Family Feud May Consume Knife & Fork

At the Knife & Fork Inn, a family feud was always cooking. It just never got in the way of the lobster thermidor.

A new one might, though: In a bitter split, the lone scion of the family that has operated the inn since 1927 is suing to stop his father from selling to a rival. The son contends that his father promised several times through the years that he would inherit the business.

The issue has been left to the courts to decide, and the family and its longtime customers stand to lose the most in the end.

Founded in 1912 as a private men’s club, the distinctive four-story building became a speakeasy during Prohibition -- federal agents once used axes to bust up the bar during a raid -- and later a tony restaurant.

With its clubby English Tudor interior, high-priced seafood and imposing Flemish facade, the Knife & Fork offered fine dining through years when there was precious little of it to be found in Atlantic City, catering to well-heeled locals and the likes of Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster.

Growing up around it, Andrew Latz, 52, learned as much about feuds as he did about table settings.

As a boy, he wore a blue blazer with a Knife & Fork crest and dressed for Halloween as a cook, wearing chef’s whites and a chef’s hat and carrying a pot with a stirring spoon in it.

He remembers looking down at the entrance from the fourth-floor residence where his grandparents, Milton and Evelyn Latz, lived.

“It doesn’t mean much to you now, but someday, when you see all these people coming in, it’ll mean the world to you,” his grandmother told him once. “This is your life.”

He served for 14 years as its manager, all the while believing that it would someday be his.

In charge, at the time, were owners Mack Latz -- Andrew’s father -- and Mack’s younger brother Jim, whose relations with each other were so bad, they took turns running the restaurant because they couldn’t work together.

The easygoing Jim, a marathon runner who wore New Balance sneakers under his Knife & Fork-crested blazer in the dining room, would be in charge for one week.

Mack, a World War II veteran who had learned the business working at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, would run it the next, assuming stewardship every other Wednesday.

Famously cranky, Mack Latz -- who had the Knife & Fork logo tattooed on the back of his hand -- was known to chew out customers or eject them if they annoyed him.

Once, when a woman complained that her lobster was too tough, he told her: “Lady, I don’t make the [expletive] lobster. God does.”

“I was always the good guy,” said Jim Latz, 83, who now lives in Miami Beach, Fla., and has since reconciled with his brother. “People would come in and say, ‘Oh, is Mack working tonight? Then we’re not coming in.’ ”

The rift led to Mack’s decision to buy out his brother; in it, Mack got the restaurant building and Jim got an undeveloped adjacent parcel, leasing it back for Knife & Fork parking.

In 1995, Mack Latz fired his son Andrew for taking a vacation in the dead of winter -- the restaurant’s slow season. A year later, the restaurant closed.

The two got back in business in 1999, with father agreeing to lease the Knife & Fork to his son and his wife. Relying on that, Andrew Latz took out a second mortgage on his house and pumped $160,000 into renovations.

But Mack Latz told his son last spring that he wanted to sell, and that if Andrew wanted the Knife & Fork, he would have to come up with $650,000.

According to Andrew Latz, he marshaled enough backing to buy, but his father refused to sell.

Then came the bombshell: In September, on the day Andrew Latz’ wife gave birth to their first son, Andrew Latz’ lawyer called to tell him that Mack Latz was negotiating to sell the Knife & Fork to the Dougherty family, owners of Dock’s Oyster House, a rival seafood house.

Now, the father-son split has gone where no Latz feud ever did: to court.

In Latz vs. Latz, Andrew Latz is seeking to block the sale.

He says the corporate charter of the Knife & Fork Inn Inc. was suspended 10 years ago for failing to file annual reports for two consecutive years, thereby making it a dissolved corporation with no power to sell, only to wrap up its affairs.

“I’m from a litigious family, but I never thought it would get this litigious,” Andrew Latz said.

Mack Latz, 86, did not respond to requests for comment.

He contends that his son quit paying rent in June and failed to make quarterly tax payments that he agreed to under the lease.

Andrew Latz had a right of first refusal in the sale but he didn’t exercise it, said Nancy Axilrod, Mack Latz’s lawyer. Now, he wants his father to back out, she said.

“Mack is really saddened by all this,” Axilrod said. “But he’s an honorable man and he needs to honor his agreement.”

In early April, Mack Latz filed an eviction complaint asking a judge to either kick his son out of the Knife & Fork or pay $26,000 in back rent and taxes owed by Andrew Latz.

Longtime customers and family friends, meanwhile, are heartsick over the falling out.

“The eccentricities of the owners doomed the place to an early death,” said Sid Crane, 83, a customer since the 1940s who considers himself friends with Mack Latz. “Now, Andrew has brought it back from the ashes and the thanks he gets is his father turning his back on him.”

For his part, Jim Latz says the Knife & Fork is Mack’s to sell.

“I feel bad about the fact that it may not survive, or be out of the family. But life goes on,” he said.