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. 

Collingswood Diner

 

The Collingswood Diner is not my favorite diner, although I wish it could be. I feel like it’s a diner that I had to have been a part of growing up, and to suddenly enter as an outsider, I feel disconnected, and unaware of what’s ‘usual and customary’ here.

Collingswood Diner

Our waitress was kind and attentive enough, but had unkempt hair and makeup, with a distinctive ring around the collar on her white polo accented with a festive “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” pin. (We visited a few days before Christmas.) As she poured our coffee, I can definitely say it detracted from my appetite a little, although I tried to see past it.

This is not a shiny, new diner. It is large, kind of dark and impressing from the outside, located at a major intersection that connects to a highway, so getting into the actual parking lot can be a little daunting if you haven’t done it before. However, I am a fan of having diner at this part of time, simply because I think it’s as nice cross-section of diner-enthusiasts of all socio-economic ranges, since you get populations from the major towns nearby. Inside, there is a friendly, multi-cultural atmosphere- tables full, and big group tables of work buddies hanging out.

An Excess of Powders

My French toast was well intended, but overall not that delicious. I appreciated the extra cinnamon they sprinkled on top (quite liberally) because it gave an extra pop of flavor that can be missing from mass produced breakfast breads. However, because of this generous cinnamon, and the cold (and NOT plentiful) butter that was provided, my butter stuck to the cinnamon and to my knife, and not to my toast! As happens with French toast when it’s too thick- very little of the egg can even hope to get all the way through, so I felt as if I was eating a kind of bland cake. After dolling it up with the works, it was decent, but kind of disappointing.

Darn Good Omelet

As Chi worked her way through her French toast, I picked through my western omelet. It is my favorite of the omelet and I'm very pleased that the Collingswood Diner had one of their top chefs on the line that morning. One of the easiest tasks that diners can't get right is cooking an egg all the way through. I've had omelets, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and poached eggs where In the middle is slimy, clear, raw egg. Too me, that's unacceptable. Collingswood Diner cooked the egg in the omelet perfectly. There was plenty of diced ham, onion, and green bell pepper. It was a great omelet. There was one small problem, and that was with the cheese. Cheese in an omelet costs extra, but I ordered it anyway. The slices of American were concentrated to one half of the omelet making it very globular and gooey on one side and flat and a little dry on the other. However, I'm not going to let concentrated cheese sully this omelet's good name.

The home fries were a bit on the lacking side. I'm starting to think I'm become more of a hash-brown  type of guy. There's more of an opportunity for crispiness and fluffy potato to live in harmony with hash-browns. These home fries met the same fate as other establishment's home fries. They weren't cooked enough twice. They weren't cooked down to an appropriate level of softness and then when they got to the grill or frying pan, they weren't cooked to the right level of crispy. This leaves the diner with kind of hot, kind of raw potatoes.

(The New) Maple Hill Restaurant and Maritsa's Part Deux

Two Eggs and Home Fries

I won’t lie. I remember very little from this experience. In fact, I’m pretty sure I went into this meal expecting that it would be forgettable, and thus got my standard 2 eggs with home fries (not even well-done) and wheat toast. If my veggie omelette orders are the basis from which I judge tastiness (eggs  are important to all diners, and the quality/cooking of veggies determines how fresh their produce is/their rudimentary skills of cooking/not overcooking things), then 2 eggs is what I order when I just want to eat breakfast and go. I remember everything being okay, with little happening on the delicious side or the not so delicious side. If anything, I would say that it was very satisfactory, with good prices. It’s very small, with a strong local crowd, so if you want more of a diner where you can hang out with your friends and be left alone, this may be a bit too social for you. However, it’s a great place for a small party (I wouldn’t suggest more than four or five people) to enjoy a quick breakfast. This being said, now that the renovations at Maritsa’s down the street is done, I would recommend that over the Maple Hill restaurant.

Looks Good, Tastes OK.

This restaurant is quite forgettable. Chi and brainstormed for about twenty four hours before we remembered the name of the New Maple Hill Restaurant. Sadly, Chi had even taken a picture of their exterior, but forgotten she had taken it. That was the first time that happened to us. Strangely enough, the food for me, even though boring, was still good. It  was just good though, vanilla, not vanilla bean. I ordered the french toast with sausage patties (always superior to sausage links, right?). The french toast smelled great due to the copious amount of cinnamon, but it was kind of soggy and limp. It tasted good, but it was boring and it was an example of when I left feeling I could have cooked the same dish better than they could have. The sausage links impressed me a little more. I'm used to tiny hockey pucks of sausage at other diners that are overcooked and unfulfilling. At the New Maple Hill, the sausage patties were larger than average and had decent flavor and above average texture. I believed it was real. Unfortunately they still need to work on their cooking time since the patties were brought out to me lukewarm.

Combine the mediocre food with the fact the inside looked like it was put together with glossy plywood and a nail gun, the over all experience left me glad to leave. With the concentration of diners in New Jersey I recommend you head out and explore for a different place to get your breakfast fix.


Chi sums it up perfectly,

If we ate at the NEW Maple Hill Restaurant, it makes me wonder what it used to be like.

