
Waffle House Vistas - samsolomon
https://bittersoutherner.com/waffle-house-vistas
======
iambateman
My Waffle House story:

My girlfriend and I had spent three rough months trying to figure out how to
date each other. Nothing was working. We were awkward and poor communicators
and just generally not a good fit. We were going to a coffee shop to break up
but figured we would see too many people we knew.

Break ups are emotional. So we escaped. To Waffle House.

I don't remember what either of us ordered, probably hashbrowns smothered and
covered. It's not really my usual haunt. But the coterie of drunk waiters,
more-drunk truckers, and government cheese served as the backdrop to one of
the toughest conversations of our lives.

At the end of the conversation, we decided to give it one more shot. 7 years
later, we're happily married.

I don't care what anyone says...Waffle House is magical.

~~~
js2
[https://www.today.com/food/atlanta-couple-takes-tasteful-
waf...](https://www.today.com/food/atlanta-couple-takes-tasteful-waffle-house-
wedding-photos-t132626) ?

~~~
iambateman
hah nah. I haven't been back to Waffle House since ;)

------
js2
I love Waffle House but I can’t convince my wife, kids, cousins or anyone else
in my family. They just don’t get it.

But I don’t care, Anthony Bourdain got it:

[https://youtu.be/bct8stbZafI](https://youtu.be/bct8stbZafI)

(As long as I live, I’ll think of him every time I see a Waffle House.)

~~~
_bxg1
I'd never been to one until a couple years ago, when my girlfriend swore by it
and took me there. I've been hooked since. It feels like stepping into a time
machine, to when "fast food" wasn't a chemical amalgamation that a soulless
corporation was trying to pass off as food. Waffle House has cheap but honest
food, and is staffed by people who don't appear to be miserable and don't have
to hide in the back with the microwaves. It lacks the cynicism of its peers.

~~~
zb
It's interesting to me how views are so polarised. I once asked a professional
cook where the best restaurant in town was and she said she mostly just ate at
WaHo. I had seen the Bourdain clip. So when I finally went there the first
time I was predisposed to like it. And it was just disappointing.

The syrup, for example, is basically high-fructose corn syrup with added
flavouring. So is the ketchup. I didn't sample the entire menu but the
overwhelming impression was of it being composed of the cheapest edible food-
like substances known to science. It didn't feel to me like a time machine
back to an era of cheap-and-cheerful diners that served real honest food, but
rather depressingly contemporary.

And yet there must be something there. Something that prompts folks like you
to genuinely see it as not just a chemical amalgamation, even though by any
objective standard it really is. Something that I missed. (The place was
deserted at the time when I went, so maybe that was it.) Something that makes
me still wonder if I should go back and search for it, even though I don't
know what I'm looking for.

~~~
scruple
My brother was (retired in his early 40s) a chef and worked closely with a
small cohort of serial restaurateurs. He and his friends swore by Hardees. To
this day I don't get it. My father and I still crack jokes at their expense,
whenever we see a Hardees, "Where the chef's eat!"

If only we'd been in the south and not the Midwest, WaHo may have won the
title for him and his friends. I probably wouldn't tease him about that one,
either!

~~~
tracker1
I have a friend who works with guys that work in a high end restaurant
kitchen... they eat convenience store hot dogs and nachos after work. Like a
lot of people.

I happen to like Carl's Jr. (Hardees other name)... although I don't like
everything they make, and some locations are better than others.

------
kyleblarson
Waffle House has an incredibly interesting notation system so that their cooks
know what to make, and any cook can go to a new WH and immediately start
working:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nickgray/378694469)

~~~
moron4hire
Ah yes, the Magic Marker system. I haven't worked at Waffle House for... oh,
20 years. I still remember Magic Marker.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
Apparently they've added to the Magic Marker system since then!

------
athenot
One of the aspects of Waffle House that's always impressed me is their
commitment to be open no matter what happens. This has prompted the informal
Waffle House Index: the informal metric used by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) to determine the effect of a storm and the likely
scale of assistance required for disaster recovery.

[https://www.fema.gov/blog/2011-07-07/news-day-what-do-
waffle...](https://www.fema.gov/blog/2011-07-07/news-day-what-do-waffle-
houses-have-do-risk-management)

