$40 meatloaf & beer. Pre tax and tip. Delicious. Very good service. BINGO was a blast, consider it…read moredinner and a show for the price of your meal.
Kings Highway at the Ace Hotel does an excellent job of making you feel like royalty, which is important, because the menu prices certainly expect you to feel that way. But let's be honest, it's still a hotel restaurant. And hotel restaurants in premium destinations, like Palm Springs, rarely cater to travelers with beer budgets with champagne tastes. You're paying for the location, the atmosphere, and here specifically the mythology wrapped around this property as much as the meal itself.
For this isn't just any hotel, this is the Ace Hotel. It is practically sacred ground for the hipster pilgrimage. Its OG ground zero for the influencer backdrop. In many ways, its trajectory mirrors what happened to Coachella or Burning Man: once an affordable, quirky alternative experience, now polished into a premium-priced cultural institution.
Still, despite a few noticeable cracks in the armor, there's a lot to like here.
First, the food. The meatloaf was soft, juicy, and flavorful. It's comfort food without becoming pretentious. The carrots were cooked perfectly. Those were tender, but still with enough firmness to remind you they were once vegetables. The mashed potatoes were exactly what mashed potatoes should be comforting and neutral. A great backdrop to the main.
While scanning the fine details of the menu, there's a small line buried almost in fine print atop the dinner selection offering a glass of wine or beer with your entrée for an additional $8. As silly as it sounds, that qualifies as a bargain.
Then came dessert - a warm sticky toffee date cake topped with vanilla ice cream, candied pecans, and caramel drizzle. Spectacular!!! I was lucky because it wasn't even on the menu yet, but I won it during on a game of BINGO.
And BINGO night itself was pretty darn entertaining. Norma Lee High and Ms. Cherry Superstar kept the entire room moving with sharp narration, quick banter, and infectious energy. Their chemistry carried the night and gave the restaurant an atmosphere that felt more like dinner theater than simple dining.
It's not filthy, adult, or aggressive, but for whatever reason its just not designed for everyone. There are references younger guests miss. If you proudly voted for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, Tuesday night at Kings Highway may not be your scene.
Now with all that said, some issues did appear, but none of these were devastating individually, but collectively enough to dull the shine a bit.
For starters, the public-facing information for the restaurant desperately needs attention. The online BINGO times are incorrect, some listings still reference 2025 dates, the start and end times are wrong, and the online menu doesn't match the physical menu they hand you at the table.
And one menu item stretched the truth. The ribs advertised "homemade BBQ sauce," yet sitting behind the counter was a commercial sauce bottle bought in bulk. It's a small detail, but details matter when you're charging premium prices.
Then there are the sticky counters. Strangely enough, this isn't a cleanliness issue. The counter itself were clean. The tackiness likely comes from years of commercial sanitizers slowly breaking down the varnish, leaving behind a sticky film that some might mistake as something other than clean. In reality, it probably means they wipe the counters down constantly. They just haven't refinished the surface in a very long time. So the issue is upkeep.
Speaking of upkeep, there is a 5% dine-in surcharge. A surcharge that does not go to the staff feels less like hospitality and more like naked profiteering. At least if the cost were simply built into the menu prices, the service staff would likely benefit from increased tip percentages alongside the restaurant itself. Additionally, when the bill is presented it's by the handheld computer that never leaves the servers hand. There's no physical copy. There's no chance to review and calculate. It's an under the gun sort of thing. I don't have those anxieties, but others may. I do enjoy a more leisurely approach to settling the bill because it is all part of the dining experience. All these financials as presented, leaves a sour final impression after an otherwise genuinely good dining experience and entertaining night.
Lastly, and this is more about Palm Springs as a whole than Kings Highway specifically, I hope the city avoids falling into the same trap Vegas did years ago when the experience starts getting overshadowed by the price tag. Because once that happens, people stop talking about the atmosphere, the food, or whatever. They only talk about what everything cost.
Still, Kings Highway succeeds where many hotel restaurants fail in that at least on Tuesday nights it gives you a memorable evening. Maybe not a perfect one, but definitely one you'll talk about afterward.