No Waffling Here

The old-fashioned breakfast standard is hot as ever

WAFFLES, IT SEEMS, are back in vogue; and waffle irons are suddenly all over the place. Paradoxically old-fashioned and trendy, the simple appliances are popping up everywhere from the fanciest cooking catalogues to mainstream department stores. Why is it that?

Perhaps a waffle iron in the kitchen — like a pair of Adirondack chairs on the lawn — creates the illusion of leisure that we don't really have. The idea of making waffles evokes images of luxuriating over breakfasts in sunny rooms with clean curtains and crisp Sunday papers. And this new generation of waffle irons is Bauhaus-cool, with lines and finishes as slick and evocative as streamlined trains from the 1920s.

Recently, from the back of one of my cupboards, I retrieved an old waffle iron; I mean really old. By all rights, this thing should be in a museum. But old as it is, it's kind of hip. Made in two cast-iron parts, it has wooden handles and gizmos on each side that meet like puzzle pieces to make a simple hinge. The idea apparently was that the cook would put the iron on top of a burner, fill it with batter and flip it to heat the other side. It's what they used to call a French waffle iron. (These days, ever since Maurice Vermersch brought waffles to the New York World's Fair in 1964, we tend to call them Belgian waffles.)

The old pan is marked "Griswold, Erie, Pennsylvania," so I know where it was made, but I can't say exactly when. The Griswold Company made cast-iron cooking equipment from 1865 until they sold out to Wagner in 1957. After 1909, the company used a registered trademark of a cross inside a circle, and my waffle iron does not have that symbol, so I suppose it must have been made before then.

I cannot imagine that they made this particular model much past the turn of the past century anyway. Once electricity and electric appliances came into vogue, stove-top waffle irons pretty much went the way of the dodo bird.

For collectors of cast iron — yes, they are out there — Griswold bears a certain cachet, and no doubt this piece has value. But for me, the value of the old waffle iron is purely sentimental. My wife bought it for me when we lived in Friday Harbor. She found it at a garage sale or one of the intermittent rummage sales held at the fairgrounds there. And even though I have never used it (it doesn't rest easily on our stove), I have nostalgic feelings for it. Every time I see it, it takes me back to the San Juan Islands.

My other waffle iron is from Friday Harbor, too, and it is nostalgic for reasons all its own. A semi-professional VillaWare model, it was a gift from the owner of Mariella Inn, where I helped launch the food and beverage program when the place went through one of its various permutations from private residence to country inn.

And talk about nostalgia. I suspect that Mariella, a grand Edwardian mansion on 10 waterfront acres along the edge of town, is about as sentimental as a place can be. When I worked there, I was keenly aware of both the romance and the history of the place. Built as a private residence, it was the scene of a family tragedy involving broken hearts and World War I. During the 1920s, waterfront cabins were added, and the place was converted into an inn, known as Kwan Lamah. A Russian cook who escaped the Bolsheviks held sway over the kitchens and oversaw the chicken coops and vegetable garden that provided raw goods for her pantry.

During the Great Depression, the inn closed and squatters occupied the cabins. For decades, the place was a private family summer home and then it became an inn again. During the '90s, when it was an inn, I cooked breakfasts and dinners there and relished every moment of it. One Christmas, the owner closed up and took off for Hawaii; he invited my family to use the inn for a holiday family reunion, which we did.

Now, I cannot honestly say that whenever I pull out that slick, modern-looking waffle iron, nostalgia for Mariella Inn comes flooding over me. But like a barely noticed view from one of the windows of the old inn, the memories are there.

Greg Atkinson is author of "Entertaining in the Northwest Style." He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Barry Wong is a Seattle-based freelance photographer. He can be reached at barrywongphoto@earthlink.net.