When it comes to late night dining, Los Angeles has its fare share of offerings; although, truth be told, we could always use more. I can only go to my after-hours haunts so many times before ennui kicks in. That why I’d been so excited to try The Waffle, one of the latest entries in the LA pseudo-diner circuit. The 22-hour restaurant opened earlier this year, and already, it has stirred up quite the controversy in the food-blogging community. Some people love the kitchen’s wide variety of dishes; others feel its overrated. There’s been backlash, and there’s been backlash on the backlash — so as you can imagine, I really didn’t know what to expect when I wandered into the restaurant with my friends, J-Unit and IndianJones, this past weekend.
I’ll sum it up in one clear, unfortunate word: overpriced.
The simple truth of the matter is that despite some well-prepared dishes, this restaurant is woefully overpriced, even by Hollywood standards. J-Unit ordered a kiddie-sized mac and cheese plate as a starter, and what was given to him was little more than a few pieces of gruyere-covered pasta in essentially a ramekin. And no, not the big kind. Flavor-wise, it worked, but for $5, it was teetering on rip-off — even for kiddie-size.
The most flagrant offender, however, were the pecan waffles I ordered for a whopping $9.50. For those prices, I expected big things. What I received, however, nearly made my jaw drop: two small waffles that were just barely larger than coasters. That’s right. I’m talkin’ tiny. Look, I’ve had a lot of waffles in my time, but none as brazenly petite as these. Just one look at my photos and you can see: they only have a 3 x 3 grid! For nearly $10, I’d expect a third waffle, or at the very least an upgrade in size. How could a restaurant called The Waffle skimp on such a vital dish? To give you an even better idea of how small these little guys were, I took a picture with my fork for scale:
Each waffle is about three or four bites each. That’s six to eight bites total, for those who can’t keep up.
Yeah. That’s right. To me, all the internet hubbub about The Waffle begins and ends with this photo. This is not me being cheap. This is me being a reasonable customer, and $9.50 for two below-average-sized waffles borders on offensive. The only way such silliness could be excused would be if the best ingredients were used and the resultant waffles tasted all the better for it. And that, of course, brings us to the most important question of all: was it worth it?
Eh.
Flavor-wise, the waffles were very tasty — perfectly crisp on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. However, the experience was too short-lived and not amazing enough to outshine the other late-night joints, let alone to warrant the relatively steep price tag. If high quality ingredients were used, I wouldn’t know, and I’d like to think that’s a reflection on the restaurant, not me. For less money, hungry diners can nosh on arguably the city’s best waffles just down the block at Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles, and believe me, they do not skimp there. The point is that despite being a strong dish, I left very hungry — which is kind of antithetical to the whole late night eats gambit.
Luckily, not all dishes appeared to be such a sham. The sandwiches all looked sizable and replete with many sides, and the Pancake Breakfast (at a mere two dollars more than the waffles) was overflowing with pancakes, eggs, and bacon (the latter of which was somewhat overcooked, but still enjoyable).
Still, for a place that wishes to make a name for itself with signature waffles, I couldn’t imagine a worse way to do so. When there are seriously better waffle alternatives just down the street (Roscoe’s), across the street (Denny’s), and throughout the neighborhood (101 Coffee Shop), there’s very little reason to hit up The Waffle for waffles.