Well, Time only said they use lo melt to cook things on the griddle, not that they serve it at the table in place of butter.
Right. They don’t serve Lo-melt on the table. Not sure why that was confusing.
Good luck trying to eat an entire restaurant.
I want you smothered
Want you covered
Like my
Waffle House hashbrowns
Have an order of scattered, covered, smothered, chunked and peppered for me!
Because when I was there they didn’t serve real butter for their waffles, just a butter substitute that I’m assuming is the same as lo melt.
Last year when I went to visit family for Christmas, I had the pecan waffle on two separate occasions. Yummy! I’m going to turn this into an annual tradition. It’s too decadent for everyday eating, but my waistband can afford it once a year.
The hashbrowns always seem much better in my imagination than they actually turn out. I’m always a tad disappointed when I order them. But the grits are always perfect. No ham required. Just lots of butter, salt, and pepper.
Why not assume it was margarine?
Because it wasn’t. It was like generic country crock or some shit.
That’s exactly what it is. Fluffy margarine is the only way I know to describe it.
They do have plain ol margarine on the sandwich board. It’s what they use to butter the toast. You can ask for your food to be cooked with it, or for it to be added to your waffle on the board (before serving), but I recommend you become a well-liked-tip-the-cook kind of regular first.
Lo-Melt is the thing that makes Waffle House food give people…indigestion. It’s used overabundantly, cause nobody wants to spend time cleaning up stuck-on food from the grill or pans. I still have an old pair of pants that smells like it, a million washings doesn’t get the smell off.
Seriously, I have never known (in 6 years working there) a cook or server with bad hygiene. They may have other issues, sure - but the first thing you want to do when you get home is shower the fine mist of oil right off you. Granted, this is in the Macon, GA and Chattanooga, TN areas, YMMV.
There’s 4 sloppy tablespoon scoops per 2 egg omelette. FOUR.
When I was in college, I was delivering pizzas until my car crapped out, and suddenly I needed a job, and thus began my stint as a third-shift waitress at the Waffle House right next to the University of Georgia campus. It was actually kind of fun, in its own way - the customers ranged from weird to wonderful to truly beastly (mostly very drunk Greeks after bar close. Gads, but they were terrible customers.) Mainly, though, I remember some of my co-workers with great fondness.
First, there was Little Carol. She was the training waitress, and I worked first shift with her, then overlapped at shift change for a while. I really don’t even have to describe her to you. Close your eyes for a minute, and envision a waitress in a southern 24-hour diner. Now take the imaginary gum out of her mouth, and you have Carol: semi-fried suicide blond hair, a little too tan, a little too thin, everyone’s name is “Sugar” or “Honey” or “Darlin’.” Absolutely amazing at her job, and as sweet as she could be - not saccharine sweet, just genuinely nice.
And then, as you may have surmised, we had another employee named Carol. Big Carol worked third shift. Big Carol was, in fact quite large. She was loud, and not exactly sweet, and not exactly pretty either, but I loved her quite dearly. If Big Carol liked you - and she did like me - she took care of you, whether you were a colleague or a customer or just some random someone she liked. In fact, the night my car died, I had to walk home from the pizza place. It was cold and late, and I stopped in at the Waffle House for some coffee en route. I’d only been in there a few times, but Carol recognized me, and asked why I was walking. When she heard my story, she asked what time my first class was (it was something ungodly, like 7:30 am.) That night, Carol would hear of nothing else but that I drive her car home, and come pick her up at seven so she could drop me off at class. As I learned later, that 1972 Dodge sedan wasn’t just a car: it was the only car that Carol and her husband and their 3-year-old child owned. She had to be home no later than eight, so that Mr. Carol could go to work. And Carol loaned it to me, not even knowing my last name, just that she liked me.
By the time I picked Carol up from work the next morning, she had already spoken to the store manager, who offered me a job if I wanted it. I’m not sure whether I wanted it, but I certainly needed a job, so I started training the next day. And then Carol and I had many adventures on third shift. (My favorite Carol story, aside from the car loan, was the night that one of my tables of drunk frat boys tried to run out without paying. Carol spotted them on their way out, caught up with them in the parking lot, and had a conversation that involved the guilty quartet digging up nickels and pennies to pay their check. When Carol pressed them for a tip for their poor long-suffering waitress, they insisted - probably truthfully - that they were stony broke. Carol came inside, handed me a fistful of pennies and dimes to go in the till, and a nice tie-dyed t-shirt that was offered up as a tip when the 6’1" 300+ pound woman suggested that I’d probably like that sort of thing. One of my miscreant customers had been wearing that shirt when he tried to dine and dash.)
And then there was Steve, our cook. He looked like a very skinny red-haired Jim Croce, had a wicked sense of humor and an even wickeder coke habit, and cooked like a madman. (The cocaine probably helped in that regard!) A quarter of a century later, I’m still amused by Steve’s quick description of three crummy waitresses that rotated through the shift: he dubbed them the Wit Triplets. Dimwit, Nitwit, and Halfwit. Perfect.
And some of the customers: George spent hours and hours every day, mostly drinking coffee at the counter and being a curmudgeon. His buddy, whose name I can’t recall, was absolutely obsessed with the sitcom “Alf,” and told me at length about the plots of each episode. Jim and Trey and Brad were in a band, and would come eat after gigs and play the Waffle House Song on the jukebox over and over and over and over again. But at least they tipped well. Ditto other bandmembers/waiters/pizza delivery drivers/bartenders - Tony and Dennis and Paul and Ann and Sis. Mostly, though, the customers were overserved and over-privileged snotty kids who had never worked such a job, and who thought that it was the height of cleverness to loosen the lid of the salt shaker, or turn the water glass upside down…
And the food: I still kind of like a lot of it, regardless of how bad for me it is, and how much I ate while I worked there. (We were allowed to eat one meal before and after our shifts. I was a poor college kid. Needless to say, that’s where I got most of my calories!) If I go in now, I generally have eggs scrambled with cheese and raisin toast and bacon and hash browns, or maybe a BLT or a waffle sandwich and hash browns. I don’t do that often, though, because no one cooks them as well as Steve used to…
I’m sure I’ve eaten there plenty of times. Left Athens in 1995, though, so you probably didn’t serve me.
The one on Milledge, by 5-points?
Now I’m wondering if I’m thinking about Bob Evans. Oh well, I think I can have Waffle House, Cracker Barrel, and Bob Evans along my trip. I’ll hit the gym hard as soon as I get back.
Is Cracker Barrel still anti gay? That was an issue in the early 1990s, but I don’t know if they’ve changed that.
That Low Melt stuff sounds the same as the Flavor Fry stuff they used when my mom was cooking in various restaurants and truck stops. I remember a big yellow can of it sitting by the grill and they would take a big ol’ scoop of it and butter the toast or use it to fry whatever with.
The very one!
I don’t know. I worked there in 1987-1988. Left to take a more lucrative job as a bartender, but I joke that it was just a classier job - at the local redneck/ biker/strip club on Atlanta Highway.
Had those for the first time a few weeks ago on vacation! Delish! Also, a peanut butter waffle. A bit too sweet because the “peanut butter” was actually chips like you’d put in a cookie, but yummy all the same.
I worked as a cook at both a Waffle House and a Huddle House. They actually use real butter in the grits, on the toast, on the waffles, and what ever else you would use butter on. They COOK with the butter flavored Lo-Melt. I sure do miss South Carolina and Georgia. WE NEED HUDDLE HOUSES AND WAFFLE HOUSES IN NEW ENGLAND!
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