Is Waffle House considered Fine Dining?

The easy widespread possession of guns is the whole problem. You had a crazy man given a permit to own guns, then when his craziness led the guns to be taken from him, the police stupidly gave them to his father, who criminally returned them to his crazy, dangerous son, who killed four people and would have killed a lot more if not for the heroic actions of James Shaw, Jr.

When lots of people have access to guns, they use them when they get angry, upset, snap, go crazy, or their family members or friends get a hold of them when they're in the same condition. Multiply the gun owners and you just multiply the gun killings. In virtually all cases, if the shooter is stopped by a shooter, it is a police officer, twenty-one times to one civilian. And in those cases, there are already innocent victims. The more guns the more innocents will die.

Agree. But logic is not the language of the NRA and RWNJs. The only language they understand is emotion—specifically fear and hate.

The things you wonder when you set your expectations as low as you can.

special treatment wrote:

the FAKE Hingle McCringleberry wrote:

I once took a dump in a Waffle House

They gave you the bathroom code w/o ordering?

He said nothing about the bathroom.

doctorj wrote:

The things you wonder when you set your expectations as low as you can.

Bottom line: it's the go to place after the bars close or the next a.m., when you is hung over. Neither is the time to search for epicurean delights.

Do they have fried chicken and waffles? I know that's a favorite of the connoisseur, Snoop Dog.

As for the occasional violent outbursts by patrons, just ignore it.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — He felt like an invisible force was drawing him into the parking lot, past the four new white crosses in the driveway, the balloons and the flowers, and the letters addressed to the dead.

He felt it pulling him into his regular spot, the one where he had been sitting in his car when a stranger, three spaces over, stepped out of a truck carrying an AR-15. He surprised himself by walking into the restaurant and sitting down in his regular booth, which had always seemed like the most comfortable seat in the world — until all of a sudden it didn’t.

At 3:25 a.m. on April 22, a Waffle House in Nashville joined the growing list of cherished American places morphed into the site of a massacre. And Chuck Cordero, a regular customer, joined the growing list of survivors left traumatized and struggling with how to move on.

Children often have little choice but to return to their schools after a mass shooting and employees must return to their offices. But 51-year-old Cordero thought at first he’d never come back here. Then he found himself again and again back at his Waffle House — No. 2,267 in the ubiquitous chain of yellow and black storefronts that are open 24/7, 365 days a year.

The eateries are so ingrained in American culture the federal government uses them after hurricanes to help gauge suffering: An open Waffle House signals hope for recovery; a closed one means disaster. Cordero’s Waffle House was closed for three days.

Four young people died, the oldest of them a 29-year-old cook, Taurean Sanderlin, whom Cordero had always called “T.” He saw the gunman shoot him in the parking lot, and now he feels compelled to come back, multiple times a day, desperate to cling to a community he never realized he was so attached to until a man with a gun threatened to destroy it.

“I don’t know why I’m doing it,” Cordero says. “Maybe I want to make sure my friends are OK. Maybe I want to know that I’m OK. Maybe I don’t want to let the bad people win. I just don’t know.”

Dozens of others feel it, too. The restaurant has been packed after the company pledged to donate a month’s worth of profits to the families of the victims, and people have come from hours away, insisting on buying strangers’ meals.

Cordero is grateful but also eager for this to be his normal Waffle House again, the place where his favorite waitress always had his coffee ready just how he likes it, with cream and three packets of Splenda. On the night of the shooting, her fiance, a cook, threw her to the ground and lay on top of her as bullets whizzed by.

Before all of this, Cordero had thought of the restaurant as a utilitarian stop, a place to pass the time between calls on his overnight shift with a roadside assistance company. Though he’s not crazy about the greasy food, Cordero likes the people who cook and serve it, and the familiarity of the jukebox and the bright fluorescent lights in the middle of the night.

“Chuck’s a special guy. But Chuck’s a normal guy for Waffle House,” says Jeff Camp, a manager for the chain. “We have a Chuck in every store: that guy that associates know, that comes in every night, that sits in the same seat, eats the same food.”