~~~
et15
Wouldn't this just mean that they are putting their employees lives in danger
more than the average restaurant? It's got to be hard to choose between
following a suggested evacuation and losing your job.

~~~
Aloha
Not really no - employees are not fired if an evacuation is forced or if they
can't get there because of a disaster.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
As a Floridian, I have to say it sucks sitting in the humidity for a week with
no power so I’m sure most of their workers are happy go in and help get people
a meal.

------
creaghpatr
>Those incidents prompted the Rev. Bernice King, CEO of the King Center in
Atlanta, to call for a boycott of the beloved chain.

Maybe her heart was in the right place but that idea was doomed from the
start. Waffle House and Chick-fil-a are 100% boycott proof in the south, me
personally I eat at waho 3 times a week- it’s the best most consistent bang
for your buck and the service is impeccable even at 4am.

~~~
peterwwillis
And why would boycotting a waffle house combat police brutality? Is it
supposed to pressure waffle house to condemn the police?

~~~
tenpies
Activists often try to get corporations to bend the proverbial knee and "have
a discussion" which ultimately leads to "commit to training" which is code for
"hire me or people very similar to me".

A great example was Starbucks who sank several millions into training. That
training is based on known flawed testing and almost certainly does nothing to
ameliorate the problem it claims to fix. It is fantastic for the social
justice activist educator industry though. At best it's a conflict of
interest. At worst it's blackmail.

------
rconti
My first trip to a Waffle House was quite memorable. 6am after a redeye into
the Atlanta suburbs. Customers ranged from, uh.. "economically disadvantaged"
caucasians missing teeth, to a pair of surfer-dude looking white guys who
looked like they just drove in from Newport Beach in their 1970s Porsche 914,
to a dapper african-american businessman in a brand new Porsche Cayenne SUV..
it was my first time to the south and it was truly a cross-section of society.

------
ddavis
When I started grad school I used to go to the same Waffle House every Sunday
evening in Durham, NC. After a few weeks the waitress or cook on shift at that
time would notice _when I pulled into the parking lot_ and start making my
memorized order (All-star: eggs over medium, bacon, grits, dry white toast,
regular waffle). They were awesome people. One day I walked in the door and 12
minutes later I was on my way home (not to-go). It's an incredible restaurant.

~~~
applesvsoranges
This post took me back to my school days as well (Raleigh, NC). It was my go-
to place whenever an assignment kept me late at the library, whenever I was
bored of cooking but could only afford to spend as much and whenever I craved
my usual scrambled eggs with cheese, toast and chocolate waffles. Waffle House
was always open and always welcoming. Fond memories.

This fun thing happened there as well : [https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-
carolina-state-university-st...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-
state-university-student-spends-30-hours/story?id=36953871)

------
imroot
Waffle House is one of my late night haunts; there's not one near my Miami
Home, but, there's one near my place in Cincinnati.

I've been in a Waffle House when a Bengal player walks in with his "crew," and
he paid for everyone's food (including mine), tipping the wait staff with $100
bills.

I've also been at a Waffle House with a woman who ordered a salad. Suffice to
say, that relationship didn't last at all.

Good nights end at Waffle House -- when one of my friends got married, we all
went to Waffle House after the reception, bride and groom included.

The idle chit-chat, the consistent menu...Texas Bacon Cheesesteak Melt
sandwich with a waffle, well done and a sprite. Open all night, half the
customers are always diverse and or drunk or stoned off their ass, and still
manages to have fewer fist fights than a Chuck-E-Cheez.

------
madcaptenor
I live in the suburbs of Atlanta, the Waffle House homeland. When we
introduced ourselves to the neighbors, their young daughter made sure we knew
where the Waffle House was.

~~~
quantumhobbit
My high school cross country running coach used to navigate by Waffle Houses.
As in “4 more Waffle Houses til our exit”

~~~
Zelphyr
The problem is, in Atlanta anyway, there will literally be two Waffle House's
on the corners of an interstate exit. I'm thinking in particular a Jonesboro
exit I used to live near, but it wasn't necessarily unique.

