Chuck Urban broke the mold this year, obtaining a high-profile award in an often-thankless profession.
    
The Resorts gourmet food server was recognized by the Atlantic City Conven-tion Authority as best server for fine dining in a hotel-casino restaurant.
   
For 20 years, the Absecon resident has served with boundless enthusiasm and compassion. Like all wait staff, he balances two opposing realities: when the meals are excellent, someone else gets the accolades. But when a patron has concerns, the server is on the front line.
    
“You always put yourself in the customers’ shoes,” says Urban, a veteran of Capriccio restaurant. “What’s the best all-around experience you can give that person? The room already speaks for itself. It’s done with Venetian art, concrete pillars—it’s awesome, and the ambience is phenomenal. It’s one of the top restaurants, if not the best restaurant on the East Coast. We also make sure the service is impeccable.”
    
Urban plays his part, punching in food orders, timing them to come out at the right moment and acting as liaison between kitchen and customers. Multiply the details by 200 or more patrons on a given shift and this profession tests one’s ability to handle the public.
     
Over the years, Urban has waited on celebrities like Tom Jones and Don Rickles. Jones was a consummate gentleman; Rickles, the abrasive “Mr. Warmth” on stage, has a different private side.
    
“He’s a caring person,” says Urban. “He would stop and take as many pictures as people wanted.”
   
Urban’s outgoing nature enabled him to meet his future wife Kim, a marketing rep who brought the comp list up to the podium. Now she’s the mother of three children and helped keep an interesting family lineage going. Chuck, his father Charles and son Chazz represent the second, third and fourth generation launched by Urban’s grandfather.
    
“It’s Polish royalty,” he says.
    
They have enjoyed a nice lifestyle, due in great part to Urban’s casino job.
  
“I have so many great things in life because of this job,” he says. “It enabled Kim and I to live well and raise three wonderful children, to buy a house and set us up so that she could become a schoolteacher. I’m grateful for all of that.”
     
Urban’s wife and parents shared the big moment at the awards banquet, where his name was announced, Academy Award-style.
    
“The  nominees’ names were put on a big screen,” he says. “There was a description of what you had done and what the company thought of you. It was humbling. My parents were there to see that, so it was really emotional. I’ve been involved in sports my whole life and am a pretty competitive guy, so to be recognized in the industry is fantastic.”
    
To the player who attended Campbell University (North Carolina) on a baseball scholarship, and whose nephew Andrew Bailey is a star in the Oakland A’s, it was like winning a World Series MVP award.

By Dave Bontempo

Dave Bontempo is an award-winning sports writer and broadcaster who calls boxing matches all over the world. He has covered the Philadelphia Flyers in the playoffs, as well as numerous PGA, LPGA and Seniors Golf Tour events, and co-hosted the Casino Connection television program with Publisher Roger Gros.

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