Georgia’s own Waffle House started with a restaurant in Avondale Estates near Atlanta on Sept. 5, 1955. GPB’s Orlando Montoya interviews a professor who wrote a book about the chain.
A staple of Southern comfort foods celebrates its 70th anniversary this weekend.
Georgia’s very own Waffle House started with a restaurant in Avondale Estates near Atlanta on Sept. 5, 1955.
University of Central Florida anthropology professor Ty Matejowsky wrote a book about the chain. In Smothered and Covered: Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary, published by University of Alabama Press, he said Waffle House is more than just a restaurant.
“When you hear the term ‘Waffle House,’ oftentimes food is not the first thing you think of,” Matejowsky said. “Typically, you might think of some kind of wild goings on after dark where people are not exactly sober, stuff that ends up on social media.”
Or maybe one thinks of the restaurant’s reliability: “The Waffle House Index,” how quickly restaurants open after a tropical storm, famously measures a storm’s intensity.
“That’s seen as like a no-nonsense, affordable restaurant that’s always there for you,” Matejowsky said. “Like it’s open 24/7, 365 days a year, so it’s like dependable, it’s reliable, you know what you’re going to get.”
Matejowski says the standard toppings for Waffle House’s golden hash browns, including scattered, smothered, and covered, came from line cooks. Meanwhile, the inspiration for the restaurant’s yellow block signs came from public education — the colors of a school bus.
“So it was kind of conceptualized that when people see a school bus, they’re kind of conditioned to slow down or notice it,” Matejowsky said. “So those type of thoughts went into the design of the Waffle House sign.”
Waffle House will celebrate its 70 years with a rare open house of its original location on Saturday from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. Participating locations also will have a limited edition birthday cake waffle on the menu.
This article comes to Now Habersham in partnership with GPB News
