Breakfast has a special little nook in my soul. The familiar smell of frying fatty batter in fatty butter triggers endorphins to start coursing through my veins like I’ve just run a marathon. It’s almost a waste to put breakfast in the morning, when so often I’m not fully conscious and up to appreciating the beauties of the world. The obvious solution is breakfast for dinner, or brinner, or dineakfast. But so many restaurants and so many conventional minds won’t let me have it this way. Well, conformists, I’ve found a place that accepts my stomach and its wishes just the way it is.

On a wintery Thursday night, my tummy was tumbling and mumbling and couldn’t quite agree with my brain about what to do to numb the rumbling. Luckily, another hungry body found me and told me about this place we had to go to, because she had a card for some free waffles there. Immediately Pixar’s Donkey (from Shrek) was in my brain and his unabashed enthusiasm for waffles was within me. We biked at a speed like lightning to Off the Waffle.

I got the waffle dubbed the H-Bomb and it made my mind blow up a little bit. The waffle itself was pure pleasure, a marbled authentic maple color with every single little hole in tact. The outside was not crisp, but resilient. And the inside was fluffy like a waffle should be, but the fluff was so dense that every mouthful melted slowly in my mouth, like cotton candy does in magic-fairy-happy-land.

On top of my waffle, pieces of crisp apple were strewn across like fallen dominoes. They were held up by the buoyant dough and held down by a slice of Havarti cheese, melted to perfection so that it became a cozy blanket encompassing the sleeping slices of apple. Atop the creamy Havarti, a dusting of cinnamon made everything go beyond hedonistic pleasures and into the realm of pure bliss.

Dinner shouldn’t be such a prude about not inviting breakfast to join the party. Off the Waffle gets it.

Location:

2540 Willamette St.

Eugene, OR 97405

Hours:

Sun-Thurs 7am-8pm

Fri-Sat 7am-11pm

There’s another story just beyond the amazing waffles. The two sons are trying to start a movement for the spread of bartering. They want to create a social networking website, a hybrid of facebook and craigslist, for bartering where one person post what they are looking for and what they can offer. People can search databases and see what’s going on in their community.

So go to Off the Waffle and check the shit out!