Atlantic City Weekly

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Through two world wars, hurricanes, political conventions, and the modern casino boom, the Knife & Fork Inn has stood at the confluence of Atlantic, Pacific and Albany avenues. It began as a drinking/social club launched by one-time Mayor William Riddle and a dozen cronies in 1912, then grew to be Atlantic City's exemplar of fine dining for gourmets, politicos, occasional gangsters, and everyday folk out for a treat. Its distinctive architectural trim, strategic location, and robust menu made it a landmark as recognizable as any majestic Boardwalk hotel or garish amusement pier.

At the time that Riddle broke ground, most of the local action was uptown. Downbeach, Ventnor and Margate were mere outposts. But the landscape soon changed. Trains yielded to automobiles, and shore-bound traffic spilled off the Albany Avenue bridge, skirted the columned World War I Memorial, cruised alongside a new Atlantic City High School, then veered left toward the stately President Hotel or turned right to race the trolleys to Longport. And at the crossroads was that epicurean beacon, the Knife & Fork.

The place always had a distinctive look - too big for its parcel of land but too small for its surroundings - with its Flemish-style facade based on a storybook illustration. Alamo-like parapets secured the red-tile rooftop above rows of green-shuttered windows, and studding the white-stuccoed walls were a dozen or so icons of the inn's famous crest: a crossed knife and fork.

In 1927, Milton Latz, a traveling salesman turned restaurateur, leased the property from Riddle. Believing that Prohibition was here to stay, he removed the original bar, a decision he would later regret. When the Depression took hold, Milton moved his wife Evelyn, sons Mack and Jim, and three daughters into the inn's third and fourth floors. When the nation went to war again following Pearl Harbor, waitresses joined waiters in the K & F lineup.

In September 1944, the Riddle family absorbed major losses from the hurricane that devastated the Atlantic Coast, and eventually put the Knife & Fork (spared by the storm) on the market. Lessee Milton Latz purchased it in the late '40s, but died before the new decade. His legacy, however, was just entering its prime.

"It's a great ego trip if you win," Mack Latz once said of running a restaurant. He and his brother were winners at the K & F in the 1950s. Competitors crowded the area: the Neptune Inn across Pacific, Conrad's in the Mayfair across Albany, the Strand just up the Boardwalk. But it was the Knife & Fork that caught the popular imagination. The lamb chops were jumbo, the flounder whole-pan. Lobster thermidor and crabmeat plump as chicken stoked appetites, and Clams Casino was a sure bet. From sea bass to sirloin, the entrees justified their billing ... and the bill. This was the place where chefs came to dine.

As did more than a few celebrities, though they tried to keep a low profile. "Was that really Bob Hope?" a drinking man would ask the bartender, now that spirits were lawful again. "Was that Cary Grant?" Years later in the movie Atlantic City, it was Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon sharing a scene and a meal on the K & F porch.

The real celebrity, though, was the restaurant itself. When LBJ and the Democrats commandeered the city for their national convention in 1964, the Knife & Fork came under the scrutiny of a New York Times food columnist. "The article was on a Saturday," Mack Latz remembered. "The convention started on Monday, and people were lining up."

When Evelyn Latz died in 1968, sons Mack and Jim inherited the property but its heyday was over. Atlantic City's years of decline were reversed when gambling came to town a decade later, but the proliferation of casino eateries took a big bite of the restaurant business. Mack bought out his brother in 1985; at the end of 1996, the Knife & Fork shut its doors and Mack put it up for sale.

The restaurant stayed dark for a couple of years before reopening with Mack's son, Andrew, at the helm. But father and son eventually squabbled over the lease and wound up in court, as Mack once again sought a buyer. That person arrived in Frank Dougherty, the fourth generation at his family's Dock's Oyster House, which started serving on Atlantic Avenue in 1897. Last week, when the Knife & Fork opened its doors to the public for the first time since last December (see dining review on p. 56), it was apparent that Dougherty has restored the storied restaurant with a zeal faithful to its historical flavor, as tasty as one of its great old desserts - pear compote with a chocolate sauce and whipped cream. A real Swiss treat.

Jim Waltzer's Tales of South Jersey, co-authored by Tom Wilk, is published by Rutgers University Press.