Places you can't find waffles (but should)...

Number 1: The Aster Cafe

Minneapolis, MN

I don't want to sound creepy, but I'm excellent at being obsessive. You might claim to have obsessions, but I bet I'm better at it than you, at least where sweet treats are concerned. For example, you might decide to become obsessed with chocolate chip cookies. You might bake them daily. You might order them every time you see them at a cafe or coffee shop, and you might eat them daily. But that wouldn't make you obsessed. You'd be a poser.

Unless you got pro-active. Start lecturing your dry-cleaner about the merits of complimentary cookies in the waiting area, or start writing to your congressperson urging legislation that mandates cookie breaks in public schools, and you can claim to be obsessive.

The mark of the truly obsessed is the willingness to go to any length to obtain one's snack of choice at any moment. In my own waffle obsession, that has manifested as a massive scouting mission to determine which restaurants in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area ought to sell waffles. And, using my scarcely-read blog as a forum, I will publicly urge those establishments to heed my advice, because I like to play hardball like that.

Maybe someday, I'll sit out in front of those establishments, contentedly munching my perfect homemade waffles and rhapsodizing to anyone who will listen about how they shouldn't patronize those uncooperative, non-waffle-carrying restaurants, and encouraging a citywide boycott of all un-waffley restaurants. And then maybe I'll get arrested for vagrancy. 

At last weekend's Stone Arch Festival of the Arts in Minneapolis, I strolled through the Aster Cafe and got goosebumps. This place would be the perfect place to enjoy a morning waffle on the shores of the Mighty Mississippi. It's a charming little joint that's been serving coffee and snacks at the adorable St. Anthony Main for decades. I snapped a few photos, so that you can imagine yourself sitting there and sharing a waffle with me. 

C'mon, Aster Cafe. Don't make me bring my own waffles.