BOBBY FLAY & WOLFGANG PUCK JOIN THE CULINARY STARS AT BORGATA...

September 2006

Joining Michael Mina’s Seablue at the Borgata in Atlantic City are two other star chef eateries, Bobby Flay Steak and Wolfgang Puck American Grille. Part of the Borgata’s $200 million expansion, the trio of new restaurants opened in early July.

Food Network chef/restaurateur Bobby Flay’s first ever steakhouse offers a twist on traditional dishes, including a Philadelphia style steak made with a cheese sauce, roasted peppers, and mushrooms made with rib eye, hanger, New York strip or filet mignon, spicy rib eye with roasted red and green chiles and garlic, along with lobsters from the Lobster Bar and other seafood entrees. The menu also includes a variety of regional steaks prepared with a distinctive rub and Bobby Flay steak sauce, the AC chopped salad made tableside, and exceptional desserts such as pecan toffee and bitter chocolate baked Alaska and buttermilk blackberry pie.

Designed by David Rockwell, the 11,000 square foot restaurant is sleek and modern with red leather sheathing on the cocktail lounge walls and ceiling, and cast glass and hewn woods throughout. It’s open daily for dinner only. The phone number is (609) 317-1000.

SPAGO CHEF DEBUTS AT BORGATA

Also bringing his special cuisine to the East for the first time is Wolfgang Puck, the chef known for Spago and his California cuisine. Wolfgang Puck’s American Grille features an expansive layout designed by Tony Chi with four dining rooms and his first ever Chef’s Table, located in the kitchen.

Highlights of the fine dining menu include Puck’s signature dish, grilled flat iron steak with maytag blue cheese and green peppercorn sauce, roasted pork chop with preserved lemon and goat cheese potato gratin, and grilled lamb porterhouse with parmesan polenta and nicoise olive reduction.

Puck’s new venture also offers pizza and foccacia from the wood burning oven, a variety of panini, and salads and small plates from the café menu. Warm strawberry crepes and chocolate soufflé are two of the chef’s dessert standouts.

Wolfgang Puck’s American Grille is open daily for dinner, and the bar area is open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. The phone number is (609) 317- 1000.

RUMOR’S RIB ROOM IN BUENA SOON TO BE GIORGIO’S ITALIAN FACILITY

Gino Fazzolari, an uncle of Giuseppe Celano, owner of Italian Affair in Glassboro, recently purchased the former Rumor’s Rib in Buena. According to Celano Fazzolari, the owner is gutting the space to remake it into a casually elegant Italian restaurant and bar.

Giorgio’s Italian Restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner and will have a full wine list. “It will be family style with a pizzeria on one side and a restaurant on the other,” says Celano. “They’re still looking for a chef. They will probably bring someone in from Italy.” An opening date hasn’t yet been set.

PHILLY BISTRO OPENS AT TSOP AT ATLANTIC CITY’S QUARTER

New at The Quarter at the Tropicana in Atlantic City is Philly B i s t ro at TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia). It’s open for dinner and late-night snacking seven days a week, and features moderately priced Philadelphia favorites, such as the classic Philly cheesesteak toasted in a tortilla with sour cream, Ninth Street pasta salad, and Philly Sound Caesar salad.

There’s also soups, appetizers, and burgers, all priced $15 or less. Entrees are $15 to $26 and include classic southern red rice and shrimp, smoked beef short ribs, and sugar cane glazed salmon. Georgia peach cobbler and warm Bananas Foster adorn the dessert list. Philly Bistro at TSOP joins the Tropicana’s other 19 restaurants at The Quarter. It’s located at the Sound of Philadelphia, 2801 Pacific Avenue, The Quarter at Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City.

For more information, please call (609) 344-9100.

CHEESECAKE FACTORY ARRIVES IN SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY

The 106th location, and the first in the southern New Jersey market, of the Cheesecake Factory opened in The Marketplace at Garden State Park facing Haddonfield Road. The only other location in the Delaware Valley is in the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania.

The Cherry Hill outpost of the popular restaurant chain based in Calabasas Hills, Ca., features 40 kinds of cheesecake at $7 per slice, as well as espresso and frozen drinks, ice cream, and other desserts, such as Lemoncello cream torte and a fresh apple dumpling served warm with whipped cream.

