Tag Archives: food

Waffle House Index

Background: My informant, BT, lived in Birmingham, Alabama, for 8 years. Interview conducted over FaceTime.

Me: “Tell me about any Alabama folklore you know. Unofficial things, stuff you wouldn’t find in a textbook.”

BT: “Well, there’s the Waffle House Index. I first heard about it from a friend while I was at Bama [the University of Alabama]. So Waffle Houses are open 24/7, they never close–“

Me: “Oh wait, can you explain what Waffle House is for people who may be unfamiliar with it?”

BT: “Yes. Waffle House is a restaurant chain in the South that’s like I-HOP but better, in my personal opinion. It’s like your typical diner, fast food chain.”

Me: “Perfect, continue.”

BT: “Right. So Waffle Houses never close, ever, except when a storm is really bad. So meteorologists started realizing that there was a correlation between the severity of a storm and Waffle House closures in the area, and realized they could track storms by Waffle House. If a Waffle House is closed in an area with a storm, then it’s all over. So if a storm is coming and people are thinking about sheltering in place, someone will usually ask, ‘well, is Waffle House closed?’ If it’s not, then the storm’s not severe enough, and you can continue on with your daily life.”

Analysis: I find the cultural significance of Waffle House to be interesting in this folk belief. Rather than trusting an institution like the National Weather Service, there’s a greater priority and belief in the knowledge of a local chain like Waffle House. Although Waffle House is a regional chain restaurant, the individual management and function of individual restaurants likely contributes to their reputation as feeling more “local” compared to a nationalized weather service. As a gathering place that is consistent and dependable in hours, the ironic trust in Waffle House over any other means to informally gauge weather is humorous of course, but also says a lot about regionalized trust and identity.

Nashville Hot Chicken Origin Story

Background: My informant, HT, is currently a student at Vanderbilt University. Interview conducted over FaceTime.

Me: “Tell me about the story behind Nashville hot chicken.”

HT: “Okay. So the story of Nashville hot chicken is that there was like a guy, a husband, who was asking his wife to make him fried chicken. But she found out that he was cheating on her, so she was super pissed. She was like, I’m gonna make his fried chicken but spike it with spicy shit, hot peppers. He eats it and is like yo that’s like straight fire. Nashville has a lot of local hot chicken chains like Hattie B’s. But the real hot chicken is not in the chains.”

Me: “Who did you hear this story from?”

HT: “I heard it from my supervisor at the library who’s a Nashville native.”

Me: Do you think the story is real?

HT: Yeah, I mean it makes sense. Plus I trust my supervisor, especially because they’re a Nashville native. That’s like finding a unicorn here.

Analysis: I think the Nashville Hot Chicken story is the perfect example of a legend with room for multiplicity and variation. It’s an entirely logical and plausible story, but I can also see how it could easily be re-told with infinitely small twists and tweaks that would cater to whichever audience it was being told to. As far as food goes, the scenario is extremely common, similar to the creation of fries (I believe potatoes were unintentionally deep fried to the unexpected delight of the customer), which echoes many of the same themes as this story. The way it was also passed through word of mouth to my informant very much makes it a performance, and not institutionalized, particularly through the prevalence of hot chicken outside of chain restaurants as well.

North German Canning Superstition

Context:

HH is a retired former housewife who lives in Westergellersen, a small village in northern Germany.

Main Piece:

“Frauen sollten kein Gemüse einkochen wenn sie ihre Regel haben. Die Gläser werden dann nicht richtig schließen.”

Translation:

Women shouldn’t be canning any vegetables while they’re on their period. If they do, the jars won’t close right.

Analysis:

There are many superstitions about the female menstrual cycle, many delineating the things women should and shouldn’t do while they are actively menstruating. The informant does not recall any further logic behind the superstition, only that the jars won’t seal correctly. Given that canning is largely seen as women’s work, and that having a good seal on the jars is vitally important for the long-term preservation of the food, it does seem reasonable that a superstition around women’s bodies would be connected to this important facet of women’s work.

Given that this is a superstition, and therefore a magical folk belief, this belief would fall under the umbrella of Sympathetic Magic, specifically Homeopathic. My interpretation of the metaphor involved in this magical belief is that if the woman canning is menstruating, her body is momentarily shedding bodily substances and fluids, rather than how she is ‘sealed’ during the rest of her cycle. So, a woman must be ‘sealed’ herself while canning, otherwise the ‘unsealed’ trait of her body would metaphorically translate to the jar, not letting it properly seal.

Songpyeon

Background:

Informant is a half-white, half-Korean student studying at USC who has lived in America their whole life.

