Palace Pizza — Restaurant in Lakeland

Palace Pizza Downtown has been and will continue to be a staple in any lakelanders experience as one of the best pizza spots in the city. Now in reality, on a good day you have 7/10 New York Style pizza leaving behind a box of grease and hopeful dreams. But today for lunch I wanted to see what else Palace downtown had to offer. I ordered the Gnocchi with “homemade” marinara sauce and a side soup of Chicken and Tortellini. A whopping 26$. I was brought out 3 large garlic knots with cold marinara sauce right when I sat to gnaw on while i wait for my meal. Following was a foot long breadstick homemade I presume, that though cold had great flavor. Finally I was delivered my gnocchi and soup. The pasta was half boiled out on a plate topped with marinara sauce that either tasted like the can because it wasn’t cooked long enough, or because they didn’t have the time so they spooned it on top of my dish, topped with shredded mozzarella cheese imitating a chicken or veal parm type of baked dish. Too say less it wasn’t my favorite. It was undercooked and under seasoned and overall underwhelming. The Soup while looked promising was something worse. To start off I felt less bad about the 26$ when it arrived as there was more soup then my main dish. I at first noticed the contents of the soup, shredded chicken breast celery, carrots, and multi color tortellini. All besides the chicken where not cooked. The celery and carrots where still cold, as if the concept of mirepoix was just that, a concept. The broth was cold and flavorless. Luckily I went inside and noticed they have all the seasonings that should be inside of a soup on the counter so i grabbed some salt, pepper, oregano, and red pepper to attempt to salvage my meal but alas was unsuccessful. I simply let the server take back my dishes declining the generous box offer. Look i understand this was a harsh review but this is a notorious place! Neighbors that I attempted to eat at before my excursion into Palace sent me this way! All this to say if you want pizza and want to support a community business downtown, Palace is an okay choice. If you want to escape for lunch and have some half decent Italian food? You’ll have as much...

I am revisiting this review. This place was always one of the local joints I love. But ever since the quarantine they have slipped a lot. Prices are very high. That's to be expected considering inflation and food costs rising so I understand that. But the quality just isn't where it once was.

There were signs before COVID. Like they use to have great specials. They were a little cheaper and came with a drink. Then the drink disappeared. Then later the "special" was just a regular menu item at regular price.

Recently the food hasnt been very fresh or the service great. The place is busy, I get that. Im not the only guy walking on this planet. But you don't make ppl wait 30+ minutes for food. This happened twice and I gave the place a break. Then tried again a few months later. I ordered the stuffed shells and my gf the chicken parm. After 45 minutes of waiting and having nothing but a drink she went up there. The said 5 minutes. 15 minutes later we got it, thats a one hour wait. Then my food wasnt just cold....it was frozen in the middle. The cheese was crunchy with ice crystals. We took it back and they were nice. We didnt make a scene, we talked to them quietly. They promised to fix it. We were starving and our baby was getting fussy with hunger too. They got it to us in 15 minutes and guess what? Still frozen. I was done. We'd been there well over an hour and a half with no food worth eating. We just said refund our money. They did but still charged us for the drinks. Very nice of them to squeeze us for a couple of bucks while letting us go hungry.

I hate writing this. I always try to support local, family owned restaurants. I never want to see them fail. I loved this place and went for years. I recommended it to everyone and took all my friends there. I was eating there once a week at one point. Now they are serving pre packaged frozen food and charging ridiculous prices for it. This was the third strike in a row. I cant recommend them anymore. I guess I'll try Ciao Bella or Il Forno. Or just go to Plant City for Esposito's. Palace just isn't worth it anymore. Go...

Before you get too far into my review, I want you to understand that my opinion is NOT Hyperbolic in this review.

Palace Pizza is the best Pizza AND Italian food in the Central Florida Area. I have reviewed MANY restaurants and was a Sous Chef at the largest Theme Park destination in the world: I KNOW GOOD FOOD, and this is GREAT FOOD!

The flavors were distinct, high quality and not muddled whatsoever. Portions were OVER generous and very filling. The only thing we 'struggled with' was parking. We had to park in a garage about 2 blocks away, but that was our only kink in the night out for us.

The staff is literally happy to be there and it shows. They love their jobs and it's very evident. The staff is lead by some of the best Food and Beverage managers that I've seen work in a location like this - NOT in a theme park.

The menu was pretty extensive and had a ton of variety. We got "Joes Pizza" (Large) and a Calamari. Both came out quick, hot and absolutely satiating. Delicious is an understatement. We finished our amazing dinner by trying their cannoli's based on the managers recommendation and they did NOT disappoint! Hand piped right before they come out to the table- the shell had a tremendously wonderful crisp to it and the mascarpone/ricotta was perfectly sweet and savory with the addition of a generous amount of semi sweet chocolate chips on the ends.

Beer and wine was available to us, but we stuck to their old school fountain machine for some pepsi products.

They have big screen TV's on site too- so I even got to watch some college football!

We absolutely recommend Palace Pizza to anyone within the Central Florida area.

It was a super easy commute from our house in Auburndale and we couldn't stop giggling about how good it was the whole ride home. I sat on doing this review for 2 days just to make sure I still felt this way later.

GOOGLE LOCAL...