We loved ourselves some White Palace, back when we were undergraduates and it was the closest 24 hour diner to Hyde Park that we were aware of. We’d show up at 11pm with our Scrabble board and a pack of brownies, and order vanilla ice cream (DIY a la mode) and coffee and play game after game until 3 or 4 in the morning. Ah, youth!
The food was always hit or miss; it was a good idea to steer clear of any dish that required “flavor” to work. But the waitresses were incredibly indulgent, and it was hard to beat the people-watching at those hours.
Nowadays, there’s a whole suburban megamall surrounding White Palace on its formerly lonely little corner on Roosevelt. Straight-outta-the-bag crinkle-cut Ore-Ida French fries served soggy may be no match for whatever razzle-dazzle potato products Whole Foods is peddling these days, but that misses the point altogether.
Why do we bring this up? Well, we were looking at yesterday’s Hot Menus, and were shocked - yes, shocked - to see that none other than White Palace had five times the hits of any other restaurant in Chicago. We’re talking, like, a quarter thousand!
There are several possible explanations. Either someone’s having a huge birthday party there and we were linked from the evite, or a blogger or MSM mentioned the diner and gave MenuPages as the link, or there’s a vast conspiracy to put White Palace at the top of the Hot Menus list, or it could be as quotidian as a database error (we sincerely hope it’s not door number four).
Any other ideas? We will happily post plausible suggestions. In the meantime, all hail the White Palace!
White Palace Grill [MenuPages]
