Check it out:
The Waffle is a new, almost-24-hour restaurant. It serves comfort food, and it’s in Hollywood. Everyone’s super-excited, right? Eh, guess not. It’s 9 p.m. on a Friday, and this place is so
not packed.
You’d think a 22-hour diner would be a slam-dunk. But as much as Angelenos claim to want more dining options in the late-night hours, restaurateurs are having a hell of a time making them work.
Mode, located cunningly in Downtown L.A. and promising a trendy after-hours scene, crashed and burned big time without ever really taking off. And
Lift, which had excellent food and a primo spot within walking distance from most Hollywood clubs, claims to be restructuring from a 22-hour restaurant to a bar with more conventional hours. Its phone is currently disconnected.
We certainly hope the Waffle meets with more success than those two, but it’s got a few big hurdles to clear. The first, and most strange, is the enormous hate-fest the Waffle has fallen victim to online. Posters on various food-centric message boards have joined in on a vicious groupthink that seems determined to drive the Waffle out of business.
“Chowhound is a despicable entity,” says Scooter Kanfer-Cartmill, executive chef at the Waffle.
Yowza, that’s quite a statement. But chef Scooter is hurt that people on the popular food website have piled on the criticisms and accusations. It’s almost Shakespearean. “I believe in free speech…but there has to be accountability,” she says. Or, as we like to say, everyone just needs to calm down, have a chocolate malt, and give the new restaurant at least a month to settle in and work out the kinks.
“I’m an easy target because I’m new again to L.A., I have a little bit of a reputation,” says Kanfer-Cartmill. It’s true: The veteran chef has had an epic culinary career. She started as a dishwasher at City Cafe, the first, now-departed outing from Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. She was so bad at it, she says, that “after about two days, they let me start peeling vegetables.” She worked her way up through increasingly prestigious gigs. But it hasn’t been all serious business. Remember when desserts took a comforting turn and we started seeing "cookies and milk" on fancy restaurants' menus? That’s partly Scooter’s doing. Because “desserts should be fun,” she says. Preach on, sister.
The upside to all these online shenanigans is that the service at the Waffle is now excellent. The staff must have had a talking-to, and besides, we totally heart their truck-stop uniforms. But good service can’t make up for the second hurdle: the ridiculous location. It’s in an office building, and the parking situation is atrocious. (We have to disagree with the website's grandiose claim to the contrary; valet does not “ample parking” make.) With half the parking in the area gone thanks to construction, you could drive around for 20 minutes before giving up and paying to park at the Sunset + Vine complex (or, you know, getting food somewhere else).
Kanfer-Cartmill takes a different view. She thinks it’s great that Hollywood is “having a renaissance,” and is happy to be a part of it.
If you do manage to find parking—and the front door of the dark restaurant—the food is pretty good. Highlights include perfect shakes and malts, and the mushroom hash browns (don’t forget the bacon, onions and sour cream), which are stupidly tasty. That bacon waffle you’ve been hearing so much about? My friend summed it up perfectly when he murmured “mmm…delicious waffle” between bites.
Kanfer-Cartmill hopes to open 30 more locations in the future, including several in and around L.A. She's obviously in it for the long haul, as she's still tweaking recipes. Are 3 a.m. waffles and milkshakes coming to a neighborhood near us? We say: Bring 'em on.
Katherine Spiers is a contributing editor for Metromix Los Angeles.