It always amused me when I was younger that you could go to either one at 2am
and it would be filled with both kids like me getting some food after a party
and truckers stopping for a break. Filled!

~~~
madcaptenor
285 and Buford Highway is another one.

I've heard that part of the reason for this is that Waffle Houses only come in
one size, so if there's more demand they build more locations instead of
bigger ones.

------
sverige
I'm not a Southerner, but I've spent a lot of time here. It's still like a
foreign land to me sometimes, but mostly I like it. One of the best things
about it is Waffle House. It reminds me of small town Midwestern cafes that I
grew up with.

Just went to a new (to me) Waffle House yesterday in Haughton, Louisiana.
Highly recommend it, very friendly and a Rock Star Grill Operator named Greg
who can sling hash with the best of them.

------
chasedehan
Waffle House is perhaps the only reason I would return to the South.

Having spent many years in the Carolinas, it was a special time with my
daughters that we would have “our time” at the Waffle House. My wife from New
Jersey never understood and was happy to let us go.

There is just something about the simplicity of the place that just makes me
happy. Now that I live Out West nothing comes close - not IHOP or Denny’s or
anything.

~~~
jtmcmc
yes it is one of the few things I look forward to when I return back to the
south.

~~~
Zelphyr
And Krystal's. I don't care what anyone says. That's foods good! I have fond
memories of my grandfather randomly saying, "Let's go get some Krystal's!" 15
minutes and probably $5 later we'd have dinner for me, him and my grandmother.

------
komali2
This is a great article and I'm going to use this to demonstrate to non-rural
Americans (i.e., city peeps or just non-americans) what rural America is
_actually_ like. Sure, stretches of farmland, cows, corn. But what it _really_
is is a place where you absolutely MUST have a car (or ATV or horse or
something) or the only food you're eating is the food you're growing, and the
best restaurant in town may very well be the Waffle House.

I grew up in rural America and then by I guess trick of genetics grew a
personality that needed to get out, and so now I've lived in both that world
and the Big City America world, and the Big City Asia world and the Big City
Europe world. Things you may take for granted (and if you've lived/know rural
America, don't take this as me teaching something you know, this is for those
that literally don't know) are things like access to public transportation or
the ability to walk to the grocery store or some restaurant, or hospital.
Like, you might gash yourself on a rusty bit of farm equipment and the nearest
hospital is literally an hour drive away - and they might not be equipped to
handle some of the weirder shit you can do to your body, so now you gotta head
to the state's Big City to get treatment. Things like that create a different
mindset, around government, around healthcare, around self-sufficiency.

You might have your kids bus an hour each way to school. There's little choice
then. If your kid gets bullied, if the teachers there are racists, whatever,
there's not much you can do about it, and what are you gonna do, attend a PTA
meeting when it's an hours' drive away?

A lot of the differences out there boil down to those two things - limited
choice, high self-sufficiency. Don't be surprised at the non-ironic bootstrap
language coming from red state americans - it's the reality for many of them.
The benefits that we enjoy in a city might not even exist for them out there -
the library, the busses, whatever. Or if they exist they're very very far
away. Not many restaurants to choose from, not many doctors. Not many
different kinds of jobs - if you're within driving distance of Nashville
there's like twenty different cafes or grocery stores you can work at as a 16
year old trying to save for college. If you're not near any Big Cities, well,
_maybe_ you can score a job at the gas station? If there's any left?

I'm wandering and meandering here, apologies for making this post a struggle -
I'm open to any thoughts people might have on this, particularly from others
that get where I'm coming from, that have lived the rural America life. I
never experienced it as an employed adult (other than as a visitor to home) so
there is a gap in my knowledge there.

~~~
microtherion
> Don't be surprised at the non-ironic bootstrap language coming from red
> state americans - it's the reality for many of them.

