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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 Wa
by zb 8y ago
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.
- scruple 8y agoMy 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!
- tracker1 8y agoI have a friend who works with guys that work in a high end restaurant kitchen... they eat convenience store hot dogs and nachos after work. Like a lot of people. I happen to like Carl's Jr. (Hardees other name)... although I don't like everything they make, and some locations are better than others.
- js2 8y agoRoger 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.
- testpostpls 8y agoIt’s tasty. The honesty isn’t in the food. It’s in the eater.