Serving much much more than dessert, the Cheesecake Factory offers a large variety of appetizers, sandwiches, pizzas, salads, pasta dishes, chicken, and steaks and chops. The 200 item menu also includes omelettes, crab hash and other Sunday Brunch fare, as well as specialty drinks from the bar.

M&M Realty Partners, which handles commercial leasing for the 22 acre former racetrack site, bought the liquor license used by the Cheesecake Factory last year from the former Lena’s Bar on Chapel Avenue in Cherry Hill for $790,000, a township record.

The Cheesecake Factory also offers online ordering of cheesecakes and other cakes that may be delivered in dry ice to your door or picked up curbside at the restaurant on Haddonfield Road.

The Cheesecake Factory is located at 931 Haddonfield Road in Cherry Hill. The phone number is (856) 665-7550.

MERCHANTVILLE CAFÉ RENAMED HALF MOON

Merchantville’s former Merchant Café is now the Half Moon Café. Owned by Chef Laura Eckhardt, a culinary arts graduate of the Art Institute of Philadelphia and life long resident of Merchantville, the Half Moon is named after a popular tavern from the 1800s located on Mount Holly Stage Road. It’s open for breakfast and lunch with daily specials.

Eckhardt’s menu features homemade soups, fresh salads, and sandwiches, along with daily specials, such as the summer peach salad and strawberry blueberry salad tossed with feta and candied walnuts.

The café seats 30 and also has two tables outside for dining alfresco. The Half Moon Café is open for breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday and for breakfast only on Saturday until noon. It’s located at 7 East Park Ave. in Merchantville. The phone number is (856) 662- 8844.

PEPE SCOTTO OPENS BYO IN OAKLYN AFTER 21 YEARS WORKING FOR LAMBERTI

After six years of running Villa Nuova in Deptford and another twenty one working for Lamberti restaurants, Pepe Scotto opened his own BYOB in Oaklyn in early July.

Casa DiLuzio is located at the site of the former Caribbean Crab on White Horse Pike. A grand opening is scheduled for early fall.

The menu is traditional Italian with quality ingredients. The BYOB serves lunch and dinner seven days a week. The casually elegant space seats approximately 150 for lunch and dinner.

A separate area provides takeout pizza and hot sandwiches. Scotto also offers catering. House-made crab cakes and gnocchi sorrento with fresh mozzarella and basil are specialties of the house. Prices are moderate.

“We completely redid the space to make it beautiful for our guests,” says Scotto. “The location is great.”

The address for Casa DiLuzio is 301 White Horse Pike in Oaklyn, and the phone number is (856) 833-1900.

HOW WAS THE SUMMER? IT DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU ARE

Such a contrast. Two restaurants on the Mainland of Cape May County completely empty. Another in Stone Harbor, not a dining soul, while nearby, there are seemingly full establishments. It’s Sunday night in late Summer at the southern New Jersey shore. I am trolling restaurants in the heart of the season and I am seeing something I have never seen before. Empty restaurants. In two establishments, the staff literally jumps at my entry.

Isn’t this the very lap of Summer? I say to myself, as I drop a stack of my magazines in a Cape May Court House restaurant that has no customers at around 5 p.m. Nearby, another establishment seems empty of customers, although there may be someone in another dining room. It also is a new restaurant. But still. It’s Summer. At the Jersey Shore. There should be lines.

Shouldn’t there? Or at least people?

I am heartened when I see the crowd at Chef Ted’s Offshore Café along Route 9. The parking lot is full, and the dining room is full. Are patrons choosing to spend money at established, familiar places? I always stop at Maui’s Dog House in mid-Summer, chat with Maui D’Antonio and disappear a hot dog or two. I pull up to Maui’s and park right in front, something that in previous Summers was impossible. I am alone, except for a young man behind the counter. He fetches Maui.

“It’s slow,” says the usually ebullient purveyor of delicious hot dogs. “People go home on Sunday nights now.” A few blocks away Cool Scoops has some business, but the Summer throng that once crowded Wildwood seems missing, at least thinning. I stop at the new Dog Tooth Grill, operated by Harry Gleason, former owner of Daniel’s on Broadway.