The ten states where federal aid makes up the highest percentage of the state
budget are: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Arizona, Kentucky, Montana,
Tennessee, Wyoming, Alaska, Missouri

[https://taxfoundation.org/federal-aid-reliance-
rankings/](https://taxfoundation.org/federal-aid-reliance-rankings/)

The ten states the highest percentage of food stamp recipients are:
Mississippi, Oregon, Tennessee, New Mexico, Louisiana, West Virginia,
Kentucky, Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina

[https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/05/S...](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2014/05/Slide2/cf89185a3.jpg)

I still think Joseph Heller had that kind of ideology pegged best:

> He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding
> rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was
> creeping socialism. [...] Major Major's father was an outspoken champion of
> economy in government, provided it did not interfere with the sacred duty of
> government to pay farmers as much as they could get for all the alfalfa they
> produced that no one else wanted or for not producing any alfalfa at all.

------
2bitencryption
Lately I've had an interest in documentary-style photography, particularly
collections with themes such as this. The wonderful BBC feature "The Genius of
Photography" helped drive this interest in me.

I feel like I have a strong appreciation for these Waffle House photos that I
would not have had a month ago. This is really great.

~~~
mvdwoord
You might like this, although in Dutch so translate where necessary. It is the
website for a recently released book called "Chin. Ind. Spec. Rest." which is
short for (translated) Chinese Indonesian Specialty Restaurant. A type of
restaurant only found in the Netherlands combining neither Chinese nor proper
Indonesian food but which has been a staple for many dutch people for a
generation or two.

I have eaten or got take out from a place like this many times in my youth.
Think MSG laden heaps of cheap food trying to resemble both Chinese and
Indonesian cuisine but with lots of dishes that are neither. Even though I
never really eat there anymore, every once in a while my family will still get
take out from such a place and even though I have a strong dislike for the
food over the years, there is a certain feeling these places invoke which is
reminiscent of my youth.

[https://www.chinindspecrest.nl/impressie](https://www.chinindspecrest.nl/impressie)

------
SwagosaurusFlex
The idea of eating at a bunch of Waffle Houses in order to make social
commentary on the South and America sounds like an outlandish thesis topic for
that dude who's been getting his PhD for 12 years now. So naturally I loved
this.

------
49531
My favorite thing about my local waho vista is that I can see another waho
from it.

~~~
yellowapple
Seems like the perfect setup for a rom-com. Two star-crossed lovers, gazing
upon each other every day from their respective Waffle Houses (Waffle Hice?).

~~~
sdrothrock
I've always been a fan of "Waffles House," as in "passersby" and "inspectors
general."

------
GlenTheMachine
I think a great hole-in-the-wall meat and three fills a similar niche. Good
barbecue is the great social equalizer in the South.

~~~
creaghpatr
Meat and 3s are a dying breed in Atlanta- a shame! If only Carvers grocery
could come back...

~~~
dpeck
still grieving the loss of Bobby and Junes on 10th street. Ate there a ton
during my time at Tech and for years had standing Thursday lunch plans there
with a handful of friends.

~~~
phasetransition
Wait. I think I am supposed to grab lunch with you through our mutual friend
Eric S. Does this sound familiar?

~~~
dpeck
Doesn’t sound familiar, but honestly if it’s a meat and 3, with anybody who
frequents HN we’d probably have a mighty fine lunch.

~~~
phasetransition
:-) true enough, and I'll take you up on that.

Especially if you sold a wireless mesh company and know a guy named Eric from
your GT days who recently changed jobs from one consultancy to another...

~~~
dpeck
lol, that Eric, yes, we are supposed to get lunch. Looking forward to it!

------
chiph
I've driven across the country several times, and across great distances in
the South many times. Cracker Barrel is for dinner. But Waffle House is for
breakfast. And it's enough breakfast to keep you going behind the wheel all
day.

There'll be a couple of middle-aged white guys like myself in there. But the
rest of the customers - everything from truckers, to young people there after
an all-night binge, to a person or two who looks like they're hitch-hiking to
their next temporary destination.

~~~
moron4hire
I've been in the back of too many Cracker Barrels to ever eat at one again. A
lot of my peers who ended up working at McDonalds or other restaurants say the
same thing. But I will always eat at Waffle House. I've _worked_ in several
and it's nearly impossible to hide dirt. Everything is out in the open.

