The Knife & Fork Inn is one of the oldest restaurants in town, and as befits an Atlantic City institution, it’s not without its share of controversy.

The iconic building has been standing guard over the intersections of Atlantic, Pacific, and Albany avenues for nearly a century. In many ways, it’s the beginning of Atlantic City. After all, Pacific Avenue starts in front of it, and most of the city’s tourist attractions lie beyond it, heading uptown. Today, since it’s surrounded almost completely by parking lots and vacant land, it’s even more conspicuous.

The narrow, four-story, Flemish-influenced building opened as a men’s club in 1912. Its members enjoyed good food and fine liqueurs, as did members of similar clubs in most cities around the United States.

In 1920, they met the onset of Prohibition with jeers. While others continued to drink on the sly, sipping from hip flasks, the club’s members insisted on serving alcohol openly. A federal strike force attacked this hotbed of lawlessness by raiding the club and demolishing its bar.

The club never really recovered from the raid and, in 1927, sold the building to Milton and Evelyn Latz, who converted it into a restaurant. As a restaurant, the Knife & Fork continued the exclusive ways of the club, and quickly established itself as a necessary stop for all gourmets visiting Atlantic City. The menu featured primarily seafood, although jumbo lamb chops were also popular. The building’s architecture was as exemplary as its food. With its dining spaces spread out over several small rooms on multiple levels, the Knife & Fork seemed far more intimate than other restaurants its size.

After Milton’s death in 1948, his sons Mack and Jim took over the restaurant. Despite the eatery’s continued popularity, the brothers could not get along, and eventually (in 1986) Mack took sole possession of the family business, with Jim remaining in control of the adjoining parking lot. Ironically, as the rest of Atlantic City crumbled in the 1960s and 1970s, the Knife & Fork got better. A New York Times review printed on the very day that the disastrous 1964 Democratic National Convention began said the inn stood out “like a good deed in a naughty world.” In a city where a top steak house featured pulsating red lamps on each table to hail waitresses, the Knife & Fork was the epitome of class.

As the city continued to deteriorate, however, the Knife & Fork shone only by comparison. In 1970, a reporter chronicling the city’s centennial took a dim view of the Boardwalk’s offerings: the hotels were decaying, many of them were being renovated into apartments, and there was little to do besides play bingo and eat salt water taffy. Hoping to escape the hot dogs and frozen custard stands, he headed down to the Knife & Fork, where for a moment he felt transported back to Atlantic City’s golden age. Then a waitress tied a plastic bib around his neck.

Casino gaming’s arrival in 1978 first helped the Knife & Fork. Since many casinos didn’t have restaurants to rival the Latz’s, they sent their best players there and picked up the tab. That year, the inn was immortalized in Louis Malle’s film Atlantic City (Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon ate lunch there in one atmospheric scene.)

The early 1980s were a boom time, with everyone from Bob Hope to notorious mobster Nicky Scarfo as frequent guests. But then, as casinos upgraded their own offerings, the flood of customers slowed. In December 1996, Mack Latz closed the Knife & Fork, saying he was old and was tired of running it.

The building sat vacant until early 1999, when Latz’s son Andrew secured a lease. In April of that year he re-launched the inn. The reopening was one of the most highly anticipated events in Atlantic City restaurant history, and the rave reviews picked up where they’d left off.

It seemed to be a storybook ending—family business stays in the family—until September 2003, when Mack stopped negotiating to sell the inn to Andrew and instead offered it to the Dougherty family, who own longtime rival Dock’s Oyster House.

After a protracted legal battle, Frank Dougherty officially purchased the Knife & Fork in early 2005, and embarked on a renovation and restoration plan that many say has restored the landmark to its original luster.

Seafood and chops are still at the center of the menu, and prices have more than kept pace with inflation. But for those looking for an authentic taste of Atlantic City before the casino era, dinner at the Knife & Fork might be a winning bet.

But even the restoration has not halted the controversy surrounding the restaurant. Earlier this year, the Bashaw-Barr company announced that the Knife & Fork would be moved—along with the neighboring “monument”—to make way for a $2 billion casino project that former CRDA director Curtis Bashaw and former Caesars Entertainment CEO Wally Barr have planned for the adjacent Boardwalk property. So who knows where the restaurant will land in the future?

By David Schwartz

David G. Schwartz (www.dieiscast.com), an Atlantic City native, is the Director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV and the author of several books, including Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling.