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.
Waffle House Vistas
91–100 of 125 posts
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#92I 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 (As long as I live, I’ll think of him every time I see a Waffle House.)
Scattered, smothered, covered, chunked.
I spent so many nights in college at a Waffle House after midnight I couldn't attempt to count it if I had too. Lots of great memories in that place.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#93I 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 (As long as I live, I’ll think of him every time I see a Waffle House.)
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 m…
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.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#94I am a Canadian and every time I am in the south, I make sure to go to waffle house at least once.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#95Sounds 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.
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 intera…
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.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
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 t…
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!
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
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 t…
Roger Ebert once wrote this about how he reviewed movies:
“I've always tried to adopt a generic approach to the movies, judging each film in terms of its type and the expectations we have for it.”
This idea is what Bourdain was invoking when he called Waffle House better than French Laundry, since it’s otherwise patently absurd to compare the two.
Maybe this is what you missed.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#98It'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.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#99An 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.
Re: Waffle House Vistas
#100My favorite thing about my local waho vista is that I can see another waho from it.
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?).
I've always been a fan of "Waffles House," as in "passersby" and "inspectors general."