In the battle of pancakes vs. waffles it all depends on where someone resides

Are people in your neck of the woods chowing down on pancakes or waffles? Christopher Ingraham of The Washington Post decided to find out which areas of the country prefer which foods, creating a map to chart the locations of Waffle House and International House of Pancakes restaurants. While IHOP is commonly found spread throughout the U.S., Wafffle House is largely concentrated in the South, with a few other areas thrown in for good measure, such as parts of Ohio and Indiana.

"Waffle House's distinctly Southern roots are a point of pride in the region," Ingraham writes. "The chain took root in the suburbs of Georgia in 1955. Every Waffle House restaurant is open 24/7, and the company takes great pride in only closing a location in the most dire of circumstances. This has led the Federal Emergency Management Administration to develop an informal 'Waffle House Index' to measure the severity of natural disasters in the South.

"IHOPs, on the other hand, are pretty much everywhere," Ingraham writes. "There are plenty in the South, too, but they're completely overwhelmed by the number of Waffle Houses in the region. Despite their broader geographic distribution, there are roughly similar numbers of both IHOPs and Waffle Houses in this country. The data I got from poi-finder shows 1,783 Waffle House locations and about 1,400 IHOPs." (Read more)