Daily Planet — Restaurant in Town of La Grange

Went to have dinner with a very dear friend I've known for over four decades is that I haven't seen in years so we went to the Daily Planet. I haven't been to the Daily Planet in over 25 years. The prices were a little high but the food was outstanding. I had the turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, corn bread, mashed potatoes and fresh vegetables dinner with fresh homemade gravy. The vegetables were green and yellow squash carrots and little bit of broccoli. The veggies were cooked absolutely perfect. The price I think was $17.95 which really isn't too bad. I have a chewing problem right now so being that the veggies were cooked al dente which is perfect for me I could not eat them so I took them home to cook them more and be able to eat them. My friend had the California Burger. She said her Burger meal was delicious. I saw her plate and the lettuce and tomato looked very fresh and her Burger was done to her liking. She also had sauteed mushrooms and sauteed onions put on her Burger. I was happy to see that the Burger came with avocado and they put a very nice portion of avocado on that burger. The bun was nice and fresh and smelled wonderful also. I am a huge Burger lover and I can't eat burgers right now. But you can bet when I can start eating burgers again I'm definitely going to order one from here. We also ordered the dinner of their homemade macaroni and cheese and we split it as an appetizer between the two of us. That was delicious! That was my friend's suggestion and what a great suggestion that was. The macaroni and cheese was creamy, very flavorful with nice texture. I do not like spending money when I can get a 50 Cent box of macaroni and cheese at home it bugs me spending nearly $20 for macaroni and cheese in a restaurant. But this was penne rigate shaped pasta done in a cheese sauce that I believed had three different kinds of cheeses in it and it was baked with a crumb topping. It was phenomenal! I also took that home. My one criticism with my turkey dinner was that the turkey was very dry. No amount of gravy is going to fix that. That's a problem with turkey and that can happen with anybody. So I took my turkey home and I made turkey salad with it. Problem solved on the dryness because I used mayonnaise. I also noticed that some of the meals did not come with soup or salad so people who may be looking for that just make sure you pay attention on the menu which do and which don't. Especially for the prices that they are asking. This isn't your regular type of diner diner. But they do serve some diner food and you can get breakfast for dinner. We had the chocolate mousse cheesecake for dessert. That was an eye ball rolling back in your head fantastic.!! As I mentioned above I have a chewing problem right now and I'm missing 3/4 of my bottom teeth due to jaw transplant from cancer. So I was able to eat the chocolate mousse with no problem. I also took that home. It was the most I've eaten in a long time at one sitting. With a little bit of turkey, all of the stuffing, a little bit of mashed potatoes, a lot of the macaroni and cheese and a portion of the dessert. I have had many meals with the leftovers. In fact I still have a little bit of it in my refrigerator. Our waiter his name was Fernando I believe. He was a really great waiter and accommodated me when I needed many extra napkins and more water. We had a fantastic dinner with great company. My friend and I were able to catch up and just spend time together which made it even better. Great food and great company! I would definitely go back to the...

Quality has declined greatly at the Planet. While it used to be good, in the past years I've had several bad meals in a row and I don't want to return anymore. Sad really, when a popular place cuts corner and lets the quality go to hell. My most recent experience was with the Walnut Crusted Chicken Salad. A bit smaller overall then it used be it arrived with the chicken burned on top. I mean burned, as in black. I called over the waitress and asked her to have them redo just the chicken while I ate the salad part which was fine.

The new chicken arrived and looked better, however it was cold. Like it came out of the refrigerator and was dry on the top and soaking wet on the bottom. It also has a funny smell to it and tasted, well, horrid. My dining companion agreed it was not edible.

The waitress asked how the second batch of chicken was and I told her it was actually worse and ice cold, then she just gave me the check. Not the way to handle that she should have gotten the manager and told him about the problem. So I called the manager over when paying the bill and he said all the chicken is cooked ahead of time early each morning and then rewarmed when it's served. Okay that explains why the chicken is always dry, that's a terrible way to prepare chicken. Chicken that is cooked, put back to sit in the fridge all day and then reheated is always going to be inferior to chicken that is cooked fresh when ordered. That's cooking 101 stuff, and a really bd sign. So basically the cook just put the cold chicken on the plate right out of the fridge without reheating it and sent it out or at the least reheated it for way less time then needed. The cook never should have put the burned chicken on the plate, but then sending out an inferior product the second go round is just completely unacceptable.

You would think the manager would have comped the price of that meal as it was awful. He did not, he took off half and said he would look into it, but he seemed like he really didn't much care to be honest.

If this was an isolated incident I would go back, but there have been several times in the past year when the food was just not very good. The 'fresh brewed' ice tea for instance is often so foul you can't drink it. A waitress on a previous trip to the Planet confirmed people send it back all the time. Ice tea is the most profitable item on a diner menu, it costs nothing to make. It has to be made fresh every morning and again every evening, kept in a container which is cleaned every time it is emptied and brewed properly. They aren't doing this. A chef friend of mine explained ordering a fresh brewed ice tea is a litmus test to see how well a diner is being run.

Thing like burgers and fries, omelettes, pancakes etc you're fine with at the planet as they are hard to screw up. Anything on the menu which would require a little finesse, stay away from.

Oh, and I've sat next to a booth where someone ordered fish once or twice, and the stink coming off that was so horrid it was obvious the fish wasn't just not fresh it was rotten. The people sent it back. Again a dish that never should have been put on the table in front of a customer. For sure don't order seafood there. When fish smells fishy that's bacteria rotting the flesh. If they can't get fresh fish the shouldn't even have...

I love the daily planet diner but they seem to have gone under a remodeling since quarantine began. They took all of the kitchy tchotchkes off the wall and painted over all of the stuff that gave the place a theme centering around old school television and comic book characters. Very disappointing because the place looks much more bland now. they still have the Superman telephone booth in the lobby though, which I was happy to see.

In addition, as a regular user of their online ordering system, it disheartens me to see that they have recently gotten rid of several menu options. If you go into the omelets section now all they offer is a cheese omelet and a western omelet, instead of the dozen or so options they used to offer. Recently I purchased an omelet for dinner and requested online for the home fries to be replaced with french fries, and while they did it, the gentleman who gave me my food told me that they did it for free as a favor but that any future times I did it I would be upcharged, which they never did previously.

It's the closest diner to me and their online ordering system is very convenient in comparison to something else close like say, daddio's in Hopewell, but I do not like the changes they are going through right now. There isn't a single thing they have changed that I like so far.

Actually no, that's not true, they used to use cheap aluminum to go containers but nowadays they have nicer clamshell plastic ones, and I appreciate that. Still not a bad place to get food, but a greatly diminished atmosphere that makes it a bit more difficult...