------
techsupporter
It's funny: Reading this thread, I now know what people who didn't grow up
with / don't like Whataburger must feel. I'm Texan, born and raised, and grew
up around three Waffle House restaurants. My hometown, that grew from a wide
spot on the US highway to a _very_ wide spot on the Interstate, had two of
them, one at each of the two (then) major exits.

Nobody I knew ate there on a regular basis. They never got mentioned at school
or work or church. Me and my family ate there maybe three times I can remember
and all three times it was an OK experience but we'd rather go to Grandy's or
just the Golden Corral breakfast bar.

After the state redid the Interstate in such a way as to move those major
exits to other locations, thus rendering the Houses of Waffle more easily
accessible from the city streets but not an immediate off-the-highway-and-
back-on situation, they both closed within two months of each other, a year
after the change. In an amusing twist, one of those parcels is now home to a
Whataburger and I regularly see its parking lot full. I'll never not go to a
Whataburger and if by some miracle someone builds one inside the city limits
of Seattle, I will move next door and live there until my last day no matter
the cost. But I've never seen the attraction of Waffle House.

~~~
fangsout
That makes sense to me. I had the exact opposite experience. Growing up in
Florida, everyone went to waffle houses on the weekends, and the only
whataburger closed down and turned into some other chain restaurant. After
living in Texas for a few years, the locals are fiercely loyal to whataburger,
but I still don't share the enthusiasm. I assume it's more about being a part
of your personal identity and childhood memories than it is really about food
quality.

------
moron4hire
I worked at one of the first Waffle Houses north of the Mason Dixon line back
in my first year of college (soooo, I guess that was the year 2000).

It was a really great time. The hours were rough. Sometimes I worked two
shifts back to back. Sometimes I had to drive an hour away to fill in at
another store. It was an all-cash operation at the time. But even though there
were one or two people I didn't get along with, it was still ok. Certainly not
like some of the back-stabbing bullshit I've since had to put up with at
almost all of my software development jobs after getting my degree.

We saw some crazy shit. We did some crazy shit. That was during the "post-
party rush". Bars in the area close at 2am, so we'd get a rush of drunk people
then, but they were all cool. We'd get another rush of mostly tweekers at 4am,
and that's when the crazy shit happened. One night, a dude walked in
completely naked. I held him off with a mop for the whole 2 minutes it took
for the cops who just left to get the call and come back. One morning, right
in the middle of Sunday rush, a very large woman exploded fecal matter all
over the bathroom. I was the most recent person to be hired, so it was my job
to clean it up. I made myself a full body suit out of plastic wrap and some
drinking straws for air holes, dragged the parking-lot-cleaning hose in from
outside and blasted everything down.

Those are the only "bad" things I remember, though I'm sure more happened. I
remember the good things, mostly. Singing along with everyone in the shop,
customers and employees alike, to "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the jukebox. The dude
who trolled us all by pumping $20 of quarters in the jukebox to play nothing
but "Earl's Gotta Die", which we got to stop by unplugging the machine, but it
forever screwed up the randomizer, so that was the only song that would play,
leading us to take a communal collection of quarters to play songs throughout
the day to avoid it. Getting the underside of my car doors "buttered" by my
best-friend coworker. Discussing C++ hacks with another. Coming up with crazy,
off-book recipes we'd serve to the regulars. Making the grill shine for the
next guy. Flipping eggs one handed, over the shoulder, back into the pan
behind my back. Getting "hazed" by being made to work a Sunday morning rush on
my own for an hour (usually takes at least 3 cooks, if not 4). Which was great
training for the time a tour bus of old folks rolled in during the last half-
