Good road food. I seem to recall I liked their chili over … something. I have not been to one in over a decade.
Been there once and once ever since they refuse to have butter for the waffles.
The first, last, and only time I ate at an Awful House was on Sunday, October 21, 2018, in Collinsville, IL. We were driving back from St. Louie and were pretty hung over from the night before having gone to the Alice Cooper concert. It was either that or the Dennys across the road.
Alright, so the food wasn’t so bad but watching it get made was. The griddle, waffle makers, and pans looked filthy.
ETA: If I ever eat there again I won’t sit at the counter so I don’t have to see my grub get made.
What? Really? If I can’t have butter with my waffles, I ain’t goin’.
But you can have oleo. As much as you can gag down. Promise.
The quality of Waffle House can vary. Check Yelp before going.
We have six in my city and only one had consistently good Yelp reviews.
Must be why there aren’t any Waffle Houses in Wisconsin. It’s illegal for a restaurant to serve margarine and not butter:
**(4) The serving of colored oleomargarine or margarine at a public eating place as a substitute for table butter is prohibited unless it is ordered by the customer **
Though I think there was one in West Milwaukee at one time on 43rd street.
Yeah, um, I don’t think people leave their house with the implicit intent of going to Waffle House. it’s the kind of place one just ends up at. For me, I had a 4 hour drive back to Milwaukee, desperately needed coffee and saw the road sign. Otherwise no way!
I prefer butter, but grew up eating margarine.
I fully expect to get margarine at restaurants. AFAIK that’s true at Denny’s, IHOP, Waffle House and McDonald’s.
That’s just what gets used in that industry.
I cook with margarine at home and save my butter to serve at the table.
I ended up eating at a Kentucky Fried Chicken for a late lunch while out and about yesterday, which is something I rarely do (it’s where to buy buckets of chicken, not lunch).
My wife’s meal came with a biscuit, and the clerk asked if I wanted honey or butter for the biscuit. I asked for one of each, since my wife had already taken our little one and sat down. The “butter” was “buttery spread,” and the “honey” was “honey sauce.”
The “butter” wasn’t even margarine, but there were some milk solids way, way, down the list after several different types of oil. The honey sauce did contain actual honey; it was (IIRC) the third ingredient after a couple of different corn syrups.
At least at McDonald’s, you can still request real butter.
BUT you know. That happens in other restaurants, even very pricey ones, ALL the time. You just dont know it because you dont see it.
And that brings me back as to why I LOVE Waffle House. Not just because they have country tunes on the jukebox (yes, they have those), not just because I really love their food, but because they make your food right out in front of you. No faking. No putting someones old food on your plate. No putting food thats fallen on the floor on your plate. You know what is going on.
I mean if you really knew what happens to your food in the back of most restaurants you would never want to eat out.
Ok, fair enough. But honestly do you think that at another restaurant say a Denny’s do you think their hygiene is any better just because you cant see it?
As do I. The very first Waffle House is a mile and a half from my house; it’s now a museum that’s only open one weekend a month. Mildly interesting. (And yes, I’ve met ISiddiqui in meatspace.)
Back when I was in high school, and Atlanta was still the Sahara of the Bozarts, Waffle House was the only place to go at 2 a.m., when you needed to consume greasy hashbrowns and pretend you were one of the Night People, but your Mom wouldn’t lend you the minivan to go down to the Metroplex or the Masquerade. So WH still has a nostalgia value for those of us who were teenagers in the suburbs in the Eighties.
Mrs. SMV and self will go every now and again, if we’re feeling lazy or it’s too late for any real restaurants. She likes the peanut butter waffle, while I’ll usually get a bowl of Bert’s chili. Still, we live in a town that has dozens of good dining choices within five miles, so WH doesn’t get the traffic it used to.
Maybe, maybe not. But I tend to sit at the counter in diners and I’ve never seen equipment look so filthy.
But in all honesty usually places have a partisan so it’s harder to see the cooking utensils. WH’s were right out there to be seen.
We go there for their magical hash browns when we’re passing through the states that have them. allthegood likes them smothered scattered and covered, I believe, whereas I’m addicted to peppered capped and countried. (OK for some weird-ass reason they say “country” but all the others are past-tense verbs so obviously it ought to be “countried”)
It’s the 2AM place of choice :D.
Though my wife will sometimes go and get breakfast there on weekends when I’m still in bed. (It’s cheaper and you won’t wait forever like the other brunch places around)
This reminds me of my one experience in a Waffle House back in 1997. My wife and I drove cross-country from Houston back to our home to New England. (We were driving instead of flying because we bought a new vehicle from a family friend…which is another story I’ve mentioned here before.)
Anyway, we stopped to eat in a Waffle House in Texarkana. As we entered, the hostess loudly greeted us with, “HI!!! HOW Y’ALL DOING?” As we then walked to our table, every single server in the restaurant would stop what they were doing and say the same thing: “HI!!! HOW Y’ALL DOING?” Finally we passed the line cook, and he did the same thing – stopped what he was doing to say, “HI!!! HOW Y’ALL DOING?”
By the time we sat down, my wife was ready to bolt. She’s from Boston, and isn’t used to enthusiastic greetings from strangers. I’m from Texas originally, and even I was a little surprised. I was starting to wonder if we’d wandered into some cult group.
Ha! Try the Waffle House in Dunwoody on a Sunday morning. You’ll wait a half-hour.
WH is one of my dad’s guilty pleasures. He knows all the line cooks and waitresses by name. I’d laugh, but I don’t have to order any longer when I go into Raging Burrito - the servers just bring me my regular order without asking.
I would love love love to eat at a Waffle House – but they don’t have them in California. Alas! Waffleness is next to godliness.
No shit? Really? That is so sad! Waffles with butter are so, so awesome. When my son was little, I used to make waffles a lot. I liked to make my own syrup since it was both cheaper and better; and my favorite thing to use for flavoring was one of those little airline-sized bottles of Cask & Cream. (milk-whiskey combo much like Bailey’s.) It got to the point where once, when I sent a morning visitor to the corner store for the Cask & Cream, they asked if he was having breakfast at my house, haha.
Not even that. It was roughly-butter-flavored spreadable plastic. The worst was that the idea of butter on waffles was so alien to the servers that I had to wonder who eats there that they have no concept that butter belongs on waffles? (No offense SD)