Waffle Me Up to start restaurant on Boise’s Capitol Boulevard

Waffle Me Up will likely be the first restaurant in Boise and Idaho to specialize in the Liège waffle, a denser, sweeter, chewier cousin to the standard Brussels waffle that is served everywhere.

The Liège waffle only started gaining a small foothold in America in the late 2000s. Restaurants and food trucks catering to this southern Belgian specialty started to sprout in cities across the country around 2011.

Hector and Josie Garcia are among those pioneers, launching their Waffle Me Up stand at the Nampa Farmers Market in 2012, and then moving to the Boise Farmers Market when it appeared in April 2013. They opened a second Liège waffle booth in 2015 at the Capital City Public Market and took to the food truck circuit in October.

“I’ve been thinking about brick-and-mortar from the very beginning,” Hector Garcia said. “Being a brick- and-mortar is a game-changer because you’re open seven days a week.”

Garcia plans to open a Waffle Me Up storefront in August in the space that Guru Donuts shared with Boise Fry Company on Capitol Boulevard. The two will share seating.

No other Idaho restaurant is known to specialize in Liège waffles, said Pam Eaton, executive director of the Idaho Lodging and Restaurant Association, though she noted she doesn’t know what every restaurant in her membership serves.

Waffle Me Up may not be alone for long in Boise.

Utah already has a Liège waffle rivalry going. Its Waffle Love finished second in the Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race in 2015 and Bruges Waffles & Frites was featured on The Travel Channel’s Man vs. Food in 2010.

Bruges Waffles & Frites opened its first Salt Lake City restaurant in 2009 after beginning with a food cart in 2004. They have four corporate stores in the Wasatch Valley and are hoping to place one in Boise, said Chris Hoy, operations manager for franchising at Bruges Waffles. ”Most of the other towns in Idaho are too small for the concept.

“We don’t have anything in the works,” he added.

There is no such thing as a “Belgian waffle.” The term was invented at the 1964 New York World’s Fair when Brussels waffle purveyors were concerned the name of Brussels would confuse Americans.  Like Belgium itself, split in half with a Flemish-speaking population to the north and French speakers to the south, the specialty Liège waffle has little in common with the ubiquitous Brussels waffle, other than that both are made in a waffle iron.

The common waffle starts as a liquid batter. The Liège waffle starts as a round ball of yeast-risen dough dotted with pea-sized pearl sugar that Garcia imports from Belgium.

“What happens is the pearl sugar caramelizes the outside to give it a nice little crunch with an airy inside,” Garcia said.

Because it’s dough that is pressed into the iron, the Liège waffle has an oval shape that is smaller than the common Brussels waffle, but the Liège waffle is much denser. Garcia described it as similar to a brioche.

Like Greek yogurt, the Liège waffle is a recent player on the American market. The waffles barely existed 10 years ago in the U.S. Today many larger cities have Liège waffle shops, but typically no more than a few.

“We see them a bit more often in L.A. these days, but in general they still pale in comparison to Brussels waffles,” said George Wu, owner of Waffles de Liège in Los Angeles, which started as a food truck in 2011 and became a storefront in 2015.

Sean Lee launched The Belgian Kitchen in New Jersey in 2014 to produce Liège waffle dough for eateries that don’t want to make their own. He believes he is the largest U.S. manufacturer of Liège waffle dough, with more than 100 accounts.

“Before 2011, I would say only Waffle Cabin (at 30 ski resorts) and Wafels & Dinges (New York City food trucks started in 2007) were relatively well known,” said Lee, who discovered the Liège waffle at a Waffle Cabin in Vermont.  “2010-2011 seems to be when multiple businesses started across the country.”

Garcia will use a heavy-duty Belgium-made waffle iron designed specifically for the dough texture of the Liège waffle.

Waffle Me Up will remain at the Boise Farmers Market, where Garcia produces upwards of 160 waffles in the four-hour market window. He will no longer appear at the Capital City Public Market and the food truck will only appear at catered events.