hour of my shift, when I had just broken down the grill to clean it. The time
the entire _town_ ran out of $5 bills and I got sent on a wild goose chase to
track some down.

I really miss "Mom" and "Bubba" and "Peanut" and "Matt".

I was 16 or 17 and pretty naive to some of the more "adult" stuff going on.
I'm (now) pretty sure one of the waitresses was a raging cokehead, and I'm
pretty sure one of the managers was sleeping with her.

But yeah, once I saw what the article was about, I knew exactly what it was
talking about. We had one of the best views of sunrise. Those overnight shifts
were hard, sleep-wise, but they were also pretty fun. And everybody had to do
it, at some point. Us young guys knew we were working the late shift because
the moms had kids to take care of, not because our managers were being dicks.
And if a customer was a dick to a waitress, we'd didn't catch hell from
management for telling the him to get out. I've had corporate managers tell me
it's "not my place" to call out sexual harassment when I see it in the
workplace. I couldn't keep it up because the pay was obviously not anywhere
near what I make as a software developer, but also because the floor soap was
caustic to my feet and cutting the tomatoes was giving me terrible rashes on
my hands (I have a mild allergy to acidic foods). But sometimes, I really
wonder if the treatment likely the vast majority of us have received in the
corporate environment is really worth it.

(BTW: scattered, smothered, covered)

------
stefanmichael
There's a waffle house location in Alamogordo new mexico that serves green
sauce on the chicken fried steak and it's un fucking believable how good it
is.

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
I didn't know I needed to try this until just now. Thanks for the tip!

------
mxyzptlk
My wife and I lived in Florida but drove home to Virginia every year for
Christmas. Work schedules being what they were, we had to be back in Florida
on January 1st or 2nd. We rang in quite a few New Years toasting Waffle House
coffee somewhere along I95.

Edit: She just reminded me, no one else in the restaurant ever seemed to care.

------
Yhippa
Across the street from the Richmond International Airport in Richmond, VA
there are two Waffle Houses on the same road that are about 2,000 feet apart.
They're on the same side of the road.

Anybody know why that would be? I could understand if they were on opposite
sides of the street but this makes no sense to me.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There are! Google Map you can see them both. Maybe with all those motels, the
demand is enough to fill two for breakfast?

------
jccalhoun
Growing up in Indiana, we had unique "Waffle House" restaurants. These were a
local chain that was more like a Dennys than the Southern Waffle House. I
don't know if the Indiana Waffle House was started as a rip off of the other
Waffle House or just a coincidence. For years the Southern Waffle House was
known as "Waffle Steak" in Indiana but they have changed to the real name and
the Indiana Waffle Houses have either closed or changed their name to Sunshine
Cafe.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House#Waffle_and_Stea...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House#Waffle_and_Steak)

------
sonnyblarney
The '3 rules of branding' are: 'Consistency, Simplicity, and Authenticity'.

I think they check off all three quite well and that's what it is. They're not
trying to be something they are not, and they 'are what they are' very well.

------
sudosteph
I'm an NC native myself and always found waffle house more of a last-resort
late night meal (hard to pick over bojangles, cookout, zaxbys or showmars for
day-time fast and cheap eats), but still glad to see it provided so many folks
with positive memories.

Still, strange to read all the romanticising over it. Sure it's diverse, but
that's just living in the south for you. One of my mom's friends was a waffle
house cook, and to go by her experience it wasn't a great gig. Inconvenient
hours, and paid just enough to afford a double wide and old pickup. But a job
is better than no job, and a meal at waffle house is better than no meal (or
gas station food).

