Palace Diner: The Maine Eatery With A 1920s Railcar Vibe

If you want to eat at the Palace Diner these days, you'll find it right where it's been parked for many a year at 18 Franklin Street in Biddeford, Maine. When this diner was first manufactured back in 1927, however, it was equipped to be mobile and could have been moved from place to place in order to satisfy the appetites of Biddeford's hungry mill workers. The town's textile industry is largely gone now and the diner is stationary, but it remains as a relic — one of the last two railcar-style diners built by the Pollard Company, late of Lowell, Massachusetts. (The other one, should you wish to plan a road trip, is the Riverside Diner in Bristol, New Hampshire.)

While the Palace Diner may be railcar-style, this doesn't mean it was ever part of a train, although it may have made the trip from Lowell to Biddeford via this method of transportation. The name instead refers to the fact that these cars were built in the style of train dining cars at a time when the latter were renowned for offering a fine dining experience. (Sadly, Amtrak's current offerings aren't a patch on its predecessors'.) These prefab lunch cars, the predecessors to today's food trucks, were intended to be streamlined and, as such, seating was quite limited. Even today the Palace Diner has just 15 counter seats and no, it does not accept reservations. You can, however, put your name on a waitlist or order your food to go.

The Palace Diner has gone in and out of business over the past century and has changed hands six times in all. The most recent owners took over in 2014 and the current menu, while pretty standard diner fare for the most part, does give a few nods to mid-20-teens peak hipster foodies. If you're breakfasting at the Palace Diner, you'll be dining on pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, corned beef hash, or some combination thereof, while lunch choices consist of a cheeseburger (single or double), tuna sandwich, and fried chicken. The sides, however, are where essence de hipster starts creeping in: caramelized grapefruit, brown butter banana bread, and mint ginger ale, plus a selection of craft microbrews, including the obligatory IPA.

While the Palace Diner itself has a retro vibe, the numbers on the menu will definitely sticker shock you right back into the 21st century. The simplest of breakfasts, just two eggs, potatoes, and toast, will set you back $13 at time of writing, but if you want some meat with that, prepare to fork over another $8 to $9. At lunchtime, the cheeseburger and fries is the cheapest entree at $15, but if you want a double patty the price goes up to $21. The least expensive thing on the menu, in case you were wondering, is a single lemon wedge priced at 50 cents. Guess this just goes to show that nostalgia ain't what it used to be.