Access Atlanta > The Newcomer > Archives > 2008 > September > 03
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Greasy spoons of the South
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Amanda Bailey and her sister Melinda Ingle of LaFayette, Ga., wave to Kid Rock’s bus as it pulls into a Waffle House in Duluth in March. Oh, those wacky diner memories…
Not counting a few fishing boat forays into Canadian waters and expressway dips into Ohio, I really left Michigan for the first time at age 9, on a spring break pilgrimage to Florida that all Midwesterners make at some point in life or near death.
Ohio? Pretty much the same with less to look at. Kentucky? Empty, I thought, with none of the truly blue grass I was promised.
Tennessee, I think, is where I noticed it first: the constant repetition of Cracker Barrels — didn’t we just pass this exit about 20 times? — the ubiquitous Shoney’s buffet ads and the glowing yellow beacon of the Waffle House.
I grew up in the land of the Elias Brothers’ Big Boy, Hungry Howie’s pizza and Ram’s Horn restaurants. I had no idea these weren’t the universal family dining alternatives for when dad charred the taco shells beyond edibility.
When a Cracker Barrel showed up in my university town, we raised a collective Midwestern eyebrow so to say, “Why are your blueberry pancakes better than that of Denny’s or Theio’s?” I never would’ve ventured into a Chick-fil-A (or pronounced its name correctly) if my Georgian cousin, then a high schooler, hadn’t informed informed me that it was the best food ever. Even now, should there be another unfortunate taco incident, the nearest Huddle House to my dad would be 146 miles away, somewhere in Ohio.
But to be a newcomer here is to accept change, to understand that the all-night diners and pizza spots of my teens is not and never was the hangout here. To live here is to eat waffles.
Eat and love, adore them enough to make them into history: behold, the new Waffle House Museum. It opens this week in the original waffle house space on College Avenue in Avondale Estates.
I tasted my first Waffle House breakfast-at-night earlier this year, on a road trip of sorts, somewhere South of Dalton off Interstate 75. It’s not the malted mix of Ram’s Horn or the strawberry Belgian of Big Boy, all the waffles of my past, but I can see why sometimes it’s the best food ever.
Whether you’re from here or just learning, what’s your regional road-trip, late-night, greasy-spoon food stop of choice? Newcomers, which ones do you miss from your past?
Yes, people here loooooove their Waffle House.
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