I remember the first time I went into a Waffle House. It was outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and it served up weak coffee and eggs over-easy with a side of grits, oozing with a pat of melty butter.
I think the total bill came to under five bucks.
Every once in awhile I would pass the Waffle House on Ina Road near Interstate 10 and consider stopping in. I never did, and I now wish I had.
The restaurant was a 24-7 mainstay for nearly 25 years right off the Interstate before you hit the fast-food chains that dot Ina Road further north. It closed on March 30, a pre-emptive strike against the state's $120 million Ina Road reconstruction project set to start this summer. The project is expected to tangle up traffic on the northwest side for two years, forcing drivers to use Cortaro or Silverbell roads as alternate routes.
A handwritten note on the door of the shuttered restaurant suggested diners visit the Grant Road-I-10 Waffle House, one of four left in Tucson. The others are at Star Pass and I-10, East Irvington Road near South Alvernon Way and East Valencia Road near South Tucson Boulevard.
The Ina Road widening project calls for removing the Union Pacific railroad at-grade crossing at West Ina Road and replacing it with a crossing that will have Ina Road pass over both the railroad tracks and Interstate 10, the Star reported in February.
The Starbucks on the south side of the freeway on Ina Road closed months ago. Workers there also cited the pending road construction as a reason.
The Georgia-born Waffle House, which has been around mostly in the South since 1955, has 2,100 locations in 25 states around the country.
