Subscribe to
FlickrWe're Pretending We're A Travel Blog, Part 2: Waffle House
I arrived safely, some hours ago, in Nashville, and was immediately subject to a punch in the face that I was no longer in California. Sara and Matt greeted me with a text that asked if I was out of the gate; and when I replied in the affirmative, another that just said "Walk fast!" Huh? Wait, I just walk forward and I will get to the exit? The one exit? There aren't like, eight baggage claims and a dozen side corridors where I can get lost? Wham!
I got back to Sara and Matt's wonderful little 2-bedroom home, which is full of the bric-a-brac and detritus of a life lived in letters and makes me all sorts of envious, and we proceeded to let Sara catch up on Dollhouse (which may yet not suck), after which 20/20 came on and the interviewer proceeded to explain in the world's most comedically stereotyped tone how really, recessions are natural and government spending won't fix anything as compared to just leaving everything in place and riding it out.
And then...then there was Waffle House.
Those of you who know about Waffle House can probably stop reading; I suspect my amazement will mostly tell you how close I've stayed to my front door all these years of my life. Waffle House is something I mostly know via anecdotal evidence from Southern gamers and, of course, Bloodhound Gang lyrics; it was only tonight, March 13th, that I got to experience Waffle House first-hand.
People may tell you Waffle House is "like Denny's" or "like Carrow's" or something similar. These people are lying. They are similar in the same way as a poodle and a bull mastiff. Waffle Houses are not the original greasy spoon, but they certainly all have a piece of that original greasy spoon's brickwork in their foundations; it's the only way to explain the bizarre warp-gate into the Dimension of Plastic and Grease that occurs when you enter.
To begin with, it appears to be a requirement that every Waffle House have precisely one letter in their sign burnt out. The one near the Nashville airport is "Affle House"; the one we visited was the "Waffe House", which brings to mind some kind of grease-bombing zeppelin. We entered and were greeted with about six tables that look like the kind fourth-graders eat lunch on; a long counter that explains where Tarantino and the Coens got all those shots for their movies; and precisely two normal-looking people who are there to remind you how weird-looking everyone else is.
The menu was two sides of a laminated placemat; the most expensive item on there was $5.95, and that was two eggs, toast, bacon, and a waffle, and their hashbrowns menu took up an entire little sidebar, complete with its own lingo. Our waitress was a skinny, hugely-chinned woman in what I'd guess was her mid-forties, and she had the accent that launched a hundred tropes. She called me "baby". She shouted her orders in short-hand that made no sense to anybody, possibly including the kitchen staff. And when I ordered a couple blueberry waffles and some hashbrowns diced and peppered (that's tomatoes and jalapenos, in the language of the Waffle House hashbrown), she looked at me and said "No meat?" My affirmative answer got me a look that I knew meant "Y'all ain't from 'round here, are ya?"
The food was delicious in that way that you know you shouldn't do more than once or twice, really; greasy, heavy, salty, but good in a very traditional way. This is what Denny's aspires to be, I think, underneath whatever bullshit they're flinging currently--a giant bucket of the best-worst parts of home cooking.
We spent most of the meal listening to an incredibly skinny, spiky-haired waitress talking to a woman who I swear was pulled out of the fridge before she could set, explaining about all the weirdos who come into Waffle House at night. Apparently, our table had one night been used to do drugs. And the other booth where we almost sat was where a man and a prostitute had sex.
The woman made of suet (who, I should note, was dressed in white with pink dots or shapes of some sort, I assume because she is trying to pretend she's actually someone's DT hallucination) asked the obvious question, "How did they get away with that?", to which the waitress answered "Well, she was havin' sex with him with her mouth...?"
"Havin' sex with him with her mouth."
God Bless America.
I got back to Sara and Matt's wonderful little 2-bedroom home, which is full of the bric-a-brac and detritus of a life lived in letters and makes me all sorts of envious, and we proceeded to let Sara catch up on Dollhouse (which may yet not suck), after which 20/20 came on and the interviewer proceeded to explain in the world's most comedically stereotyped tone how really, recessions are natural and government spending won't fix anything as compared to just leaving everything in place and riding it out.
And then...then there was Waffle House.
Those of you who know about Waffle House can probably stop reading; I suspect my amazement will mostly tell you how close I've stayed to my front door all these years of my life. Waffle House is something I mostly know via anecdotal evidence from Southern gamers and, of course, Bloodhound Gang lyrics; it was only tonight, March 13th, that I got to experience Waffle House first-hand.
People may tell you Waffle House is "like Denny's" or "like Carrow's" or something similar. These people are lying. They are similar in the same way as a poodle and a bull mastiff. Waffle Houses are not the original greasy spoon, but they certainly all have a piece of that original greasy spoon's brickwork in their foundations; it's the only way to explain the bizarre warp-gate into the Dimension of Plastic and Grease that occurs when you enter.
To begin with, it appears to be a requirement that every Waffle House have precisely one letter in their sign burnt out. The one near the Nashville airport is "Affle House"; the one we visited was the "Waffe House", which brings to mind some kind of grease-bombing zeppelin. We entered and were greeted with about six tables that look like the kind fourth-graders eat lunch on; a long counter that explains where Tarantino and the Coens got all those shots for their movies; and precisely two normal-looking people who are there to remind you how weird-looking everyone else is.
The menu was two sides of a laminated placemat; the most expensive item on there was $5.95, and that was two eggs, toast, bacon, and a waffle, and their hashbrowns menu took up an entire little sidebar, complete with its own lingo. Our waitress was a skinny, hugely-chinned woman in what I'd guess was her mid-forties, and she had the accent that launched a hundred tropes. She called me "baby". She shouted her orders in short-hand that made no sense to anybody, possibly including the kitchen staff. And when I ordered a couple blueberry waffles and some hashbrowns diced and peppered (that's tomatoes and jalapenos, in the language of the Waffle House hashbrown), she looked at me and said "No meat?" My affirmative answer got me a look that I knew meant "Y'all ain't from 'round here, are ya?"
The food was delicious in that way that you know you shouldn't do more than once or twice, really; greasy, heavy, salty, but good in a very traditional way. This is what Denny's aspires to be, I think, underneath whatever bullshit they're flinging currently--a giant bucket of the best-worst parts of home cooking.
We spent most of the meal listening to an incredibly skinny, spiky-haired waitress talking to a woman who I swear was pulled out of the fridge before she could set, explaining about all the weirdos who come into Waffle House at night. Apparently, our table had one night been used to do drugs. And the other booth where we almost sat was where a man and a prostitute had sex.
The woman made of suet (who, I should note, was dressed in white with pink dots or shapes of some sort, I assume because she is trying to pretend she's actually someone's DT hallucination) asked the obvious question, "How did they get away with that?", to which the waitress answered "Well, she was havin' sex with him with her mouth...?"
"Havin' sex with him with her mouth."
God Bless America.
Labels: travel
posted by Tyler at
10:26 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home