Now, people on the street recognize Cordero from the news, and he knows they mean well when they stop him. “They say, ‘God bless you. Nice to see you,’ and then I start thinking to myself, ‘It’s nice to be here.’ And then I get all emotional about how close it came.”

He pictures himself dying — not the death itself, but the news of it being delivered to his 5-year-old daughter, Emily. So he shaved his head so that people might stop recognizing him. He sometimes fantasizes about moving out to the mountains so his daughter never has to feel fear like this. He feels hopeless, like the shooting will never make sense and gun violence will never be stopped.

When he ran into a pastor one day outside the Waffle House, he told him, “It seems like the bad people are winning.”

The pastor replied: “They’re not winning.”

Cordero is struggling to believe it: “They’re terrorizing us. To me, that’s them winning. To me, keeping someone from going into their restaurant without feeling scared means they won.”

Then he feels awful for feeling so awful because he lived and four others didn’t.

When he heard a community group had planned a vigil exactly one week after the shooting, at 3:25 a.m. Sunday morning, he pulled back into the parking lot for the second time that day. His favorite waitress, Virginia Stanley, was waiting for him at his spot, wearing a T-shirt she’d hand-painted with the phrase “Waffle House Strong.” They hadn’t seen each other since the shooting, so they hugged and cried and he immediately felt relieved — like things might be normal again. They went inside and slid into a booth along with her fiance, Douglas Lauderdale.

Cordero had, for a week, struggled to find the right adjectives to convey what had happened to them. Scary. Horrible. Devastating. None seemed big enough to describe it: the first glimpse of the gun, the blood, what it feels like to consider that inches or seconds separated those who lived from those who didn’t.

But sitting with others who had experienced it all, too: “I don’t have to say that I was scared,” he says. “They were there. They know that.”

Stanley promised Cordero she’d return to work soon, and then she raised her sleeve to show him a new tattoo: “spread love,” it said, with the L drawn in the shape of an orange ribbon.

They should all get matching ones, she told him, all of the survivors.

CNN's Van Jones told Waffle House hero James Shaw Jr. that President Donald Trump had been in contact with Kanye West but not him.

Shaw replied, "At this time I haven't heard anything, but that is not to say he didn't try to contact me or not."

"So he hasn't successfully contacted you, you know, but he gave a shout out to, you know, gave a shout out to Kanye today," Jones said . "No shout out to you. How do feel when the President of the United States misses an opportunity, to hold up, you know, somebody who is trying to do good stuff like you?"

Would fit well in, with Trump (USA).

Puleezee... clearly a publicity Pro like DJT knows far well, it is BETTER to play this out the long game, rather than have your 15 min of fame dissipate right away. The only reason this WaffleHouse hero is on Van Jones, is because he hasn't been thanked by Trump yet! Otherwise, he'd be yesterday's potato salad to the media. Kudos to one the greatest thinkers/trollers of our time, making sure JSJ stays in the spotlight, well AFTER the event..........

Fine dining? It is if you are from the backwoods of southern GA.

one topic not so far covered in this thread is the venn diagram where Waffle House, Fine Dining and saxophones in popular music all coincide; don't we do intersectionality on LRC anymore?

Hoopster X wrote:

I know it is known as a breakfast place but I have always found Waffle House to be extremely clean with very nice furnishings and decor. The staff also is expert on the food they prepare and seem very polished. The food is superior. I just always have such a great time whenever I am able to secure reservations at the place. My favorite!

Of course it is fine dining. You never sausage a place.

I have never had a waffle or an American pancake. I feel a bit left out!

Hoopster X wrote:

I know it is known as a breakfast place but I have always found Waffle House to be extremely clean with very nice furnishings and decor. The staff also is expert on the food they prepare and seem very polished. The food is superior. I just always have such a great time whenever I am able to secure reservations at the place. My favorite!

I'm assuming you are from the south..

Billy Bob wrote:

Fine dining? It is if you are from the backwoods of southern GA.

I find the wine list there fairly limited.

Curiously, it shows up in lots of movies, including as the gathering place in Tin Cup. In reality, those characters would have hung out at a dive bar.