The place seems busy. A friendly hostess offers me a menu to take home. It is an interesting menu of some entrees, but mostly snack food. I am aware that a more casual trend has taken hold in the restaurant business and I think of the success of Lucky Bones, operated by the Craig family in Cape May. The combination of quality casual food has attracted crowds this Summer at that new establishment. Jeff Schwartz, owner of the new Red Sky Café, says the second of his two restaurants in Wildwood is “holding its own” and the first in Seaville is typically busy. Rick Appolonia, owner of Crab Island, said he was “even with June and up for July.”

But Wildwood is in transition, losing more than 150 motels in the last few years, and losing many of those visitors. In the street next to the Dog Tooth Grill, I try to park at four different parking meters, but all four are inoperable, with quarters stuck in the mechanisms. I finally find one that works, but I cannot help but calculate the amount of business lost to Dog Tooth from customers who can’t find a place to park and give up. Yo Wildwood. Fix the meters.

Wildwood’s most classic restaurant is Groff’s, a shining example of a crisp efficient culinary operation. I figure proprietor Earl Groff will have an insight and some wisdom on this Summer’s business cycle. Groff’s, at Magnolia Avenue and the Boardwalk, is indeed busy, and its well laid out stainless steel kitchen is both filled with employees and sparkling clean, even at the height of service. It is one of my favorite kitchens.

Earl has lost weight and is without his trademark red suspenders, but he has the Groff’s polo-shirt and the publicity minded approach. He is taking customers on a tour of the kitchen when I enter from the basement and climb the stairs past the fresh made pies. I marvel at how the kitchen is laid out, and at the young chef Chris Adams, Groff’s nephew, and his command of the staff and the line.

Earl agrees that the loss of customers is related to the missing motels, and calculates 25,000-30,000 people, a conservative number, who no longer come to the resort. Even though some might have purchased the expensive condominiums that replaced the motels, those people either aren’t visiting every week, or aren’t spending their money on dining out. And even though some of the motels that remain are full, many are not.

Earl puts it in these terms.

“Two years ago, we might do 400 dinners on a night like this. Last year it was 350. This year it’s 300 dinners.

Hopefully this coming month will be back to normal. But you can’t make up for what you lost.”

There is also the inconsistency: “The last two Fridays were busy. Saturdays were off.”

What does the future hold?

“Grit your teeth and hang on.”

In Stone Harbor, the contrast is amazing. At Donna’s Place, there is no one, even though the doors are open, the lights are on and the employees are busy waiting. The Concord in Avalon is nearly full, as are the facilities surrounding, including the busy Golden Inn.

At Busch’s in Sea Isle City, it seems like old times. The restaurant is so busy it creates its own environment. There are customers meandering the streets before or after their meal, finding their cars and holding discussions with once-a-Summer friends and relatives.

The carnival atmosphere extends around Busch’s seemingly for several blocks and is reassuring. Inside, the busy kitchen is an example of how it’s done. There are several lines, and on each there are scores of plates ready for entrees, appetizers and salads. Owner Al Schettig is stirring the restaurant’s famous she crab soup, which is waiting to be consumed in several stainless steel vats. There are at least six vats. Schettig always seems to have a smile and a relaxed approach to a stressful evening in the restaurant business. He cracks jokes, unloads puns and pitches in to help when someone gets behind. There are at least three dozen people in the kitchen and everyone is moving, quickly. The place is like the deck of an aircraft carrier with its instantaneous series of events that produce the desired result with no catastrophes.

Al provides me with samples of onion rings, she crab soup, prime rib and crab au gratin, which I have never tasted. The crab au gratin is amazing, perfectly flavored and textured. The onion rings are superb, with just enough onion flavor and breading. The prime rib is wrapped to take home, but the she crab soup is sampled and refilled. I cannot imagine a more perfect combination of Everest-sized crab pieces and secret ingredients. I have told the story of the she crab soup, made in secret, with a special spoon specially marked for perfect portioning, and videotaped for the next generation so that the recipe will live on. He offered last year to tell me the secret, and I told him not to. I don’t want to know. He offers again. I hold my ears. He frets over an Ocean City competitor who came on our radio show and promised to exceed the quality of Busch’s she crab soup.

Not even close, I tell Al, who seems heartened, but worried.

How’s business, I ask. Dead even with last year, is the answer. Dead even. Not bad in this economy, I tell him. More she crab soup please. I don’t want the secret, just the soup.