For all his world travels, Parts Unknown star Anthony Bourdain had never been to a Waffle House. As a part of Charleston, S.C. episode for the last season of his show, Parts Unknown (currently on Netflix), Bourdain was introduced to the golden-lit Southern culinary mecca by chef Sean Brock, who said he used to love going to The Waffle House as a kid because he liked watching the cooks make food in front of him.
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"This was the only place I had ever been to where I could see the people cook," Brock says in the video. "This was action to me."
Bourdain was so daunted by the menu at first he didn't know what to order.
"I'm looking at my hashbrown, and I'm already confused and enticed," Bourdain said.
The restaurant appears to have left its mark on Bourdain, as he so eloquently describes The Waffle House in the introduction to the video: "It is indeed marvelous— an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody regardless of race, creed, color or degree of inebriation is welcomed."
As anyone who has ever been to a Waffle House can tell you, it is marvelous, indeed. And possibly even better with a higher state of inebriation.
This article originally appeared on Wide Open Country and was posted April 24, 2018.
