Anthony Bourdain Said This Chain Restaurant Was Better Than Fine Dining

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

For all Anthony Bourdain's timeless associations with haute cuisine and fine dining, the man was not afraid to rub elbows with the hoi polloi when it came to eating. His debut book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly brought the public into the unseen world of the back-of-house at some of NYC's ritziest eateries. Tony Bourdain counted In-N-Out as his favorite fast food chain, he frequented a local dive bar in Chicago when he passed through town, and he thought the best soup in the world was the bún bò Huế he slurped at an outdoor stall in Vietnam.

It comes as no surprise, then, to discover that Bourdain had something akin to a religious experience when he first visited a Waffle House restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, eating an enormous meal that he dubbed the pinnacle of Americana. Accompanied by Sean Brock, executive chef of several award-winning Southern restaurants, Bourdain ordered, in consecutive courses, a pecan waffle absolutely dripping with butter and syrup, a patty melt, pork chops, a T-bone steak, a fried egg, and a green salad with Thousand Islands dressing ... a whopping repast that Brock curated as a "tasting menu" for Bourdain. Quoth the departed great, who was as epic a wordsmith as a chef: "This is better than the French Laundry, man [...] It drives me to clamber up on the counter and start reciting Walt Whitman, 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' Oh say, can you see — and you know what? I doubt I'd be the first."

It's been said that, if you can handle the rigors of being a line cook at Waffle House, you can handle even the most exacting fine dining kitchen. The patrons are demanding and sometimes drunk, the diner is open all night, and the grillmasters are expected to remember a complicated, esoteric system of marking plates that ensures orders are correct from a verbal cue, no paper tickets required or allowed. On Reddit, an "ask me anything" session with a self-proclaimed fine dining chef led to the revelation that Waffle House experience gives a serious boost on résumés: "Secondary shout-out to Waffle House, because they've stared into the void and sold 17 orders of eggs at the correct temp." Another thread shouted out the inimitable training ground that Waffle House served as for up-and-coming chefs: "I did it in my teens. It's pretty brilliant training for a young cook. Speed, accuracy, memory all put to the test."

Not for nothing, some of the biggest celebrities around appreciate the Waffle House experience. Carrie Underwood's family enjoys their Christmas breakfast there, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson counted it as comfort food in his early life. Bruno Mars, Donnie Wahlberg, Kim Kardashian, Kobe Bryant, and Justin Bieber are just some of the luminaries who have publicly shared their patronage on social media. Waffle House is, in many ways, the great equalizer. It seems that, no matter how lofty your pedigree or deep your pockets, you can put your elbows on the table and scarf some smothered and covered hash browns at two in the morning. If it was good enough for Anthony Bourdain, it's definitely okay in our book.