10 Dishes To Avoid Ordering At Waffle House

When you're looking for a cheap, simple meal that's dripping with butter and served in a fun, albeit often questionable environment, there's perhaps no better place to go than a Waffle House, which was reportedly one of Anthony Bourdain's favorites. The popular 24/7 breakfast chain made its debut in Georgia, but these days, you can find its locations sprawled throughout the southern United States. It promises undeniably delicious waffles and an assortment of other sweet and savory options to budget-minded diners, from families to individuals at varying levels of intoxication.

If you've never been there before and you're wondering what to order, there's only one right answer: the All-Star Special. But with so many options on the menu, you may find yourself drawn to one of the other listed dishes. Go ahead and experiment with WaHo's menu if you wish, but we're here to warn you about the dishes you should probably skip if you want to have the best possible meal. These are the 10 dishes we suggest avoiding the next time you visit a Waffle House.

There are four different types of waffles at Waffle House, all starting with the classic waffle, which may be your best bet if you're visiting the restaurant for the first time. However, we find ourselves partial to the chocolate chip waffle, which offers a super sweet flavor profile that pairs wonderfully with the salty whipped cream at the chain. If you're the kind of person who prefers nuttier, richer flavors, you might want to opt for the pecan waffle, which has an undeniably pleasurable crunch. But the waffle flavor we absolutely cannot get on board with at Waffle House has to be the peanut butter chip.

You're not going to get actual, spreadable peanut butter here. Rather, these chocolate chip-like pieces of peanut butter don't deliver the same creaminess you might expect from the real thing. Rather, you just get a boring, one-note nuttiness that simply cannot compete with the deliciousness offered by the other waffle selections on the menu. This dish is safe to skip.

If you're looking for quite possibly the heaviest dish on Waffle House's menu, look no further than the Texas cheesesteak melt, which boasts beef of a questionable quality along with grilled onions and two slices of American cheese. It all comes on buttery Texas toast that only adds to the decadence of the sandwich. Sure, if you're extremely hungry and you're okay feeling mildly constipated for the next week, it might be worth an order. But considering that it doesn't taste very good either, this is another WaHo menu item we think is worth skipping.

We love a fatty dish every now and then, but this one is a bit over the top. With all that butter and cheese, there's nothing fresh to balance out the fattier elements of the dish. Some pickles, for instance, might be nice, but those don't come standard with the sandwich. Overall, it's a dish that's far too heavy to actually taste very good at all.

Waffle House uses a very specific bank of words to describe the various ways in which it serves its hash browns. You can get them scattered or smothered, or if you're really in the know, you'll order them "all the way." But the worst way to order them is simply "covered." What does that mean, exactly? Basically, it means that your cooked hash browns will come out covered with a single slice of barely melted American cheese. Want that cheesiness to be distributed throughout your plate of hash browns? You'll have to mix them yourself.

Honestly, it sort of seems like a lazy way of preparing hash browns, and it's not particularly delicious: The American cheese the chain uses seems not so high quality and simply sits like a piece of yellow plastic on top of the potatoes. There are far more interesting ways to order your hash browns at Waffle House (and far more delicious dishes to choose from in general).

Waffle House is the kind of place you go to when you want to get a nice, greasy sandwich or a giant plate full of breakfast food. It is not, on the other hand, the kind of place you want to visit when you're simply craving a bowl of soup. That's why we absolutely cannot endorse anyone ordering the Bert's chili if they're trying to get the best of what Waffle House has to offer. This chili tastes like it came straight out of a can, with less beef than we would prefer and beans that are so soft, they're almost gooey.

It could be argued that there's a time and a place to order this chili. Perhaps you've been driving on the highway for hours on a particularly cold night, and you need something to warm you up at the first place you stop. In this case — and this case only — we can understand why someone might order this dish. Otherwise, though, you're cheating yourself out of a better meal if this is the dish you choose when you go to a WaHo.

Admittedly, most people are probably going to order a cup of coffee when they go to Waffle House, particularly if they're visiting for breakfast. After all, you have to wash down your waffle with something hot and liquid, right? But if you think that Waffle House is a place you should go to enjoy the coffee specifically, you have no clue what you're getting into. It should come as no surprise that the coffee at this chain isn't that good. Depending on which Waffle House location you go to, the coffee may be either too watery or too bitter — but it's almost always one or the other. Frequently, we've had coffee at Waffle House that tastes burnt.

