Some context for those not familiar with Waffle House Culture:Β
Waffle House is one of the few chains in America thatβs open 24/7/365, and where you can get both breakfast and lunch/dinner options at any time (I have had so many Breakfast Cheeseburgers at Waffle Houses). The food is really good, and people eat there at all times of the day or night, but itβs particularly popular as a late-night post-drinking spot because itβs all thatβs open and itβs the kind of food that tastes especially good when youβre hammered.
Part of Waffle House Protocol is that all the servers and cooks greet every single customer as they come through the door. It sounds lame, but Iβve never been to a Waffle House where that greeting didnβt feel completely heartfelt. My mom is a health nut who could barely find anything on the menu she was willing to eat and yet she describes the Christmas Day lunch we had there one year as one of the nicest meals sheβs ever had because everyone was so warm and welcoming. That sense of camaraderie gets turned up to 11, of course, at 2 a.m. when everyoneβs shitfaced.
The jukeboxes have Waffle-House-themed songs on them (once you have heardΒ βRaisins in my Toastβ you will be earwormed forever) and there is an arcane system of hash brown ordering: scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, peppered, and/or capped. The hot sauce bottles sayΒ βCasa de Waffle.βΒ
Once, in Oxford (UK), my husband and I walked past a kebab van very late one night and he saidΒ βwhy do I smell Waffle Houseβ
The location of most Waffle Houses means thereβs someβ¦ classism that tends to get tied up with Anti-Waffle House Discourse, which is probably lending itself, in part, to this being such a fraught topic. (Iβm looking at a map and apparently I was born and raised right in the middle of the Peak Waffle House Density Zone)
It is, in the words of chef Anthony Bourdain,Β βindeed marvelousβ an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody regardless of race, creed, color or degree of inebriation is welcomed.β
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