WAVERLY, Ala. (AP) – As a nearly 20-year resident of the little town of Waverly in east Alabama, Andy Anderson likes to say his adopted hometown is “two square miles and a long way from anywhere else.”
Waverly has a post office, four churches, about 145 residents and not a single traffic light.
It also has the Waverly Local, a Southern dining gem in a century-old building that has become a destination for folks who live in or visit the Chambers, Lee and Tallapoosa tri-county area.
“We get going pretty good,” Christian Watson, the executive chef and Anderson’s partner in the restaurant, says. “We get a lot of people from Auburn, Opelika, Dadeville, Alex City and the lake (Martin).
“You know, in culinary school, it’s (all about) ‘location, location, location’; in business school, it’s ‘location, location, location,'” Watson adds. “When we first started conceptualizing this, we went, ‘We’re kind of in the middle of nowhere.’ But come to find out, we’re kind of in the middle of everything.”