~~~
mindcrime
Fellow NC native here, and my take on Waffle House is similar. The main appeal
is that they're open pretty much all the time, which is nice at 3:00 in the
morning when the bars are closed and you're looking for something to do other
than go home. Pile in the car and head to Waffle House to eat and talk shit
until everybody is too tired to do anything else. Good times.

------
ThinkBeat
In Oklahoma years ago the Waffle House near me had an all you could eat
option. It was reasonably cheap. It wasa huge win for nearby students.

I had a friend who ran track and he ate enough every time to close down the
place I would have thought.

They removed the option after a couple of years.

I guess a lot of students got skinnier.

Personally I used to love their breakfeast food (of course) but they changed
the oil they use to fry the breakfast items and I could not stand it. I kept
trying but I could not get passed it.

I tried 3 other Waffles Houses near where I lived back then and it was the
same in each one.

I havent been back since, but I really miss the way they used to be. I should
find one and see if they have switched oils again.

------
joshfraser
I went to college in the south. Our rule for waffle house was never before
midnight.

------
JoeAltmaier
Always reliable. I've had 3 total lunch fails this month at trendy places,
until I thought "What the hell am I doing" and went back to my good ol
Bluebird diner. It'd be Waffle House if we had one.

------
Simulacra
Cheese eggs and raisin toast, with bacon and grits. Hold the apple butter.
It’s the only thing I’ve been eating at waffle house for 30 years.

~~~
delinka
Is “hold the apple butter” necessary? Around here it comes in a tiny jelly
tub, stacked on the table with the other jelly tubs.

~~~
Simulacra
Yeah, but it kind of saves them a second from having to grab it.

------
whidden
I'm sure the article/story about waffle house vista's is good, but I couldn't
get into reading with the first picture of the piece that blew me away. The
composition is fabulous. The clear window, reflection, highway, bridge, the
lighting, the condiments on the table, the shadow on the seats. Sorry, someone
was saying something about food.

------
mcphage
As a Northerner, one of the places I wish the most we had is Waffle House.
They're so good, but the closest is ~5 hours away.

------
ravieira
Last year I fled from Brazil to Georgia to spend time with my gf who's from
the state and a Waffle House was the place of our first date straight out of
the airport

Everyone looked very friendly. I guess it's not my taste, but she treated it
like a place I had to visit haha

------
ggm
I think it's likely you can't transplant the culture. You could open a
franchise in Quebec or Aberdeen but they'd be different. A case in point is
taco bell: they've opened here in Queensland, nobody is making jokes about
food poisoning.

~~~
moron4hire
It might get there, eventually. They've been slowly marching up the Mid
Atlantic region for the last 20 years. There are two in Scranton, PA now, and
three along Lake Erie just north-east of Cleveland, OH.

[https://locations.wafflehouse.com/](https://locations.wafflehouse.com/)

~~~
ggm
Slow is more likely to preserve the feel I think. The team helping open doors
more likely to be part of keeping it real. But given time I think it would
bifurcate in a mason-dixon line way. (I rarely get to the south east but now
have a new goal to unlock)

------
dmuth
Sounds like Waffle House is to the South what Wawa is to the Philadelphia
area. :-)

I've only been in a Waffle House once, but did enjoy the food and the service
--definitely on my list for the next time I'm down south.

~~~
kingbirdy
As a transplant from the South to Philly, it's not even close. The staff in a
Waffle House are happy to help you, and great to talk to. I'ts a place to sit
down and hang out for hours at a time with your friends, recovering from a
breakup, or a night out, or a hard day's work. At Wawa they just want you to
get your shit and get out - most don't even have seating, and you're not being
waited on by someone, just interacting with a touchscreen, then being handed
your food across a counter.

~~~
tbyehl
The Wawa everyone loves is from a time before touchscreen ordering. What I
remember from living in Hammonton 20-ish years ago, the staff were super
friendly and almost always tried to chat me up -- be it my regular Wawa or one
20 miles away I'd never been to before.

Kinda like stepping into a WaHo or QT.

Last year I was in Florida a few times and tried a Wawa in St Lucie and
Brandenton. Thoroughly underwhelming at all levels. The magic is gone.

------
aj7
In 1987, I was staying in Albuquerque, NM learning how to run an optics
factory to be established in CA. I was very thrifty, my Motel was $6 a night.
I ate in the nearby Waffle House on Central Ave. Once.

------
pmarreck
An ex gf introduced me to WH and I got the appeal right away. We don’t have
them in the Northeast so when I can get to one I usually do.

------
renholder
For those of us, who don't want to deal with their uMatrix looking like a
fucking Christmas Tree, the WebArchive link[0].

[0] -
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190315210024/https://bittersou...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190315210024/https://bittersoutherner.com/waffle-
house-vistas)

------
jay754
I am a Canadian and every time I am in the south, I make sure to go to waffle
house at least once.

