logo
Stephen Starr Is Opening Two New Concepts In Atlantic City This Summer

Stephen Starr Is Opening Two New Concepts In Atlantic City This Summer

Forbes03-04-2025
Visionary restaurateur Stephen Starr is developing two new dining concepts for Atlantic City's Ocean Casino Resort.
There's no shortage of buzzy developments and events in the pipeline for Atlantic City this summer—from the return of the Atlantic City Airshow to the debut of Steel Pier's new roller coaster Sky Rocket II—but the biggest news is the just-announced partnership between the visionary James Beard Award-winning restaurateur Stephen Starr and Ocean Casino Resort for two new dining concepts.
'I formed some of my finest childhood memories in Atlantic City, both at the beach and on America's most popular boardwalk, where I worked as a teenager,' Starr shares exclusively with Forbes. 'When the team at Ocean first approached me, it felt like a full circle moment. I admire how Ocean is constantly improving and enhancing their offerings, while keeping the guest experience front and center.'
While the restaurants are still in the development phase, one thing's for certain: in true Starr style, they'll deliver exceptional crowd-pleasing cuisine, detail-oriented design, and polished service from start to finish. 'The 'Americana' concept will be open for breakfast and lunch, and will offer a nostalgic menu of comfort foods that are familiar and beloved by all,' says Starr. 'The menu will feature dishes such as Pigs in a Blanket, Tuna Tacos, Pierogies, Home-Style Meatloaf, and Thanksgiving Dinner served year-round.'
One of Stephen Starr's new concepts at Atlantic City's Ocean Casino Resort will focus on the classic French bistro favorite, Steak frites.
As for the second concept, Starr is drawing inspiration from Paris' iconic Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecot—'it combines old-school charm with a new-school twist'—and its cult favorite steak frites smothered in herbaceous butter sauce. Starr shares, 'The menu will be a prix-fixe of Steak, Salmon and Lobster with frites—in addition to a few à la carte offerings.'
Starr's partnership with Ocean Casino Resort couldn't have come at a better time. Atlantic City has been on a steady upswing since the pandemic, and this news will give all kinds of travelers, from gourmands to high rollers, another reason to visit. 'We are excited to add to this historic culinary fabric with our own interpretation of classic dining that will be a draw for locals and out-of-towners alike,' says Starr, who hopes to recreate some of the magic he experienced in Atlantic City as a kid.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Jamie Lee Curtis Confirms She Will Star in MURDER, SHE WROTE Feature Adaptation That is Officially in the Works — GeekTyrant
Jamie Lee Curtis Confirms She Will Star in MURDER, SHE WROTE Feature Adaptation That is Officially in the Works — GeekTyrant

Geek Tyrant

time25 minutes ago

  • Geek Tyrant

Jamie Lee Curtis Confirms She Will Star in MURDER, SHE WROTE Feature Adaptation That is Officially in the Works — GeekTyrant

Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis ( Everything Everywhere All At Once , The Bear ) has confirmed that a film reboot of the classic series Murder, She Wrote is in the works at Universal, and Curtis is set to star. The actress revealed that she's 'a minute away' from taking over the late Angela Lansbury's beloved middle-aged mystery writer and amateur sleuth role, Jessica Fletcher, in a feature adaptation of the CBS series that ran for 12 seasons from 1984 to '96. 'Oh, it's… happening,' Curtis playfully confirmed to Entertainment Tonight. 'We're a minute away, but yeah, [I'm] very excited. Very excited. But I'm tamping down my enthusiasm until we start shooting. I have a couple of other things to hustle, but then I'll get to enjoy that work.' The script was written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, with producers Lord Miller and Amy Pascal. Lansbury starred from 1984 to 1996 in what became one of the most successful and longest-running shows in TV history. Her Jessica Fletcher was a retired schoolteacher turned successful mystery writer, who proves to have an uncanny knack for solving real-life murders. The show was primarily set in the seaside town of Cabot Cove, Maine, though Jessica often travels to other locales as cases unfold. I love Curtis, and I think she will be great in this role. Stay tuned for updates. via: Deadline

