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Waffle House's Magic Marker System

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Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#121

Post by rootusrootus »

treflop wrote: post #7
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #4

Eating at a Waffle House (preferably at 1am following a night out) is a unique American cultural experience that especially those confined to the Bay Area have been denied. It's a place where those from all walks of life come together.

Sounds like IHOP / Denny's in other places

I think it is very different. IHOP is a low grade sit-down restaurant where all the food is too sweet. Denny's is sometimes better, but still decidedly low grade. The problem with both is they kinda try to serve stuff that could be better, but they suck at it.

Waffle House has no pretensions, they are unashamedly serving super simple food with zero attempt to be fancy. But they're pretty good at what they do choose to serve (or at least pretty consistent).

I love going there any time I'm in the South. I really wish we had them in the PNW. We're finally starting to get some In-n-Outs here, I'd be in heaven if we got Waffle House too. I can dream...

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#122

Post by rootusrootus »

flyingswift wrote: post #114
madcaptenor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's their map: https://locations.wafflehouse.com Waffle House started just outside of Atlanta, and you can still see that. In other big cities they seem to stay outside of the core - I suspect they don't want to have locations without parking. (But off the top of my head I can name two Atlanta-area Waffle Houses that don't have their own parking, namely the one right off Centennial Olympic Park and the one in down…

The one at Georgia Tech also doesn't have parking

Good for people watching, that one is. We went there for breakfast every single day when I was in Atlanta to retrieve my OMSCS degree (we were staying in the GT hotel in the same building, so it was super convenient). I'm easy to please, and my waistline is better because we don't have Waffle House in the PNW. Maybe I'd grow tired of it, but no guarantees.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#123

Post by pjscott »

axus wrote: post #100
jimbob45 wrote: post #3

[flagged]

What are your thoughts on Reduced Instruction Set Computers?

I'm not the OP, but I'm pretty sure there's a simple, uncontroversial answer here. They were an excellent idea at the time, allowing much more pipelining with the microarchitecture design techniques in use back then. In the time since, the complexity of the instruction set has stopped being such a big deal.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#124

Post by IncreasePosts »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #106
IncreasePosts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it isn't.

Bourdain’s show was about traveling the world, eating cheap food with the local common man. He was good enough to cook in the kitchen at French Laundry and rich enough to eat in their dining room as often as he wanted. But he was very much anti food snobbery.

It's fine to be anti-food snobbery, but it doesn't change the facts, and to make a comment like that descends into reverse snobbery(which is just as ridiculous as snobbery but rarer)

Maybe if he was as drunk at the French Laundry as he was at the Waffle House, he would rate it differently.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#125

Post by IncreasePosts »

wizerdrobe wrote: post #119
IncreasePosts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it isn't.

It’s simple comfort food consistently cooked by an often sassy staff. Sometimes that beats a Gucci plate with opaque aioli at absurd prices. If Bourdain says my old Waffle House beats a French laundromat who am I to argue? Cultural institutions are something to behold.

Sure, and if I say that my 4 year olds drawings are better than anything Van Gogh ever made, who could argue against that?

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#126

Post by maxfurman »

galdosdi wrote: post #104
lastofthemojito wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's the affordable, approachable 24/7 always-welcome aspect more than the food. People have fond memories of going to Waffle House after partying, or going with their tween friends as the only place they could afford to go out to eat, or going after softball games in their still-dirty uniforms. Another commenter mentioned that Anthony Bourdain said Waffle House was better than The French Laundry (while eatin…

> in (just about) any state you like. In any state but a northern one. Sadly, there are none in the northeast. Waffle House to me borders between being an "american" thing and specifically a "southern" thing

There are several waffle houses in PA, DE, and MD. Isn't that the northeast?

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#127

Post by lisper »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #106
IncreasePosts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it isn't.

Bourdain’s show was about traveling the world, eating cheap food with the local common man. He was good enough to cook in the kitchen at French Laundry and rich enough to eat in their dining room as often as he wanted. But he was very much anti food snobbery.

Being anti-food-snobbery is great. But let's be real: the Waffle House might be fantastic (I've never eaten at one so I wouldn't know), but there's still a reason that the Laundry can charge two orders of magnitude more for a meal than the Waffle House and still be sold out every single night.

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#128

Post by ranger207 »

notaustinpowers wrote: post #57
nerdjon wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Waffle House has locations in any major Urban location. I really wish we had them in Boston also. It is an experience that even other diners don't really replicate. Especially the price, I am always shocked when I go to visit parents just how much you get at Waffle House for multiple people for what I am used to spending on just myself. But it is more than that. The size, the layout, the code words for…

Come to Atlanta, down the street from me are two completely separate Waffle Houses built right next to each other that share the same parking lot.

In Macon (a couple of hours down I-75 from Atlanta) there were for a long time two Waffle Houses on either side of the interstate at the Pio Nono exit

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#129

Post by ranger207 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #80
notaustinpowers wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to Atlanta, down the street from me are two completely separate Waffle Houses built right next to each other that share the same parking lot.

How do you decide which one to enter?

IIRC one of them is for catering only

Re: Waffle House's Magic Marker System

#130

Post by alexpotato »

TheGRS wrote: post #113
tivert wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't help thinking its simultaneously ingenious and hilariously convoluted. It's just ingenious, they're coding the order onto the customer's plate by partially setting it up. They're getting some of the work done, and they don't have to fumble with some separate source of truth.

Still would take a lot of training to get right. Its not intuitive. And I can certainly find a lot of humor in how its implemented.

If you have a system with low turnover of staff then intuitive is not the goal.

The goal is to efficiently transfer information with additional steps in a common language.

A similar example is the hand signals from the old trading exchange floors [1]. The point wasn't for it to be easy to learn. The point was to make it easy to transfer visual information across a very loud and boisterous place. Plus, you had to do it with both people you knew well and people you may never have worked with before.

1 - https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008...

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