{"id":483059,"date":"2026-10-02T19:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T19:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483059\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T19:30:11","slug":"yall-waffle-house-is-never-coming-to-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/483059\/","title":{"rendered":"Y\u2019all, Waffle House Is Never Coming to Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up in Southern California, a veritable breakfast haven<\/a>. We have restaurants like the Serving Spoon, a James Beard Foundation America\u2019s Classics winner<\/a> that has fed the Inglewood community for decades; Pann\u2019s Restaurant, a Googie-style beacon of eggs and hash browns<\/a> just 10 minutes from the airport; and any pink-box doughnut shop<\/a>. But for a long time, I have had to weather transplants bemoaning the chains and restaurants from their hometowns that have not crossed into Southern California. I see this constantly on Threads and Instagram, where people seem to take visceral pleasure from discussing what the dining scene in the largest county in the United States lacks. Though Waffle House has announced no plans to open in Los Angeles, I see impassioned requests<\/a> for it too often<\/a>.<\/p>\n

James Beard Award\u2013winning chef Sean Brock, who owns Darling<\/a> in West Hollywood, might be one of those people; he tells me the world needs a hefty dose of Southern hospitality. \u201cEvery city in the world needs a Waffle House,\u201d says the Virginia-born chef. \u201cIn the South, there\u2019s always one place that\u2019s there to feed you no matter what, to gather, catch up, and be nourished. And that\u2019s Waffle House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brock describes how Waffle House cultivates a strong sense of community for all its patrons, whether arriving in an expensive car, on foot late at night, or during a natural disaster<\/a>. His regular Waffle House order remains a pork chop plate, though he says that the experience, for him, is all about feeling welcome. A lifelong Southerner (Brock splits his time between Nashville and Los Angeles), he believes in the chain\u2019s model so much that he took the notable New York chef Daniel Humm<\/a> and restaurateur Will Guidara<\/a> to a Charleston Waffle House in the early 2010s. \u201cThey were blown away by the Waffle House\u2019s hospitality,\u201d says Brock. Guidara incorporated parts of the Waffle House philosophy into his restaurant group and wrote about the restaurant\u2019s culture in his 2022 book about restaurant service, Unreasonable Hospitality.<\/p>\n

Gritz N\u2019 Wafflez<\/a> chef and owner Jurni Rayne was born in Houston, Texas, and spent her youth dining at Waffle Houses. She debuted her popular Southern brunch restaurant in Los Angeles in 2022 and expanded twice to larger locations to meet customer demand. \u201cWe don\u2019t want a Waffle House in Los Angeles,\u201d says Rayne. \u201cBut we want Southern hospitality. We want that feeling that the Waffle House brings. We want to feel like we\u2019re at a family reunion and just kicking it with our cousin and our granny is cool with us sitting on the couch that she had wrapped in plastic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Brunch<\/a><\/p>\n

Brunch at Darling in West Hollywood. Ron De Angelis<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve only been to Waffle House twice. First as a college student, and the last time in August 2026 in Tampa, Florida. I enjoyed my golden waffle layered with tons of butter with a healthy pour of maple syrup. But I also considered how Rayne\u2019s soul-warming restaurant and waffle consistency surpass the Waffle House experience in every way, complemented by her highly trained staff who practice their own unique hospitality. Gritz N\u2019 Wafflez\u2019s does not emanate the same Southern charm found in the South, likely because Los Angeles is not the South. Instead, one can expect a friendly face who checks in regularly, doesn\u2019t hover, but makes sure the experience mirrors the spirit of its owner, whose Texas accent can sometimes be heard floating around the room.<\/p>\n

Rayne says that Waffle House logistics would not be realistic in Los Angeles, anyway. \u201cThe other reason we like Waffle House is because it\u2019s cheap,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can get the all-American breakfast at Waffle House for under $10. That will not exist in Los Angeles. Margins are based on insurance premiums, taxes, overhead, and labor. Hypothetically, if it moved to Los Angeles, that same breakfast would be $27.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rayne\u2019s point begs a better question about a Waffle House in Los Angeles: would someone be willing to pay $27 for a combination waffle platter with two eggs, choice of meat, toast, and hash browns? Los Angeles already has options, including Norm\u2019s<\/a>; Denny\u2019s; and IHOP, where a comparable combination meal<\/a> is only $18.99. (All of these breakfast chains originated in or near Los Angeles.) Angelenos can find homey breakfasts at Downtown\u2019s Poppy & Rose;<\/a> Larchmont\u2019s Max & Helen\u2019s<\/a>; Eagle Rock\u2019s newcomer Zero Fox<\/a>, which serves an affordable all-day breakfast menu; and even biscuits from the Hart and the Hunter<\/a>, which reopened in the same West Hollywood space it lived in previously on September 30. Breakfast lovers shouldn\u2019t skip Koreatown\u2019s Olympic Restaurant, which serves stellar pancakes made by a Korean family, or East Los Angeles fast-food diners like George\u2019s Burger Stand<\/a>, which slings a hearty pancake breakfast for $10. A short stack from Alhambra\u2019s Aloha Food Factory<\/a> that can feed two people runs for only $8.99.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles, like any city, has its own dining culture. Breakfast is a kind of special religion in Los Angeles, and we have hundreds of familiar neighborhood diners and greasy spoons already serving communities the real flavor of this city: its diversity. Angelenos can understand the Waffle House nostalgia \u2014 but we also have legends of our own.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

An assortment of dishes from Gritz N\u2019 Wafflez. Sarah King<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I grew up in Southern California, a veritable breakfast haven. We have restaurants like the Serving Spoon, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5894,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-483059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-intel","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}