There's nothing worse than being sick on the road. I contracted a bad cold earlier this year during a trip to Chicago and one day I just couldn't function very well. I needed some comfort food including some soup and I needed it quick. I did a quick search in the area to see if there was any place close to my hotel and found a little restaurant named Lola's Diner that sounded exactly like what I was looking for.
Lola's Diner is run by longtime restaurateurs Herman and Lola Rivera. The Rivera's also had a restaurant by the name of the Sunrise Diner in nearby Mount Prospect that they ran until they shut it down in the summer of 2013 to fully focus on running Lola's Diner. The Rivera's make many of their foods from scratch, soups are made in-house, and they use only fresh, locally-sourced items for many of their foods.
Lola's Diner is located along Busse Highway in Park Ridge, just east of the intersection of N. Dee Road. (see map) I was able to find some parking behind the place and went inside. It was an unseasonably cold early spring day and had snowed off and on as winter was still trying to hold on in the Chicagoland area. I was greeted by a hostess who took me to a booth in the corner of the restaurant. The diner was nice and clean with a parquet tile floor, light blue accents on the chairs and booth backs, a small 3-sided counter toward the back of the place, and a series of plexiglass columns that featured various model cars or trucks. This place just screamed, "We have comfort food!"
Since Lola's is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. through the week (7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the weekends), they do both breakfast and lunch. And both menus are extensive with omelets, waffles, skillets, Swedish pancakes and crepes available for breakfast, while lunch features sandwiches, burgers, salads, wraps and panini melts. But the thing that jumped out at me on the menu were the hot plates they had listed.
They had a meatloaf plate, a hot turkey sandwich plate, a breaded pork tenderloin plate and a good ol' fashioned country fried steak. But I went with the hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy. A cup of soup came with the hot beef sandwich for just a dollar more. I asked my waitress if I could get a bowl of soup and she said, "That would be a couple dollars for an upcharge." That would be no problem, I said.
One of the soups they had that day was just what the doctor ordered - lemon chicken rice soup. And it was excellent. It had a nice chicken broth with a hint of a lemony taste. The chicken chunks in the soup were teddy and tasty. And there was a lot of rice in the soup, as well. I could have just had the soup and I would have been happy. For a brief moment, I suddenly felt better.
The hot beef sandwich was served open faced with the mashed potatoes - made from real potatoes, not that boxed crap - off to the side. Some grilled asparagus came on the side. The beef was thinly cut, but it was a little tough and overcooked. The gravy was very good and helped out with the semi-toughness of the beef. There was a seasoning in the gravy - a spice - that I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. But I liked the gravy with the potatoes and the roast beef. The asparagus was basically a throw away side. The asparagus was limp and lifeless. But that was all right - between the excellent soup and the very good gravy helping the taste of the beef and potatoes, I had more than enough food that day.
Unfortunately, my cold only intensified from there on out and I ended up spending the rest of the day and evening in bed at the hotel. But the comfort food I had from Lola's Diner helped ease the discomfort of my cold. While the beef was a little overcooked, the mashed potatoes - made from real potatoes - with the very good gravy was a spot-hitter. But I could have probably gotten a quart of the excellent lemon chicken rice soup to go and had that for some subsequent meals as I was trying to get over my cold. I was glad that I found Lola's Diner and I've already made a mental note to go there for breakfast some morning in the near future.
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