New Jonathan Demme biography spotlights director's clashes with powerful stars — and his humanity
New Jonathan Demme biography spotlights director's clashes with powerful stars — and his humanity

Los Angeles Times

time25 minutes ago

  • Los Angeles Times

New Jonathan Demme biography spotlights director's clashes with powerful stars — and his humanity

Before he set his sights on Hollywood, Jonathan Demme studied to become a vet. Movies may have mesmerized him since childhood, but animals were his 'parallel obsession,' writes film journalist David M. Stewart in 'There's No Going Back,' an uneven biography of the Oscar-winning director of 'The Silence of the Lambs.' In the end, chemistry classes proved too hard, and only one animal sustained Demme's interest long enough: the Alligator, the University of Florida newspaper that let him contribute film reviews. A career as a veterinarian was abandoned in favor of the movies. Demme, who died in 2017, forged a career defined by films that centered voices from society's ever-shifting margins. He spotlighted women ('Swing Shift'), Black people ('Beloved') and HIV-positive gay men ('Philadelphia') in narratives that celebrated their trials through an empathetic camera lens. Interspersed among Hollywood projects were documentaries such as 'The Agronomist,' on Haiti's only independent radio station; 'Right to Return,' about Hurricane Katrina victims fighting to access their homes again; and 'Stop Making Sense.' Demme himself witnessed the difficulty those at society's fringes faced entering spaces men (often white) had claimed and refused to relinquish. His grandmother retold rose-tinted stories of building aircraft equipment during World War II before being forcibly relegated back to her domestic life. Growing up Miami's Overtown neighborhood, Demme saw how Black people created their own unique 'music and communal energy' during segregation, a culture he would repeatedly honor in his own films. After college, Demme landed a publicity job at United Artists. During a chance encounter chauffeuring François Truffaut around, the master auteur told the desperate factotum that he had an eye for directing. Demme insisted he wasn't interested in being a director, even after the French filmmaker inscribed his copy of 'Hitchcock.' 'Yes, you are,' was Truffaut's reply. Despite these early protests, Demme moved west to Hollywood, working for B-movie producer Roger Corman on films such as the 1971 bike picture 'Angels Hard as They Come' and the salacious 1973 prison escape story 'Black Mama White Mama' before he directed 'Caged Heat' with a feminist take on the women-in-prison film that embraced satire and progressive politics. Demme directed socially conscious projects during the 1970s, tackling the disenfranchised and forgotten through action and comedy tales. 'Crazy Mama,' about a housewife intent on exacting vengeance on the men who murdered her husband, highlighted Demme's desire to recognize women's ongoing struggles against a patriarchal world. 'Fighting Mad' and 'Citizens Band' (subsequently titled 'Handle with Care') touched on corporate greed, ecological destruction and finding human connection in small-town America. 'Melvin and Howard' won two Oscars and was nominated for a third. But in an experience that would unfortunately repeat itself, the Goldie Hawn-produced 'Swing Shift' was a deeply demoralizing project for Demme. He had wanted to make a 'feminist perspective of women during wartime,' writes Stewart, while Hawn had imagined the film as a sugary rom-com. The veto power Hawn had meant the entire ending was reshot, mostly sapping Demme's dream of its political message. A decade later, Demme would suffer similar strife on the set of 'Beloved,' quarreling with Oprah Winfrey over aspects of characterization in the supernatural slavery epic. ( Winfrey told Stewart that she was banned from viewing the dailies for a brief period.) But creative comfort was found, as Demme repeated over the years, in music. There was his Talking Heads concert film 'Stop Making Sense' and several Neil Young concert films; 'Something Wild,' a Melanie Griffith movie he made after 'Swing Shift,' prominently featured Jamaican singer Sister Carol and her cover of 'Wild Thing.' Still, it was his passion for female protagonists who were 'reliable in a world of lying men' that also fueled his output, if only partly dealt with in Stewart's shorthand approach. 'The Silence of the Lambs,' 'Rachel Getting Married' and 'Ricki and the Flash' each etched, in equal parts, the strength and vulnerability of a different women — battling the criminal justice system, besieged by addiction and estranged from family — who reject victimhood as an option. 'There's No Going Back' stresses it's not a definitive biography but an effort to 'understand Demme as a filmmaker.' If Stewart can be forgiven for the light detail on Demme's upbringing for this reason (only a few pages), he is less absolved for his inconsistent, often abridged, treatments of Demme's films and what messages to glean from a long view of the director. Patchy approaches — 'Rachel Getting Married' gets some dissection with minimal production detail, while 'The Silence of the Lambs' gets extensive production detail with no film analysis — doesn't help extract Demme's thematic throughlines as a filmmaker. To end the book with his passing and without any final remarks only compounds this problem. What does somewhat redeem 'There's No Going Back' is the detail given on Demme's lifelong activism. Starting first with the freedom of expression movement, Demme moved to documenting Haiti's transformation from a dictatorship to a democracy in several energized documentaries. If political connections aren't always made back to his dramatized films, appreciating how Demme championed voices from the likes of Haiti and in the aftermath of Katrina does at least highlight his lifelong advocacy of society's most forgotten — on- and off-screen. When Demme was a young boy, his mother told him to write about the movies he so ardently watched 'to uncover the secrets behind the magic.' It may be an unfortunate irony then that this same advice Stewart recounts proves largely absent in 'There's No Going Back.' While well-intended and admiring, the biography often proves facile, showing difficulty reckoning with Demme's oeuvre and its deeper political and cinematic lessons. The book has still set some of the groundwork for a future project that may more adeptly synthesize life with art. Smith is a books and culture writer.

Hulk Hogan is 'woven into the fabric of Americana,' pro wrestling star Aron Stevens says
Hulk Hogan is 'woven into the fabric of Americana,' pro wrestling star Aron Stevens says

Fox News

time2 hours ago

  • Fox News

Hulk Hogan is 'woven into the fabric of Americana,' pro wrestling star Aron Stevens says

Hulk Hogan had a larger-than-life persona and left an indelible mark on the professional wrestling industry over the course of his career spanning several decades. On Thursday, Hogan died after first responders reported to a cardiac arrest call at his Clearwater, Florida, home. He was 71. Pro wrestling star Aron Stevens, who performs in the National Wrestling Alliance, remembered Hogan in a statement to Fox News Digital. Stevens also performed in WWE as Damien Sandow. "Hulk Hogan is somebody that he's woven into the fabric of Americana. He embodied every principle and ideal that was good about America," Stevens said. "And when he first rose to prominence in the '80s, that was a time when, as a country, we were not as divided as we are now. "Everyone was proud to be an American, and Hulk was the personification of that. From his battles with the Iron Sheik to Sgt. Slaughter during the Iraqi War, Hulk was somebody that everyone could cheer because he represented, as far as his in-ring persona goes, the best of what this country is." Stevens, whose real name is Aron Haddad, recalled Hogan's appearance at the Republican National Convention and a rally at Madison Square Garden and how he earned one of the biggest pops of those events. He also noted the impact Hogan had on young fans. "When you look back on his life, every sick child that he put a smile on their face and made them forget that they were sick, every child he inspired to live a better life, to do the right thing, every adult that he inspired, everyone, that's something that most people, I don't think they think about enough," he said. Hogan's death rattled the sports and entertainment world. He was about to launch Real American Freestyle to help put freestyle wrestling on the map. "Obviously, he'll never be forgotten, but he was a pioneer," Stevens said. "He was truly the first of his kind, and I don't think we will ever see another person quite like Hulk Hogan in the wrestling business ever again. So, Hulk, rest in peace."

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store