Waffle House (Market Street, Wilmington)
5041 Market StreetWe ended up making the entire 14 hour trip to Wilmington, NC in one day. It was a late night but my colleague and I pulled in to town around 12:30 AM.
We didn’t book a hotel until we figured we were going to make it all the way. The plan was, if we got too tired, we’d pull off somewhere and finish the drive in the morning.
We had a 10:30 AM appointment so we really didn’t want to be too far away from Wilmington. I was still wide awake once we hit North Carolina so we just finished the drive.
While I was driving, my colleague made hotel reservations. He decided to play nice with the company and went with something cheap.
He regretted that decision once we got checked in.
We stayed at the Baymont Inn & Suites on Market Street kind of in the center of Wilmington. Honestly, the rooms weren’t that bad but it did give off sketchy vibes when we pulled up. I was fine with his choice. He was looking forward to morning and getting out of there.
When we got up the next morning, I got a text saying the hotel breakfast room looked sketchy and we should go somewhere else.
The day before, I joked the whole way down we needed to stop at a Waffle House. It’s kind of a tradition for me when I travel south for work. I love the place but last time I took him to one…which was our second visit to one in Miami Gardens, he just got a Coke, so I was a little surprised when he said we should check out of the hotel and hit Waffle House for breakfast.
Lucky for us, there was one right down the street.
There are several Waffle House locations in the Wilmington area but the one we were closest to was the location on Market Street west if New Center Drive. Like most Waffle House locations, this one is just a small, standalone box with the traditional red awning and yellow roof line. For some reason, this location has a random palm tree right in front of the square letter logo sign.
I love Waffle House because it’s so dang simple. All the restaurants are the same. There’s a large lunch counter in front of the tiny kitchen. If you’re a bigger person, you really should sit at the lunch counter.
The rest of the small building is filled with booths that are way too small for the husky gentleman like myself…although I squeeze in to one every. single. time. instead of sitting at the counter.
The menu is always a point of frustration for me. They put one each of the tables but it’s not their entire menu. It’s a picture menu of their popular items. You can ask for a full menu but it seems like an annoying waste of time. I pretty much knew what I wanted…and it wasn’t on the menu that was on the table so I felt like I was ordering from a “secret menu.”
My pick is always the Steak and Eggs. You can get a Sirloin or a T-Bone. I always choose the sirloin. My co-worker laughed and said it looks just like the steak you get at Ruth’s Chris. It’s weird but I really like this steak. It’s such a cheap, simple piece of meat but it’s somehow always tender. It’s just seasoned with salt and pepper and seared really quickly on the flat top but it’s always the best $12 steak.
The rest of the meal is hash browns, which I got chunked (ham), covered (cheese), and peppered (jalapenos). Again, super simple breakfast food that they churn out pounds and pounds of each day and they’re some of my favorite hash browns. Nothing special but always crispy and delicious. The remaining part of the plate is two eggs and two slices of white toast.
Co-worker picked up the check since we were expensing it anyway but it should have been right around $25 for both of our meals.
I wish there was a Waffle House right down the street from my house in Kalamazoo. There are a lot of great breakfast places around but Waffle House is just so quick, so cheap, and somehow so tasty. I always look forward to traveling south with the hopes I will have time to stop for breakfast. Glad I got that time on this very quick trip.
SW Michigan Dining 