Sunday, September 14, 2008
Food

Whose House?

The Waffle House opens a museum

By Blake Guthrie

If you’ve driven down East College Avenue between Decatur and Avondale Estates lately, you’ve probably noticed an old-fashioned looking Waffle House sign and restaurant that isn’t open for business. After doing a double-take, you might have also seen a more familiar looking Waffle House sign further down the road—this location open and ready to smother and cover your hash browns. What you may not have known was that the older place is Ground Zero for Waffle House—the first location, recently re-purchased by the company for the purpose of restoring it and turning it into a private museum for corporate and community events. I didn’t know it either, even though I had lived in the neighborhood for almost 10 years. 
                   
When I first moved to town as a starving artist in 1997, I immediately began scouting my new environs for cheap places to eat. I soon found a Chinese take-out place near my apartment, a stone’s throw from the Avondale MARTA station. It resembled every other Chinese take-out place I was familiar with from my days in New York City—dumpy interior with broken light fixtures and numbered combo plates lit up by a broken neon sign (mine: chicken and broccoli with garlic sauce, or No. 6), so it became a frequent lunch spot. At the time, there were scant other food options in the neighborhood, a sort of no-man’s-land between the city limits of Decatur and Avondale Estates. There was a Mrs. Winner’s across the street and a Waffle House down the block, and that was about it.

After becoming a semi-regular at the Hunan Express, a friend of mine asked me one day, “You know that’s where the first Waffle House was, don’t you?” I didn’t believe him. I knew the first Waffle House was in Avondale Estates, but I thought that was down the street, where the Waffle House was. They even had a plaque inside saying so; I thought they’d just torn down the old building and built a new one. Not long after that, a couple of other friends confirmed what I had thought was a local urban myth: that the Hunan Express was the first Waffle House. My doubts were washed away when, driving down College Avenue last fall, I saw the Hunan Express sign gone and the old-fashioned looking Waffle House sign in its place, with dripping letters simulating waffle batter off the sides of a griddle, or maybe maple syrup. Bye-bye No. 6.

The first Waffle House opened on Labor Day weekend in 1955. In those days, before the interstate-highway system, College Avenue in DeKalb County was a major thoroughfare. After I-20 opened, business died off at the original location and it eventually closed in 1972. By that time Waffle House was already branching out with locations all over the Southeast, eventually just off every Interstate exit it seemed, and in many places, two per exit–one for each direction of traffic.

It took a couple of decades for Waffle House to become the interstate food-service icon it is now, and it can all be traced back to the initial success—based on efficient, friendly service and affordable food prepared in full view of the cash-paying customer—of that tiny neighborhood diner in Avondale Estates. Technically, the location is not really in Avondale Estates, but on the Web site for the restaurant chain, they don’t quibble with this fact. You can’t really blame them. “Unincorporated DeKalb County” doesn’t sound very romantic.

There used to be a dry cleaner’s shop in the same building, next to the original Waffle House, which would eventually become a used tire store. That tire store was where I would buy a set of used tires for my ’86 Buick shortly after I first moved to town. Now the tire store is gone too, turned into an events and meeting room, connected to the museum, and complete with a giant wall-mural photograph of Waffle House founders Tom Forkner and Joe Rogers Sr., beaming from behind the counter, ready to pour you a fresh cup of joe. The museum had its grand opening on the morning of Sept. 3, with Forkner and Rogers on hand for the unveiling, 53 years after their first grand opening in the same spot.

“We’re just having fun with it,” explains Waffle House Director of Communications Pat Warner, “and we’re fortunate that the founders are still with us, to remember exactly what it looked like on opening day.” Indeed, the private museum is quite accurate in its detail, right down to the number of stools at the counter and the globe light fixtures hanging overhead. 

Concerning public visitation, Warner says, “We’re going to wait and see what the demand is,” but for now Waffle House only plans to use the facility for corporate meetings, pre-planned community events and tours by appointment. It’s all good by me, because I no longer buy used tires or eat food by numbers. SP

For more information: Waffle House Museum, 2719 E. College Ave. www.wafflehouse.com.