Maritsa’s PART DEUX:

Yes, we’ve gone back to Maritsa’s since the muddy mushroom’s incident. I ordered French toast, and it was very soft/buttery although perhaps not as large portion-wise as other places. My home fries were a little too well-done for my liking, because I didn’t ask them to be so. Coffee was good, and the service was faster than last time and our cups never emptied.  The inside is complete (no more random ending to the carpet/stucco-looking walls) and the waitresses were wearing proper uniforms this time. Definitely no longer a place to avoid. We'll have to go back and try something more complex and see how they handle it.


Definitely a better experience at Maritsa's. Good thing my parents really like it or I might not have gone back. My second time around I ordered the short-stack of blueberry pancakes with sausage links and scrambled eggs. The sausage was average. The blueberry pancakes were almost disappointing. They were all loaded with fresh, delicious blueberries and they were cooked to perfection. They were sadly not nearly as tasty as they looked. The blueberry came through nicely, but the sweetness had a watered down taste to it and their Heinz Syrup packets didn't help out with the flavor. When I have blueberries I expect some tartness, and since there was not I left a little suspicious. The eggs, thankfully, stole the show and Maritsa's knows how to cook them right. They were super fluffy and light and buttery. Next time I'm ordering a plate of scrambled eggs and double toast.

Marlton Diner

Flashy

The Marlton Diner's reputation precedes it with its multiple accolades as "Best of [insert location]" by a few local papers, including the Courier Post. One gets the sense that it knows just how popular and appealing it is, despite not being around as long as its competitors in the area. But just like the popular kids of our pasts, I felt the attitude to be complacent, vaguely shallow, and with a skewed sense of what things actually cost. It gleans off of Route 70 (in Marlton) like a prized baby blue convertible. (Yes, I quoted Santa Baby, but yes, it was kind-of teal).

French Toast, Eggs Over Medium

Chris's parents took us out for Saturday breakfast and since they paid, you would think I could just focus on the experience and critique the quality of food, but I can't. While breakfast meals cost about the same as they do at any other diner, many items didn't come in the popular combos that they traditionally do, or at those combo prices. For example, I ordered their french toast which came out to a little under $6, but as you can see, there's only the (3) pieces of toast, with butter and individual packages of syrup. I ordered a side of two eggs over medium, which cost me almost an extra two bucks. It wasn't terrible, just clearly not a bargain, which is something I've come to expect (perhaps unfairely) from diners. Plan your meals carefully and they can cost the same as they do anywhere else, but double check your sides, especially your meat-based ones.


I will say that the french toast was delicious with the pefect ratio of toast to egg. I think that I would been happier if they had just upgraded me to a bottle of syrup on the table instead of packets tacked on the side, but since I like my toast more buttery than sweet anyways, I can't really say it hindered my enjoyment. As usual by over medium eggs were runny and boring. But maybe ordering eggs over medium is boring...

Exhibit A

I wanted to order their french toast and eggs special (with coffee and juice) and then order a side of sausage. The combo of just french toast and eggs was eight dollars, a side of sausage was four dollars. Four dollars for sausage links. Four dollars. Until this diner, the most expensive side of sausage I've seen was two dollars and fifty cents. I guess having a building painted like a '50s Chevy made the Marlton Diner feel entitled to overcharge it's customers. Now that I've gotten that off my chest I must admit that they seated us rather quickly for showing up on a busy Saturday morning, and our waitress was very patient with our slightly indecisive party. The atmosphere was pleasant enough with classic diner feel and booths packed with families and old timers, the Marlton Diner clearly has their own set of regulars.

French Toast with Four Dollar Sausage

With good company at the table our food seemed to come out fairly quickly. Three pieces of french toast bordered by four sausage links. I'm a butter and syrup man, so I slathered up the slices and went to work. Let me tell you, this french toast was good enough to stand up by itself and I would go back to the Marton Diner just to order a short stack. There were three things that made this french toast better than other diners. The first key for yumminess is thickness of the bread. Most diners advertise super think slices of Texas toast. Well, that means the egg won't be able to get to the middle of the bread (there's a surface area to volume ratio theory that is important for diffusion) and that means half of what your eating is a core of warm bread. Marlton used more than Wonder Bread, but they didn't over do it, which made their french toast one hundred percent french toast. The second high point of their french toast was the perfection of "toasting." The Marlton Diner made sure that the outside reached it's nice golden brown exterior without overcooking the middle of the french toast remained soft, moist and delicious. The third golden start I'm going to give them is for not skimping me on butter. The amount of butter they gave us looked like miniature fluffy clouds. As for the sausage (the four dollar sausage) it was mediocre. Nothing about it screamed "I'm better than Jimmy Dean!" which solidified my previous statement, I would come back to get just the short stack of french toast.

Additional notes:
Apparently the Marlton Diner doubles as a museum and contains an antique cash register and jukebox, but don't touch them. Also, they sell giant, soft chocolate-chip cookies, buy one. The place was family-friendly full of Halloween decorations with clean, dry booths. If you can get over the $4.00 a side thing, might be worth a trip.

All Sides are Four Dollars

Like Mean Girls, being popular comes with rules. No subsituting your potatoes for fruit cups (waitress denied Chris's mother), or sharing (unless you want to pay $2.00 a plate), and always, always wear pink on Fridays.

Calorie Counting is No Way to Live