This Month's Story
One outstanding change in the Waveland area since Katrina is the new Waffle House. I have visited Waffle Houses before and have not been impressed either way. You go in have a quick breakfast and get out. The new one in Waveland is different, or at least it seems so to me.
One of the reasons is their food. It’s great! There are, of course, the waffles, which Waffle House is proud of and rightfully so, as they are delicious. You have the choice of including pecans, but these are dropped in the batter as whole halves, not chopped. This to me is too much, but that’s a matter of taste, I take mine plain with maple syrup and lots of butter and a side order of eggs and bacon, both of which I flip on top of the properly buttered and syruped waffle. The eggs and bacon are always done perfectly. But then so is everything else and so it has a reputation as a great breakfast place and is always crowded especially on weekends.
The thing I want to talk about, however, is their call outs. I usually sit in a stool at the counter for quicker service and I was flabbergasted my first day at hearing the waitress calling out a string of maybe five or six different orders and the three cooks at the grills seemingly ignoring her and somehow having the five orders coming out perfectly. How was that done?
In the old days this calling out business was an art requiring special skills as well as a colorful imagination. In those days, Waffle Houses and their like were “diners” and each had a big sign over it with the diner’s name, usually the owners (remember “Mel’s?), and an even bigger sign that said “EATS.”
A good diner in those days depended on the skill of their short order cook and his ability to remember and turn out meals from the shouted orders from their waitresses was part of that skill. What I remember best was that the orders yelled by the waitresses were shouted in a special, rather colorful code, “one egg killed good (fried hard), a flap and piggies (pancake with sausages), etc. It was fun just to listen to the different ways that the orders went out and it was different from diner to diner.
Not so at our new Waffle House. No code, just the order shouted somewhat abbreviated, but essentially in plain English. So, how, I wondered, were the orders magically turned into plates of foods, especially when none of the cooks seemed to be paying attention? It took me my entire meal to figure it out (sometimes I can be slow), but in the end I did.
When we left and got in the truck, I started to tell Stella of my finding. But before I could tell her of how it was done, she said, “Oh yeah, the plates.”
Now that’s annoying. Anyway, my suggestion is to go to the new Waffle House, have a nice breakfast and watch the cooks.
