Palace Diner

we're getting artsy up in here.

(Chris)

I honestly didn't have the highest hopes for this place when I saw the name of the restaurant. Something about naming a diner "Palace" seems pretentious, but I made sure to drop any prejudices before I walked through their front door. I was surprised when I saw the inside, it had that legitimate "diner" feel to it.

The booths were worn in and comfortable, the bar had a few seniors finishing their home fries and reading the days paper, and there were plenty of families enjoying their pre-Thanksgiving breakfast. Now that I think of it, maybe it was the morning of Thanksgiving that brought these people out. The lure of having one meal that didn't require cooking or cleaning dishes might have made this diner seem more popular than it really is.

The coffee came out quickly and it was delicious. I ordered their "Southern Sausage," which (as you might have guessed) is biscuits and gravy. The dish came with your standard two biscuits covered in a sausage gravy, home fries on the side, and two sausage links (Palace does the duty of cutting your sausage for you in this dish). I'm used to having eggs with my southern sausage, so I put in the side order for two over medium. I could have left off the order of eggs. To Palace Diner, eggs "over medium" really means, "barely cook them and make sure that the white are still runny." When over medium comes out like over easy, it makes me wonder if "well done" eggs are still runny or if they come out like white and yellow hockey pucks. The home fries were acceptable. All the potato was cooked through and there were definitely some good crispy bits to nibble through. The sausage gravy and biscuits were pretty good, especially the biscuits. The biscuits were nice and delicate even under the pile of gravy, they were buttery, and they did a great job mopping up any extra gravy left behind. On our way out of the diner we saw a couple picking up no fewer than five pies and cakes for Thanksgiving dinner later that night. All the deserts looked amazing. They must be doing something right at Palace that I didn't pick up on; I'll be sure to go back and get an omelette next time before I completely label them as mediocre.

(Chi)

As with every place this time of year, pumpkin was in the air at the Palace Diner. I decidedly to indulge by having some pumpkin coffee. It was the most fragrant and full-bodied pumpkin coffee I've had and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only thing was that the waitress brought me another full cup when I was just a few sips into my first one, so my entire second cup just sat on the table getting cold the entire meal. Wasted.

I ordered two eggs medium that came with hashbrowns, a juice (orange), and a short stack of French toast to round it off. As you can probably tell from the pictures, this portions were not as overwhelming as I had expected them to do from my experience with diners. In the overall sense of things, this is probably a good thing for mankind. 

My eggs had the opposite problem that most places do; my eggs were runny. When they were warm, it tasted okay. Once they cooled, it got kind of gross even when I just dipped my toast into them. My French toast was pretty sub-par... dry, with non-spectacular butter or syrup. My home fries were the highlight of the meal, but not enough for me to come back just for them.

Disappointing. 

They must have some great baked goods though, because (literally) everybody and their mother was coming in to buy their Thanksgiving cakes and pies. I think the people in front of us were only eating dessert for dinner that night.