Sure, if you need some coffee on the side of your breakfast, go ahead and order it. However, we think it's also smart to skip the coffee here entirely, opting to visit a coffee shop after you've wrapped up with your breakfast. Basically, any other coffee you can find is likely to be better than the stuff at Waffle House.

Some argue that Waffle House's pork chop dinner should be avoided because it's simply a pretty unhealthy meal. We don't align with that line of reasoning, since nobody is going to Waffle House for their health. It's not exactly known as a restaurant with a wealth of super nutritious options. But we do agree that the pork chop dinner is not worth your time if you want a meal that's going to taste as good as possible.

First of all, why would you go to a diner specializing in breakfast foods and order a pork chop? It's already a strange order. But when you consider that the pork chop is almost always tragically overcooked, you have another good reason to skip this meal entirely. Every time we've had the pork chop at Waffle House, it's been incredibly dry, sometimes even to the point of chewy. And considering that you can get the same sides with basically any other entree on the menu, there's no reason why you should gravitate to the pork specifically.

When you want the most basic, boring sandwich you've ever tried in your entire life, head to Waffle House and order the grilled ham and cheese sandwich. We're convinced that this thing is only on the menu to meet the needs of particularly picky children. It comes with only one slice of ham and one slice of cheese, served between two pieces of toast. If that sounds like something you could whip up in under two minutes in your own kitchen, you're not wrong — it's incredibly simple, and perhaps too simple to justify spending money on, even if it's available at a Waffle House price point.

Like the Texas cheesesteak melt, there's nothing in this dish that offers any brightness or acidity. Rather, you're getting a sad combo of meat, cheese, and bread that you could find anywhere. Unless you're allergic to flavor, we'd suggest skipping this menu item in favor of the many more delicious options on the WaHo menu.

If you're going to order something sweet at Waffle House, believe us when we say that your best bet is probably a waffle. After all, they're what the restaurant is known for and named after, so you can bet you're going to get something sweet that tastes delicious. However, you'll notice that there are a few other dessert menu options as well, including the pecan pie. Since this is a restaurant that hails from the South, you might expect that pie to shine. In reality, though, the pecan pie you'll find at Waffle House is undeniably disappointing.

We're guessing that it's not ordered very often, because the times we've tried it, it hasn't tasted fresh at all. The crust is more soggy than crisp and flaky, and it has a cloying sweetness to it that'll immediately turn you off sugar for the rest of the day. If you don't want to be disappointed in your dessert, skip the pecan pie at Waffle House (and make your own instead).

There's a time and a place to order the healthiest-looking option on the menu, but eating a meal at Waffle House is neither the time nor the place. Waffle House is the kind of joint you visit when you want something extra buttery and greasy, not a dish that's on the lighter, more refreshing side. That's why we absolutely cannot get behind the chain's grilled chicken sandwich. It comes with lettuce, tomato, and onions, all served on a grilled bun along with the chicken itself.

Unfortunately, though, since you're at Waffle House, that chicken is liable to be quite dry, with a chewiness that's probably not what you're looking for in this kind of sandwich. Often, the vegetable toppings at Waffle House are a bit sad and wilted, so you may have that to look forward to when you order this sandwich as well. Although it may not objectively be the worst item on the menu, it's still one we would never suggest a Waffle House-goer to indulge in.

The chicken melt hash brown bowl at Waffle House sounds like something you would make at 2 a.m. after a night of drinking when you're desperate to throw something together with what you already have half-cooked in your fridge. The hash browns are topped with onions, American cheese, and some chopped-up chicken breast that feels completely out of place. In fact, it seems like the chain decided to make another random menu item by throwing together elements of different dishes that didn't get used up for their intended purpose.

The chicken at Waffle House tends to be quite dry. Although the addition of creamy American cheese offsets that dryness a bit, it's not enough to make this dish worth trying. If you're looking for a similar hash brown-focused dish, you can simply get the same thing with sausage instead — it's a much tastier option, if you ask us.

These dishes were chosen based on both personal experience and online reviews. They're dishes that are either lacking in flavor, are simply too basic to justify ordering at a restaurant, or don't taste very good as a whole.