Why & Waffles matters.
& Waffles is a family-run breakfast restaurant where Toluca Lake's studio-adjacent character meets Belgian waffles, all-day breakfast and Edward Damadyan's idea of rebuilding familiar American morning dishes around the waffle iron.
Set along Lankershim Boulevard near Valley Spring Lane and just steps from the Los Angeles River, the restaurant occupies North Hollywood's southern approach beside Toluca Lake, with Universal City rising southwest beyond the Ventura Freeway, Studio City extending across the river toward Ventura Boulevard and the eastern Santa Monica Mountains framing the Valley edge beyond Cahuenga Pass. The compact dining room keeps booths and tables close to the breakfast counter, giving the operation the scale of a neighborhood diner despite its position on a major Valley artery. A waffle mural supplies the room's most conspicuous visual element, reinforcing the food that organizes the restaurant's concept. Outdoor seating extends the dining area toward Lankershim Boulevard, broadening a relatively small storefront. The result is a focused daytime restaurant whose waffle imagery, intimate dining room and position between North Hollywood, Toluca Lake and Universal City give a family breakfast concept a distinctly Valley setting.
What defines & Waffles.
& Waffles is best known for turning founder Edward Damadyan's fascination with breakfast and lunch staples into a family restaurant organized around waffles as both a standalone dish and a structural component of savory cooking. Edward developed the original idea before his sons Raffi and Serge were old enough to work the waffle iron, and the brothers subsequently took over the operation and expanded their father's concept. The North Hollywood restaurant opened in 2017, giving the family its first foothold on Lankershim Boulevard before the business expanded to Woodland Hills and Long Beach. The three-location group still operates under Raffi and Serge, preserving the generational relationship behind the original restaurant as the company has grown across Southern California. Waffles remain the organizing principle across breakfast plates, sandwiches, burgers, Benedicts and sweets, allowing the kitchen to use the same foundational preparation across markedly different dishes. The restaurant also maintains breakfast throughout its daytime operating hours, with the North Hollywood location opening seven days a week from early morning through midafternoon. That continuity between Edward's original idea, his sons' stewardship and the expanding waffle-centered menu gives the restaurant a more specific family lineage than its casual diner format initially suggests.
Cajun Fried Chicken & Waffles pairs a mildly spicy six-ounce fried chicken portion with a full Belgian waffle, and the Texas Style version shifts the protein toward buttermilk fried chicken. Bacon Waffles and Sausage Waffles move the meat directly into the batter, distributing salty pieces through the waffle instead of treating them as separate breakfast sides. The Waffle Cheeseburger pushes the same idea further through jalapeño-cheddar waffles, an Angus beef patty, cheese and egg, converting the griddled breakfast form into the bread component of a burger. Waffles Benedict places ham, steak and two poached eggs over a half waffle, transferring the architecture of eggs Benedict away from the English muffin. The Cajun Country Skillet layers Cajun chicken, three eggs, jack cheese, home fries and country gravy, carrying the restaurant's mildly spiced fried-chicken profile into a heavier breakfast preparation. Sweet versions move through Carlitos Churro Waffle, Boysenberry Nutella Waffle, Fruity Pebble Waffle and Berries & Cream Waffle, using cinnamon sugar, fruit, chocolate-hazelnut spread and cream to alter the same Belgian base. The menu's strongest through-line is structural: waffle batter becomes breakfast bread, sandwich casing, burger bun, Benedict base and dessert, allowing one preparation to organize much of the restaurant's cooking.
How & Waffles fits.
& Waffles works as the anchor for a North Hollywood outing connecting the treaty site associated with the end of armed conflict in California during the Mexican-American War, a surviving railroad depot from the Valley's agricultural settlement and a vaudeville house that followed North Hollywood into the motion-picture era.
Begin at Campo de Cahuenga, where Andrés Pico and John C. Frémont signed the Articles of Capitulation on January 13, 1847, ending hostilities in California during the Mexican-American War and preparing the way for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo the following year. The original adobe deteriorated after the nineteenth century, but preservation efforts eventually produced a memorial structure near the historic site, giving the Cahuenga Pass a direct physical association with the political transfer that reshaped California. Continue to Lankershim Depot, a surviving remnant of the agricultural settlement that preceded North Hollywood's entertainment economy. Southern Pacific's Valley line reached the community in 1895, when the surrounding town was still developing around farms and orchards; the settlement had begun as Toluca before taking the Lankershim name in 1896 in recognition of Isaac B. Lankershim, whose land syndicate had acquired a vast portion of the southern San Fernando Valley decades earlier. The depot became part of the transportation infrastructure connecting that agricultural community with the expanding Los Angeles region, surviving long after the orchards and early rail traffic disappeared. Conclude at El Portal Theatre, which opened on October 5, 1926 as a 1,400-seat vaudeville and silent-film house just before Lankershim officially adopted the North Hollywood name in 1927. The building moved into motion pictures, later received Works Progress Administration lobby artwork under Anthony Heinsbergen and survived the 1994 Northridge earthquake before a late-1990s reconstruction divided the former movie palace into three performance rooms. Its present complex includes the 360-seat Debbie Reynolds MainStage, 96-seat Monroe Forum and 42-seat Theatre Tribe, preserving live performance inside a building approaching its centennial. The progression moves from the 1847 agreement that closed armed conflict in California through the railroad infrastructure of the agricultural San Fernando Valley and culminates in a 1926 theater that accompanied Lankershim's transition into North Hollywood and the entertainment economy that came to define the surrounding district.
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