By Harold
Eating breakfast at home is a pretty easy way to save money. It’s relatively easy to make, the ingredients are cheap and it actually requires less effort than to fully wake up, get in the car and drive somewhere.
So that helps explain why Laura and I hadn’t made it to the popular Chapel Hill breakfast spot Ye Olde Waffle Shop. But I found the perfect reason today — the place is celebrating its 28th anniversary by offering the 1982 menu at 1982 prices. Fortunately, breakfast options haven’t really changed since I was born, so it basically meant everything on the menu was half off. If any other restaurant wants to do this, I can guarantee you will have two customers. And most likely a blog post.
I’ve never seen a place so full of contradictions. Like the name — why go with Ye Olde and not continue the pattern with Shoppe, as in Ye Olde Archery Shoppe or Ye Olde Soap Shoppe. It’s like they started naming the store, then realized it was sort of hokey for a place that opened in 1982, so they only did it half-way.
Then there’s the hours — it’s open on weekdays until 2 p.m. and on weekends until 2:30 p.m. What other place in the country is located across the street from a large college campus and closes in the early afternoon? Do they not want students to eat there? If anything, they have the opposite hours, since there’s nothing more exciting when I was a college student than midnight breakfast.
Finally there was the shop itself. It was like two different places. The front room was what you would expect — a counter with stools, open kitchen, linoleum floor. And the back room was like a Swedish cottage, with wooden benches and wood beams crossing over white walls.
But most important, how was the food? For “research purposes” Laura and I shared blueberry pancakes, pecan waffles, an egg biscuit, a plain biscuit, hash browns, juice and chocolate milk. In 1982, apparently that costs $9.54. I have no idea what Dr. Brown was using his time machine for, but I would use it to go back and load up on cheap breakfast.
Anyway, I thought the food was good, and I was glad to have another authentic Chapel Hill experience. But it wasn’t so amazing that it would make me want to eat breakfast out again before Jan. 29, 2011.
Laura
Harold
