Guy Fieri let me down. That’s painful to say out loud. My girlfriend and I first heard of the White Palace Grill in downtown Chicago on an episode of Diner’s Drive-In’s and Dives about 24 hour diners. I was working in Chicago this past weekend and since my girlfriend’s parents live in a Chicago suburb, she decided to come with me and take a long weekend. We left Lansing around midnight on a Thursday night and got to Chicago a little after two a.m. We took a detour into the city instead of just heading to her parents. We’ve been to a handful of places featured on Triple D including two others in Chicago and figured if Guy went there, it must be good. We were wrong. Really, really wrong.
White Palace Grill is located just south of the Loop on Roosevelt and Canal Streets. According to a friend of my girlfriend’s, venturing into this neighborhood at this time of night five years ago would have been scary. It wasn’t quite a walk in the park now, but it wasn’t really bad. We parked about a half a block from the diner and walked back. There’s a huge mall with a lot of high end stores right next door. The scary thing was all the people just loitering in the street and around the restaurant. We made our way to the front door and someone behind the counter acknowledged us and told us to sit where we want. There are two dining rooms. When you first walk in, there’s the traditional diner setting with a counter and a row of booths along the wall. Keep going back and there’s more of a dining room with tables and booths. We sat in the front dining room in a booth along the wall. The menus were already on the table, so we grabbed a couple and started looking over them. A bus boy came by with water and wiped the table down. After that, it was quite a while before a waitress noticed us. This was just the start of possibly the worst service we’ve ever gotten at a diner. Read the rest of this entry »
Mid-Michigan Dining 
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