona was the first food that had ever made me sick. I was 18 at the time, to give you a sense of the magnitude of that. So I tend to avoid the place.

I don’t think there are any in California anyway, so it’s no big deal now.

See above. I ate at a Waffle House just north of Tucson once. (It’s off the 19, Ina Rd, I think. Alice the Goon probably knows which one I’m talking about.)

They don’t have Krispy Kreme anywhere now, do they? But I clearly remember eating at one in Minneapolis.

Concurred.

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This thread is making me wish the local IHOP was still around. The building with its characteristic steep-sloped blue roof is still there but it’s currently a Thai restaurant. Since we’re far too northern (and western) for a Waffle House, I guess I’d have to settle for the Denny’s across the street.

Krispy Kreme has made inroads here. I’ve vowed never to try one on principle. Don’t know exactly what that principle is (something about the massive lines whenever one opens up bugs me) but I’m stickin’ to it nevertheless.

Alas, Dunkin’ Donuts hereabouts are no more. Man, I loved me those ones that were packed all full of frosting!

Even Winchell’s is long gone. Sigh

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Not true. My hometown has one. Never discount the geographical misplacement that is Central California.

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Still, Arizona wasn’t a state at the time, just a territory, but Tuscon was capital of Confederate Territory of Arizona, so it’s allowed (as long as they don’t serve sweet tea- that stays hyeah).

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If you want Krispy Kreme badly enough, you could just do what I did when I lived in MA.

Go to Mohegan. :stuck_out_tongue: