By Seth Briliant
Let’s begin with a stroll down the Boardwalk to the Traymore Hotel. In the central arcade on the ground floor, there was an amazing Art Deco restaurant called the Submarine Grill. The interior walls were covered with frosted glass that had been etched with drawings of different types of fish. So the effect was that you were sitting underwater, which was very neat – and the food was pretty good, too.
On the way to the Traymore, I often stopped at “Tabor’s Toyland,” located in the Boardwalk frontage of the Haddon Hall Hotel near Steeplechase Pier. Before there were Toys “R” Us stores, this huge store carried every toy, game and plush animal known to man, and it was great fun to walk through. Best of all, there was a big display of S.S. Adams novelties like Sneezing Powder, Joy Buzzers, Plate Lifters, Whoopee Cushions and Squirting Nickels, as well as some very interesting magic tricks and puzzles. I often spent some of my weekly allowance there.
I could ride my bicycle all the way to the Inlet at the end of the Boardwalk, where Captain Starn’s Restaurant was located. I usually took along my fishing rod and was occasionally successful in catching something for dinner. For 25 cents, I could buy two live clams and cut them up for bait; although I didn’t realize it at the time, maybe that’s why I didn’t catch too many fish.
Captain Starn’s also offered thrilling speedboat rides that my father treated me to several times. Unfortunately, I never got to eat in the big boat-shaped dining room with spectacular views of Absecon Inlet, and I was too young to sit at the famous Yacht Bar.
Although not located on the Boardwalk, there were several great Atlantic City restaurants that I also enjoyed going to. When I worked the 8 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shift at the front desk of my parents’ motel, I sometimes went to the Stanley Restaurant at Atlantic and North Carolina avenues afterwards for dinner. That would often be a hot pastrami sandwich on rye, with spicy brown mustard on the bottom, coleslaw on top and then some Russian dressing on top of that. This was a sandwich that fought back when you tried to eat it, but it was delicious.
On Sunday evenings our family often went out to dinner, which was a special time for my sister and me. We would go to a lovely Italian restaurant called Alfred’s Villa, or to the Neptune Inn; both were located on Pacific Avenue near Albany Avenue. We also liked Luigi’s, a great red-sauce place on Pacific Avenue near the Million Dollar Pier. And we went to Chinaland on Tennessee Avenue, at a time when Chinese restaurants were still somewhat mysterious places with unfamiliar dishes. I always ordered barbecued spareribs as an appetizer, and moo gai pan for dinner because it was the only dish I knew how to pronounce.
But my favorite spot was the Riptide Room, located in the Penn-Atlantic Hotel on Bacharach Boulevard. The hotel was a real antique, but the restaurant was a swanky and snazzy place, with lowlights, an elegant long bar, soft red backlighting around the ceiling perimeter and lots of mirrors on the walls. If my father ordered a martini, my sister and I got nonalcoholic Shirley Temple cocktails – ginger ale and grenadine (pomegranate juice) for color, plus two maraschino cherries.
For dinner, my sister and I always shared a shrimp cocktail, followed by chicken Parmesan with a side of capellini and then a slice of cheesecake for dessert. The restaurant was owned by Mike Fiore, a gracious fellow; his wife baked the delicious and creamy cheesecakes herself. We always sent a lot of our motel guests to his restaurant because the food and atmosphere were consistently wonderful.
Not many restaurants remained open in Atlantic City during the winter, but you could always depend upon getting a magnificent hot roast beef sandwich at the 500 Club – a legendary nightclub located on Missouri Avenue. They sold a – french dip – both pieces of a crusty split Kaiser roll were briefly dipped in warm beef gravy before the sandwich was assembled, with a spoonful of creamy horseradish sauce on top of the roast beef. The result was a little messy, but a delight to eat and well worth the trip uptown on a cold wintry evening.
Seth is a retired attorney who was born in Atlantic City and grew up in Margate and Ventnor. He lives in Egg Harbor Township and his favorite dish is still Chicken Parmigiana with a side of capellini.
