Waffle Shop

The Waffle house is a quirky little place where you can get good waffles for a low price. I wouldn’t go here for the food alone, but it is a neat little venue with a live talk show, which is something you don’t see every day. You are encouraged to participate in the show if you want to, but you are not pressured so just watch or ignore it if you want. The menu is limited, but the options are varied so you should be able to find something you like as long as you like waffles. It is definitely worth checking out at least once.

Menu: Limited.
Coffee: Not hot enough. Same temperature as my water, in fact.
Water: Not cold enough. Same temperature as the coffee.
Sausage: Pretty terrible.
Prices: Reasonable.
Service: Got one out of five orders wrong, and needed clarification on some incredibly simple things.
The Show: Technical difficulties.
Concept: Very neat.
Waffles: Pretty good, actually, but not worth a detour (especially in light of everything else).

Quirky spot. Great for a late night bite.

Though the overall goal of this place is the art show/​talk show element, it’s also a legit restaurant. I stopped in for Sunday brunch with my 2 year old son (not an easy age to eat in restaurants).
What worked for us was that that it was quick, the food was good (waffles with strawberries and whipped cream; turkey bacon) and the atmosphere was relaxed. Oh, and prices were pretty cheap too. We had a friendly server behind the bar. They accidentally gave us some eggs we didn’t order but that was no big deal.
As for the talk show element, we weren’t quite sure how to get involved (probably wouldn’t be the most interesting interview with a 2 year old anyways). It did seem like they could have more audience participation and more interesting shows if they had some topics or questions available to the crowd for people to think about before being filmed… maybe on the menu?
Overall, I would recommend it. It’s not easy to find a place that can serve the needs of a harried mom and little kid. And, I mean, who doesn’t love waffles?

The interior of the Waffle Shop is irrefutably adorable.
The format is irrefutably weird.
The food here definitely isn’t bad. I’ve seen other reviewers call it unexceptional, and they’re probably right. I don’t know, I’m not a waffle connoisseur, and I’ve never even met anyone from Belgium. What I do know is that I really enjoyed my waffle. So pshaw to your declarations of unexceptionality!
I sort of wish I had gone up and been on the «show.» I mean, nobody watches webshows (so far as I can tell,) but it probably would’ve been fun.
The hours are really weird, though… What’s up with that?

Okay, its obviously not for the food. The waffles are okay.
The reason you go is that its an art project, that could either be really entertaining, or really lame. This place has very charming and beaming CMU students working to promote art, waffles, life, and talk shows. its an interesting gig, which you will leave very quickly, or stay when you are drunk to free style rap or talk about your problems. Go when you are drunk, but remember you are on camera. Immortalized.

Now this is a weird, fun little place. The main thing that you have to know before you go is that it’s less of an actual restaurant and more of an art project. You’re not going to enjoy this place if you don’t understand that right off the bat. So don’t expect awesome food or incredible service.
Now, the waffles ARE very good, and there’s nothing wrong with the service, but the main reason to go is to watch the show. Yes, this restaurant is actually an ongoing, live-​streaming talk show. Don’t worry, you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, but if you have delusions of being interesting or entertaining, they’ll hook you up.

After my experience with another eatery that serves waffles on South Highland, I wanted to give this place a shot for comparison. While the waffles aren’t extraordinary here, I prefer them to Oh Yeah’s. Oh Yeah has more batter and add-​in options, but the Waffle Shop’s are thicker and (in my opinion) tastier.
I enjoyed the Bananas Foster waffles, though that name is a bit misleadng – the bananas here raw, and not cooked like real Bananas foster. The brown sugar sauce is delicious.
The servers were very friendly when I was there, though maybe not the most efficient. But this was just with little stuff, like not remembering to ask another diner if he wanted cream with his coffee until a few minutes after she had poured him a mug. Even though one of the employees approached me to ask if I wanted to be on the talk show (no diners had yet volunteered), he didn’t pressure me after I said no thanks. A couple of people wandered into the shop lost and needing directions, and the employees were nice enough to step out the door and point them the right way.
This isn’t a gourmet experience, but it’s a charming one with its quirks. I’m glad they added daytime hours on Saturday and Sunday because I can barely keep my eyes open late at night nowadays.

