Thanks in part to unrelenting partisan animosity and sectarian media, the United States has been cracked wide open, two halves that seem increasingly unlikely to ever reassemble into anything resembling a cohesive whole. Fortunately, one opportunity remains to save us all, a gleaming beacon of fluorescent daffodil light welcoming our tired and poor, but mostly our hungry, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. If there is a unified America remaining out there somewhere, it’s probably grabbing something to eat at Waffle House.
When you are at a Waffle House, your only real concern is the plate in front of you. In the presence of pecan waffles, patty melts, and hash browns, dividing lines are set aside as all are equal, just trying to enjoy our affordable, delicious food that was prepared moments before it was plopped down on a freshly-wiped table by a usually busy server.
This consistency is everything. A visit to any Waffle House promises a certain resolute baseline of quality, and each restaurant’s ability to regularly meet or exceed that level while still charging affordable prices not only ensures you’ll rarely find an empty Waffle House, but that the restaurant will be likely be filled with people who appreciate the intersection of economical and quality eats. Waffle Houses are also somehow impervious to outside elements; famously, they never close. They are so impenetrable that FEMA created an unofficial index based on the operability of a Waffle House to determine how an area was faring following a natural disaster.
I’ve been frequenting Waffle Houses for decades, at all hours of the day and night, and I don’t recall ever walking into an empty restaurant. If you want to see the real America, there is no better place than a random Waffle House at 6:00 A.M. Perhaps there will be a few older gentlemen at the counter, sipping coffee and chewing over community issues. Later in the day, you might come across a salesman wearing a corporate-branded golf polo grabbing lunch while out on a sales call. Maybe you’ll see a family of five getting an affordable meal together. Or you might bump into a tipsy Anthony Bourdain, being instructed in the finer points of Waffle House etiquette(oh heck yes you should use the Heinz 57 sauce!) by James Beard Award-winning chef Sean Brock. Or Kanye and Kim on a double date, or Kobe, or maybe even a member of New Kids On The Block. Perhaps even putative senator Kid Rock, who once got into a brawl at a Waffle House, which is certainly some sort of peak American experience. Waffle House is for everyone.
The only valid excuse for not frequenting a Waffle House is geography. I live in New York City, and the closest Waffle House to me is 73.4 miles away in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. (Yes, I check frequently.) Waffle Houses are mostly clustered throughout the American South, stretching as far west as Arizona, as far north as Pennsylvania. While plenty of land remains to be conquered, Waffle House has played mostly to its base, sticking close to Atlanta and doubling down around the South, where it’s not uncommon to find multiple Waffle House locations within blocks of each other. And they’re all always full.
The very best restaurants not only fill us with food, they also provide some sort of emotional sustenance. The most comforting thing about eating at any Waffle House location is the constancy it offers. The world may be changing radically as quickly as we can reload our Twitter feeds, but Waffle House has mostly stayed the same, and offering the exact same menu and dining experience at every location provides a certain familiarity. I love the staff shouting “Hello!” as I walk into any Waffle House. I love the retro-cool hanging orb lambs. I love the tissue-thin napkins that are barely effective, the laminated menus, the wire baskets on each table that serve as a sort of United Nations of condiments, from ketchup to salsa to Worcestershire sauce. (Conspicuous by its absence: Russian dressing.) I love the Waffle House-themed songson the jukebox. Heck, I love that they still have jukeboxes!
There is a time and a place to eat at a white tablecloth restaurant with hovering waiters, to drop some serious coin on a night you’ll never forget. But for the majority of America, the bulk of our meals eaten out are more about function than fancy. Income inequality may be a hot-button issue in the United States, but the Waffle House doesn’t discriminate: Everyone sits at the same formica table; everyone eats the same crispy hash browns; everyone pays the same prices. In this nation that is scattered, smothered and covered, Waffle House is where America is its truest, an oasis where we can all unite free of prejudice and preconceived notions. It doesn’t matter what city or state I’m in: If you are in a Waffle House, you are, irrefutably, an American.
