Arosa: The Waffle Cafe
3121 E Madison St, Suite 101, 324-4542

Mon-Fri 6 am-5 pm, Sat 7 am-5 pm.

There is something compelling about the solid expression of what was once a void--a plaster cast from Pompeii, a huge church bell cast of molten bronze, a great waffle. Waffles, too, are born of the space between things: in this case, two hot metal plates, toothed and grooved to let the batter flow, and it's the resulting complex geography--all ridges and valleys--that makes waffles so endearing. Usually a waffle's dents just beg to be filled with butter, with maple syrup, with creamed chicken, whatever. But Arosa Cafe in Madison Park specializes in snack waffles, engineered to be picked up and eaten as is. It's what Eggos hope to be in the afterlife.

An Arosa waffle isn't confined to the square boundaries of its stiff Belgian brethren. It's more or less round, with an occasional tail trailing in one direction or the other, and is self-sweetened, with balls of pearl sugar that melt on contact with the iron and turn into a half-crispy, half-sticky glaze. Near the edges, the glaze browns into a sweet mahogany shellac; inside, the batter is baked to a pliant but toothy cinnamon-scented cake.

Arosa is lodged in one of the city's swankier mini-malls (looking for a skein of yarn worth its weight in gold? or a paraffin-dip French pedicure with a twist?), which makes a $1.50 waffle seem like a bargain. It's too bad that the overheated lattes clash bitterly with the sweet waffle flesh, and that the atmosphere is as heady as a seaside taffy shop. But if you need fresh air, there's always the arboretum across the street--the waffles are ready to roll.