You Gotta Try This: Feta, arugula, tomatoes, pestos – and that’s just under the waffle

This is “You Gotta Try This,” The Bee’s series featuring one particular must-have dish at a local restaurant. Each featured dish is nominated by a reader and chronicled at sacbee.com. Got a menu item you want to shine some light on? Email reporter Benjy Egel at begel@sacbee.com.

The Waffle Experience prides itself on cooking true Belgian liège waffles, the standard before IHOP and friends made their airy cousins commonplace throughout the country. The rest of the local chain’s menu borrows little else from Europe, with the exception of one item.

As The Waffle Experience general manager Josh Macias put it, “Jimmy’s A Greek” is part Mediterranean salad, part breakfast item. One of the five most popular dishes on The Waffle Experience’s extensive menu, its tan midsection bursts with green, white and burnt auburn from the medley of ingredients piled above and below.

“It’s one of our most beautiful dishes that we have available,” Macias said. “There’s just so many colors in it. It’s outstanding.”

The liège waffle dough – made from San Francisco’s Giusto’s Vita-Grain flour, an herb mix and water – is similar to brioche dough but denser and slightly fattier. Its thickness allows the waffles to be cut in half and maintain something of a body, creating buns for The Waffle Experience’s burgers and sandwiches.

Jimmy’s A Greek starts with a 4-ounce, palm-sized block of waffle dough pressed in an iron. A cook prepares an egg according to the customer’s preferred style while the waffle bakes, and preps a medley of fruits and vegetables for the breakfast items’ arrival.

A handful of arugula goes down first, followed by diced tomatoes, crumbled feta cheese and tomato and basil pestos. The waffle comes in next once golden-brown and cooked through, then another layer of arugula is piled on before the egg lands. Nearly all of The Waffle Experience’s ingredients are sourced from around the state and country by Sysco; a cup of Natomas-based Liberty Coffee might be the most local thing on the menu.

Housemade onion jam and Kalamata/Queen Majesty olive tapenade both top the egg before Jimmy’s A Greek is finished with a balsamic drizzle. The $13 entree riffing on Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, a longtime NFL commentator fired over his controversial statements about black athletes and coaches in 1988, comes with a single dolma on the plate’s edge.

All this preparation can be seen on TVs throughout the restaurant, which show a live-cam bird’s eye view of the open kitchen’s line. Another TV continuously plays the “Man vs. Food” episode that saw Travel Channel host Casey Webb devour The Waffle Experience’s “The Babe” sandwich (grass-fed beef patty, pulled pork, bacon, white cheddar, onion rings, jalapenos, arugula and chipotle aioli between a sliced lardon-studded herb waffle).

President/CEO Michael Donoho and co-founder Jeffrey Belaski met in the Marine Corps in 1986 and opened The Waffle Experience’s Natomas store in 2014. The Folsom restaurant followed in 2016 before the first franchised store opened in Elk Grove last year. Additional franchises are planned for West Sacramento, Roseveille and Thousand Oaks, a Los Angeles suburb.

“All of our franchise locations will have the look of the Folsom location – the chalkboard on the wall, the wood on the wall, the live TVs, the open aesthetic appeal,” Macias said.

Donoho, the founding chef and co-owner, now focuses on The Waffle Experience’s business side; Macias said he hadn’t cooked at the Folsom restaurant for five months. Belaski, meanwhile, has moved on from the company altogether.

In a Sacramento County Superior Court lawsuit filed in February, Belaski and his wife Lydia alleged Donoho, COO David Isbell and CFO Victor Acepcion III conspired to strip them of their ownership stake and business assets, the Sacramento Business Journal reported. The defendants filed a counter suit in March; both remain ongoing.

If there’s a downside to a customer’s experience at The Waffle Experience, it’s in a pricing structure that can be misleading. The menu advertises that each entree “includes your choice of house salad, seasonal fruit, French fries, pesto potatoes or pork belly hash,” only to add the number “2” at the end to indicate a surcharge.

When the bill comes, that $2 surcharge has already been added to each entree’s advertised price, not listed as a separate item. That $2 surcharge is included even if the customer doesn’t get the side, a waitress at the Natomas location said.

A sign at the Folsom location’s entryway also indicates a 3 percent debit/credit card convenience fee, but the fee was applied on both visits The Bee made to the Natomas location despite no indication of how the customer would pay. At the end of the day, though, it’s a couple extra bucks and shouldn’t be enough to make most people waffle on whether or not to visit a unique brunch destination set on expanding throughout the region and the rest of California.

THE WAFFLE EXPERIENCE

4391 Gateway Park Blvd. #650, 916-285-0562 (Sacramento), 13405 Folsom Blvd. #950, 916-805-5938 (Folsom); 8351 Elk Grove Blvd. #100, 916-647-3877 (Elk Grove)

Info: https://thewaffleexperience.com/

Hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., seven days a week

Pro Tip: Every item off the children’s menu comes with a small ramekin of animal crackers. Call it a kiddie amuse bouche.

This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 5:00 AM.