BIDDEFORD (NEWS CENTER Maine) — An iconic diner in Biddeford is one of the most essential places to dine in the country, according to Eater's 2018 annual America's Essential Restaurants list.
Palace Diner, a 15-seat breakfast and lunch spot, is the only restaurant in New England to make the list and, other than six joints in the New York and Philadelphia metro areas, the entire Northeast.
It's one of 17 newcomers on the 38-restaurant list's fifth installment.
Eater national critic Bill Addison jokingly claims that eating at Palace haunts him.
"I can’t find better light, lemony, buttery pancakes, or a more precisely engineered egg sandwich," Addison writes, "and theirs is the only tuna melt I ever hunger after."
Located off Main Street directly behind the Smith Building and adjacent to Shevenell Park, the diner has been in the heart of Maine's sixth-largest city for more than 90 years.
The institution's housing, one of two Pollard cars remaining in the United States, was built in 1927 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and has been in Biddeford ever since.
GALLERY | Palace Diner in Biddeford
PHOTOS: Palace Diner in Biddeford
Owners Greg Mitchell and Chad Conley first met while farming at Four Season Farm in Harborside, sharing a dream to one day open a restaurant. Years later, the business partners pounced on an opportunity to reopen the diner in March 2014 and became its sixth proprietors.
Addison's methodology isn't heavily detailed, not that a definitive key necessarily exists for this topic anyway. He does offer this: "Each of these restaurants cooks American food; I can’t imagine our dining landscape without them. Sure, they’re wonderful places to eat. But they all engender belonging, possibility, and connection — things we surely need in our country right now."
North Yarmouth's The Purple House was one of three restaurants to make Eater's honorable mentions list of "restaurants that nearly made the national 38." Located on Walnut Hill near the intersections of Routes 9 and 115, the daytime bakery specializes in bagels and pastries.
"This cooking comes across as that of someone who feels creatively liberated," Addison describes the craft of chef Krista Kern Desjarlais. "You never know exactly where [Desjarlais'] culinary whims might next lead, but you can expect that the flavors will be bright and warming, and that the meal will be worth the trip."