Margate BYOB offers a seven-course tasting menu for $35 in addition to its popular lunch and dinner fare.
Seared tuna (back) and crab cake (front)
MARGATE — Creative inspiration, culinary or otherwise, has been known to take on many different forms and functions.
For John Merlino, chef/owner — along with wife Victoria — of Margate’s fine BYOB, Manna, it arrived through his faith.
Which only makes sense, considering that their restaurant derives its name from the Biblical food from heaven provided Israelites during their time spent wandering.
The Merlinos attended a party last December at the home of their church’s pastor, Kyle Huber, of Greentree Ministries.
Huber, described by Merlino as a very serious food fan, laid out a spread of small plates (tapas), which got the pair thinking.
Having successfully run Manna for four years, John says, “We think we put out a great product, but it’s still tough in the winter.”
So the kitchen, where both halves of the couple happen to toil, quietly began offering tapas early in the year.
Initially limited to Fridays, this provided customers an opportunity to easily sample new items at limited expense.
“We were always looking to refine what we were doing,” says John. “To stay current with culinary trends without being trendy.”
Softly introducing this new concept to the market, Manna offered a seven-course tasting menu for $35. This proved even more prudent as the economy slowly lurched back from recession.
The idea wasn’t completely alien here either.
“We’d always been doing a four-course prix-fixe, which is basically the same plates,” says John.
So well-received was this mid-winter experiment that it blossomed into a full-blown reformat by spring of this year.
This meant some serious new challenges for the cooks, according to John.
As the final, precious weeks of summer ’10 wane, we thought it a splendid opportunity to reflect back upon a culinary season as hot as the Fahrenheit we’ve encountered.
Poised to celebrate its second birthday, Atlantic City’s Restaurant Week — Sunday, Feb. 28 through Saturday, March 6 — has quickly matured into a precocious, hotly anticipated event. Managed through the auspices of the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority (ACCVA), participants run a wide gamut of cuisines, styles and price points. They also provide the dining public opportunities to sample both lunch and dinner at many regional establishments. The last element of the equation are manageable prix fixe charges: $15.10 lunches and $33.10 dinners.
Downbeach gastronomic musical chairs: One of the area's most dynamic dining destinations has seen a number of changes over the course of this past off-season. Most notable among these was the closin...
In the words of the late, lamented Beatle, George Harrison, "It's been a long, cold, lonely winter" for the restaurant industry of the Jersey Shore. Shifting dining demographics, plus six horribly c...
Webster's Seventh Collegiate Dictionary defines 'manna' as: "heavenly food supplied directly by God for the divine spiritual and physical nourishment of humans." Naming your new restaurant venture M...
Article:
A ‘Taste’ of Maroon 5
Article:
Atlantic City Seafood Festival Returns
Article:
Inaugural Taste of Revel
Article:
Chefs Announced for 2012 AC Food & Wine Festival
Article:
Atlantic Club’s New Menus Unveiled
Article:
Double Cupcake Fun at Showboat
Article:
Worship Surf Bar, Crossroads at HOB, Coming to Showboat
Article:
Dishes, Dreams and Delicacies
Share this Story: