The States Where You'll Never Find A Waffle House
Open 24 hours and slinging breakfast all day, Waffle House is one of those iconic restaurant chains whose ordering method for topping hash browns gradually became part of the popular lexicon. Anyone of the semi-regular patrons who frequent a Waffle House eventually learns that covered, smothered, and diced means topping your spuds with melted cheese, sauteed onions, and grilled tomatoes. But in the event that you need a refresher course, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a guide to Waffle House hash brown terminology that also examines the dizzying number of potential ingredient combinations.
Depending on where you live, you have most likely spent some quality time in a Waffle House, whether fueling up before work or possibly sipping on coffee and gorging on life-sustaining greasy food at 2:00 a.m. while recovering from a night of revelry. Yet there are certain areas of the country where unless people have ventured out on road trips, they will have never experienced the joy and unique wonder of a Waffle House or played a game guessing which letters on the sign will be unlit.
The Left Coast is a Waffle House-free zone
As of July 2022, there were approximately 1,977 Waffle House locations in the United States (per ScrapeHero). Waffle Houses are primarily concentrated in the southeast. So if you're planning a cross-country trek from the east to the west coast and you're developing a hankering for topped and chunked hash browns (that's chili and ham for the uninitiated), just be aware that Waffle House hasn't opened a single restaurant in California, Oregon, and Washington, according to Insider.
The last stop for satisfying your Waffle House fix before arriving on the left coast would be Arizona, which has 15 locations. In fact, a number of states across the country are devoid of a Waffle House. Despite having nearly 2,000 locations, Waffle Houses are only found in 26 states. Sorry Alaska and Hawaii, you've also been excluded from the Waffle House game, meaning no heated debates have been sparked yet over whether spam and pineapple belong on hash browns.
If you want to visit a state where a Waffle House is never that far away, may we suggest Georgia, which boasts the highest number of locations at 432, as Atlanta Magazine reported. Perhaps it's only fitting since the original Waffle House opened there in an Atlanta suburb in 1955. It has since been converted into the Waffle House Museum (via wafflehouse.com).