I’m in Atlantic City for a high school reunion this weekend, catching up with friends not only from ACHS Class of ’67, but from grade school and even earlier. To those of you who have visited the town, I’ve always advised skipping the casinos and heading straight to the only place on Absecon Island worth your while, the White House Sub shop.  As a native, I should confess that I’ve already broken that rule on this visit. For starters, I’m staying at the Borgata -- comped as a guest not because I am a high roller, for I surely am not, but because a Class of ‘67 buddy of mine does Borgata’s laundry.

Regarding the White House, I passed up a cheese steak sub there, opting instead for the incomparable tuna/cheese sub from Dino’s in Margate, a downbeach suburb of Atlantic City. In South Jersey, and particularly on Absecon Island, where Atlantic City is located, subs have reached their apotheosis, and sub shops do not win “Best of” awards for “subs” per se, but for such specialized categories of subs, such as “Best Regular Sub,” or “Best Cheese Steak Sub,” or “Best Egg, Pepper & Cheese Sub” (my mother’s favorite).

Dino’s Mayonnaise Secret

So what makes Dino’s tuna/cheese hoagie so great?  In a word, the tuna. It is not just tuna salad on the incomparable Rando Italian roll, but tuna that has been whipped with mayonnaise almost to the consistency of a tuna mousse. Cheese-steak specialists have some secrets too, and one that has kept the White House’s version at the top of the ratings is that they use a very high quality of rib-eye steak, as well as stake-grown Jersey tomatoes.  A whole steak sub is about 16” long and feeds 2-3.  A sub shop in Podunk would probably have to charge more than $20 to make a profit using the same super-quality ingredients that White House uses. But White House does such a huge business, serving more than a thousand subs a day, that they can buy their rib-eye  in quantities that yield a profit at $14 per. 

If you visit the White House, be sure to look for my Aunt Betty, who is pictured with Joe DiMaggio’s arm around her shoulder. Celebrities love to have themselves photographed at the White House, and just about everyone in showbiz that you’ve heard of is there on the wall, somewhere.

Incidentally, a cheese steak sub is not a Philly Steak.  They are two very different sandwiches, and even though the latter is a legend in its own right, its purveyors make no claims as to the superiority of a “steak” over the Atlantic City-style sub. It is as though whites and blacks, out of mutual respect, refrained from dissing each other on the basketball court.

Don’t Miss Lucy…

I noted above that the White House is the only place worth visiting if you come to Atlantic City, but actually that is not quite correct:  There is also Lucy the Elephant in Margate, just a few blocks from where I grew up. This charming, six-story monstrosity was built by a Barnum-inspired real estate developer  in the 1880s to lure gawkers down to that end of the island.  The southwestern part of Absecon Island was still pretty swampy when my parents moved there in the 1950s, but it’s come so far since then that I barely recognize parts of the neighborhood I grew up in.  One particularly amazing development is Harbor Cove,  an enclave of modest 1950s-style homes on the boulevard that connects quaintly upscale Longport with the mainland. If I had been raised in Harbor Cove, I’d probably have committed suicide, since it was just a dumpy little place in the marshes, totally cut off from the island, with mosquitoes and greenheads as big as buzzards. But now, it is quite something else. I was sailing on nearby Lakes Bay Friday, and from the water I didn’t even realize that I was looking at Harbor Cove, which is now densely packed with $4 million-and-up houses, many of them with huge yachts moored in their “back yards.” Harbor Cove! Who’d a thunk it?