My husband and I went to the Waffle Shop for Sunday Brunch, which is your choice of 7 different types of waffles and nothing else. The whole experience was surreal and then there was the «reality show» aspect of it which seemed like the only normal part.
This restaurant is obviously run by people who have no — I mean zero — experience in the restaurant business. When we walked in we stood in front of the door while the servers sauntered around aimlessly, and the manager sat in the window talking to a friend (truth be told this is a familiar experience on the Pittsburgh Sunday Brunch scene, but still annoying). Finally a server came over to us and said that she would clean a table for us but then wandered off. After standing around for awhile longer our table was finally clean, we sat down we ordered coffee, waffles and OJs and waited some more. As I sat watching our server meander around the shop, she seemed to have no clue what she was doing. It all seemed very odd to me. When our waffles arrived from another server, our coffee and OJ hadn’t. Soon after our waitress returned and stated, «I’m sorry, I feel like I abandoned you guys.» And I couldn’t help but agree. Our check was delivered by a third server. The first check we received was over-​priced, we soon realized that this wasn’t our check. We exchanged this check for our actual check and somehow our waitress had added our two $ 6.50 waffles, coffees and OJs to $ 10.70. I actually wondered if this was some part of the reality show experience — how you react when your server is a lost and bewildered individual (I’m trying to be kind with my words here).
I’m guessing the whole experience is significantly more fun when you are drunk in the middle of the night. But, for a Sunday morning, I walked out of the restaurant saying to my husband, «That was a weird experience!»

So if you’re in the area, and seriously want a relatively overpriced waffle with either an unbelievably long pubic hair, or a regular length normal hair, give this place a shot. I understand that there is meant to be SOME measure of informality in this place, but seriously this place is uncomfortably familiar. If you’re not in on the joke, don’t bother coming here. The kitchen staff is strangely furious at their little waffle stations, and the vibe is that you’ve invaded a kind of shitty CMU art project. The waiter guy was very sweet, but then he peaced out, and enormous pubic hair lady swooped in to serve up… well, her hairy waffles. Seriously, a 2/​3rds chance of a hair being embedded in your food seems like a terrible gamble. F this place.

First, you don’t go here for the food.
The Waffle Shop is strictly for intoxicated (or curious) individuals wandering out of the local bars. It doesn’t open until late, the coffee is nothing to write home about, and the waffles are unexceptional.
On the other hand, the atmosphere more than makes up for the mediocre food. The Waffle Shop is a media project run by CMU students, and you can volunteer to be interviewed up on stage, or you can watch others as they’re picked apart.
Great fun & inexpensive, to boot.

I love the Waffle Shop — great food and they let you get on stage and make a fool of yourself on the internet. The only issue they have is with their wait staff but it’s getting better. Besides what can you expect from a bunch of CMU students that would be better suited acting, painting, synthesizing renewable fuel sources, or creating robots for the Pentagon. If they can’t manage to make sure that my coffee cup is full I guess I can understand that.

Waffles? Late at night? Yes, please! This place is awesome. I can’t love it enough. They have a live streaming talk show, where audience members can participate.
This is definately a place you would want to show people that haven’t been there, visitors or newbies to our fair city!

I’ve been to the Waffle Shop a few times, and each time is a new experience for me! Not only are the waffles delicious, but there’s this vibrancy in there that really represents the Pittsburgh community.
Their talk show is an interesting idea — members of the audience can voluntary be part of a streaming talk show they do online (see
).
The Waffle Shop is a mandatory visit — whether you’re a local or s a visitor looking to get a feel for the city.

The waffles started off as good, but fairly plain at this late night eatery right next to the Shadow Lounge. Over the months of redecoration & retooling their recipes, the waffles have gotten better & better! The hours have expanded (in time for me to move out of Pittsburgh, of course) making the waffles even more attainable.
The savory waffle (bacon, egg & cheese) is delicious, though the presentation could look better sometimes. If they have the Bananas Foster waffle, that’s a must! I was there the first night they made it as a trial waffle, and they ran out of bananas because it was so popular!
Oh, and the talk show is quite amusing. I have no clue where they get the guests, but it provides great entertainment to go along with the waffles.