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. 

Westmont Family Diner

Even though I technically live in Haddon Township, NJ now, I still consider the entire area of "Haddon" to be home. I still live very close to Westmont, and therefore, I consider the Westmont Family Diner to be my true local diner. I say this not necessarily based on proximity alone, but also on general quality. It is the diner that is our default- in a good way. I've been here at least half a dozen times throughout the year and a half and oftentimes on Sundays when I need a quick breakfast.

On this trip, Chris and I decided to finally review it, believing that its consistency of food should be something to be shared with others. We were greeted with a quick hello and a "sit where you'd like" around 8:30am on a Thursday morning. Our coffee came with water without us asking for it.

The menu is pretty standard, but the diner really shines through its specials menu that changes one or two items every few months. We both ordered off of it- I got the Greek scramble with feta cheese and oregano that came with toast, and hashbrowns with grilled onions and peppers (as a standard). Together with the coffee, it was $6.99. My toast was wheat as usual, but toasted really well, with a higher sugar content than others I've had (even at this location). My meal was yummy, and warm, with a clear attempt at more sophisticated flavors than other diner breakfasts. For example, my my onions and peppers inside my potatoes were delicious and well seasoned with salt, pepper, and rosemary. My eggs were also delicious, although I thought there was too much feta which kind of overwhelmed my mouth on certain bites. It was a very simple scramble with exactly what it said would be inside of it which is something to appreciate in and of itself.

I am still on a biscuits and gravy kick. And, let me tell you, Westmont Family Diner does this southern classic right. The first thing you notice is some delicious looking sausage gravy covering two flaky (but you don't know they're flaky yet) biscuits. A little bit a sausage goes a long way, too. The gravy is thick and creamy, but not to the point where it becomes like toothpaste, and the nibbles of sausage along the way add a great pork flavor. The two eggs over medium were cooked perfectly. I decided to switch up my usual side of sausage to a side of bacon. Westmont delivers when it comes to pork. They serve the thick cut bacon that falls into the spectrum of chewy and crispy. Did I mention that you can lap all of this up in the gravy that is still overflowing on your plate? Just in case you do have some gravy left on your plate and you haven't started the biscuits, they happen to be the perfect morsels to mop up the remaining gravy. Like Chi said above, the Westmont has become our default and for good reason. By the way, my half of the meal cost less than $7.00.

Unfortunately, all pictures of Chris's part of the meal were accidentally deleted. Sad.

Legacy Diner

The Legacy Diner rests on the White Horse Pike in Audubon, NJ. The building looks relatively modern for a diner, and from the outside everything looked like it would be neat and tidy. Eating here was a coin flip between the Legacy and Oaklyn diner, so hopefully we'll check out the latter very soon.

The inside of the building was warm and clean and it got my hopes up for a warm, comforting meal. After we were apathetically seated by the hostess, we were waited on by another woman who seemed to be in a hurry. Chi and I both felt rushed when we were asked "what will you have this morning?" less than a minute after we had picked up the menus. Granted, I'm sure there are locals that don't need the menu, but I'm here to be thorough. We told her we needed another few minutes two more times after the first time, and she finally gave us some peace and quiet to decide on our breakfasts.

Legacy Sampler

To be dramatic, my breakfast was tumultuous. I didn't suffer any injury or anything like that, but I was confused about what had just happened when I picked up the check. The eggs were very in between over medium and over easy. I ordered over medium and the whites came out to perfection; however, the yolks were extraordinarily runny and hardly warm. Despite the cool eggs, they tasted very fresh and had great flavor, so I don't want to complain too much there. The bacon was cheap and lean. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say a high fat content in bacon comes with the territory of being high quality. The lack of fat on the bacon left them a little bland difficult to cook. Impressively, though, they rendered what fat was there into chewy deliciousness that countered the crispy strips quite well. I chalk the bacon up as a success. The real let down of the breakfast was the sausage. The Legacy is an establishment that favors the fat links, and I've had some pretty good fat links. They Legacy's links were mushy, oily, had a thin casing, they were bland, and they were boring. I hate to be so harsh, but I struggled to eat them. The gold medal winner on my plate was the pancakes. I saved them for last and my first bite was full of bliss. They were both salty and sweet. They were light yet doughy, and they were cooked to a perfect golden, brown color. Some of the best pancakes I've ever eaten. If you go, get the pancakes.

----

Readers of Two Spoons will know that I tend to be very skeptical of diners that have epic names that imply some sort of superiority. Obviously, diners can’t be named “The Mediocre Diner” or “The 32^nd best Diner in this County”. Sometimes, I feel as if they lose sight of what they were in their prime. Most diners are family opened/operated, but as reins are passed through generations, does the passion get diluted?

Le Bakery

For starters, the Legacy Diner is a little difficult to get to. It’s easily findable on Google Maps or a GPS, but once you get there parking is a little bit difficult (and dangerous) as the diner pours directly into/from the White Horse Pike. I imagine that this is good for business with the White Horse Pike being the important thoroughfare that it is, and I feel that the fast and furious customer is what the staff at the Legacy Diner have come to expect. The crew was decidedly angsty as we weren’t greeted immediately or enthusiastically when we entered and the lady who seated us just dropped our menus at the table instead of handing us our menus after we sat. The busser was still cleaning when we were seated, and the 6 dollar tip from the table before us still lay glaringly awkward back at us.

It seems to be a new diner, clean with modern appliances and a more open-dining feel.  Upon looking at their website, I’ve discovered that they’ve been open for a little over 20 years- which in my eyes, for a NJ Diner, is pretty young. (Side Note: They do seem to have a nice, functioning, and well-maintained website!) The bakery was small, but well stocked with the typical oversized pastries, cookies, and Sesame-themed cupcakes- a phenomenon that I still don’t understand. There were even long-stemmed chocolate-covered strawberries offered.

Mediterranean Omelette

Our waitress was rush-y, and I ended up settling the Mediterranean Omelette- just adventurous enough to see if I could taste the “fresh ingredients” that they so proudly tote. Immediately, I could taste that there was too much olive presence, which I feared, but didn’t realize to what extent it would be actualized. The amount of olives was generous, but it was more the overwhelming smell/flavor of olive that transferred through the whole omelette that took away from the experience of the spinach, tomato and onions that were actually well-cooked and did, in fact, taste fresh.  The home fries that came with it were well-cooked (with lots of butter?) but poorly seasoned with large chunks of burnt potato. When will diners realize that there is a standard of quality that should be expected with a potato, even if it’s just thrown on the grill and served as a side-dish? Overall, I would say that the best part of the meal was that it came out fast and hot-which I suppose means that their impression of ‘get them in, get them out’ stays intact. Also, it was relatively cheap.

What is the legacy of the Legacy Diner with this type of business model? Or, did we just catch them on an off day?