“I feel like it’s not a tradition, just a holiday, on 추석 (Chuseok), which is like the Korean Thanksgiving, you eat like, rice cake also. You eat this like little, there’s like little colorful ones, I think they’re called 송편 (songpyeon, lit. “pine cake”), and they have little things in it, they go bad really fast.”

Context:

This conversation was recorded in-person. We were discussing holidays that we celebrated that had traditional foods usually eaten on said holiday.

Analysis:

Food is a major component of ethnic identity. As Elliot Oring notes in his book, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres, “it is unlikely that anyone who feels some stirrings of identification with an ethnic group cannot think of some dish recipe, or kind of meal that they particularly associate with their group” (35). Songpyeon is seen as quintessential to Chuseok, as it also carries symbolic belief, to show gratitude to the year’s harvest. Songpyeon is a type of dish made from rice, which is a staple crop in Korean food (there are also many other dishes that involve rice—tteok is a whole classification of various rice cakes). Making songpyeon invariably leads to a large quantity made, it is reasonable for it to be served on a holiday like Chuseok, traditionally celebrated with the entire family. As folklore, food serves as a symbol of in-group identification, creating a sense of community. Especially with members of a diaspora, food is also a way to stay connected with their culture that they otherwise would not be exposed to.

“Three all the way and a coffee milk”: Rhode Island Hot Wieners

Text:

AG: “I’m from a little state called Rhode Island and there’s this dish, this cuisine called the Rhode Island Hot Weiner. It is not strictly related to Rhode Island to my knowledge, it’s kind of like an East Coast thing, like, New York, New Jersey as well. But Rhode Island has these very specific ones. There’s a bunch of different kinds you can get, there’s a bunch of different categories. There’s East side and West side wiener. I’m an East side wiener guy. There are some that are just disgusting. They don’t even call them wieners. If you go into Providence to get a hot wiener, they’re called gaggers because of how disgusting they are. I couldn’t even finish it; my dad took me to get gaggers one time and I was like, yeah, I can’t do this. 

The East side wieners. Basically, you’ve got a standard hot dog in a bun with celery salt, mustard, onions and meat sauce and it’s delicious. And there’s a very specific way you need to order them. You can’t just order one, you have to order three, and to order three with all the stuff on it, you say ‘let me get three all the way.’ But it doesn’t stop there. You have to also order what’s called a coffee milk, which is also something that’s very, strictly limited to Rhode Island. It’s milk with coffee syrup. I don’t like coffee; I do like coffee milk. So. the classic order, you go into any wiener joint in the state of Rhode Island, you say ‘let me get three all the way and a coffee milk.’ They know exactly what you want. ‘Coming right up,’ and they give it to you.”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old college student from Barrington, Rhode Island. He described Rhode Island Hot Wieners as a staple of his home state’s food culture, a source of rivalries, familial traditions, and regional pride. AG, his father, and his grandfather have a tradition of going to get hot wieners when he is home from school. AG’s grandfather prefers West side wieners—which are more like sausages in comparison to East side wieners, which are more like classic hot dogs– and frequents an iconic restaurant called Wienerama, famous for the way the server prepares the hot dogs in front of the guests by stacking around ten on his forearm and adding the accoutrements with his other hand. AG prefers East side wieners and favors the hot dogs served at a tiny diner called Rod’s in Warren, Rhode Island. Just as the man who prepares hot dogs at Wienerama has been working at the restaurant and using his same assembly method for decades, the owner of Rod’s has a similarly iconic status among the diner’s regulars. AG describes her as an old lady between the age of 90 and 100 who plays the same role at the restaurant that she did when AG’s grandfather went there in the 1970s. AG describes how the people who have worked there recognize his father and grandfather as patrons who have been going to the restaurant for decades.

         AG thinks of this food tradition as communicating state identity. He has a shirt that says, “Three all the way and a coffee milk.” Though non-Rhode Island natives tend to think hot wieners sound gross when he describes it to them, he says that when he’s taken friends to try them, they appreciate the tradition. “You’ve just gotta do it. It’s one of those things you can’t describe, you just have to experience it for yourself,” he said.

Analysis:

I think that the Rhode Island Hot Wiener and the tradition of ordering “three all the way and a coffee milk” is an emblem of state pride. This food tradition provides Rhode Islanders with a common experience to bond over. AG’s story shows how the food builds community—between his family, with other people from the state, and with the people who work at the restaurants where this food is served—and serves as an intimate familial ritual which brings together members of different generations. Moreover, allegiances to one type of hot dog or the other creates subcommunities, creating another social dimension to this tradition. 

The fact that people who are not from Rhode Island think that Hot Wieners are gross further strengthens this sense of community, where there are people who understand it and people who don’t, insiders and outsiders. However, the novelty of the food also provides Rhode Island natives with the opportunity to be arbiters of their culture, choosing to introduce people to the tradition, sharing a part of their identity.