2011 James Beard Awards America's Classic: Chef Vola's, Atlantic City, NJ

Like and subscribe to hear more from chefs, writers, beverage professionals, and more! Each year since 1998 the James Beard Foundation Awards Committee has recognized our nation’s beloved regional restaurants. Distinguished by their timeless appeal, they serve quality food that reflects the character of their communities. We anoint these locally owned restaurants with a James Beard Foundation Award and designate them as America’s Classics. Some believe that Chef Vola's, operating in the basement of a former boarding house since 1921, is hard to get into, that you need to know someone, that Louise Esposito, the woman who answers the once-unlisted telephone number, screens applicants for a table. Urban legend. Fact is, all are welcome. Once here, you're family. A single serving of the peerless veal chop, done parm-style, feeds, maybe, six. The red gravy is revered, as is the veal swathed in Prosciutto. Ditto the cannellini-green bean salad crowned by cubes of provolone and salami. Frank Sinatra once said he wanted to be buried with one of Chef Vola's banana cream pies. In 1982, the Esposito family bought the restaurant from the Vola clan. Today, Louise, along with her husband Michael, and sons Michael, Jr. and Louis, work the kitchen and the dining room, an always-humming space in which a Naples-born grandma would feel at home. Customers make pilgrimages to eat at Chef Vola's. They come for the people. They come for the food, for dishes that serve as standard-bearers of an Italian-American culinary tradition that may be more loved in the heart of the Mid-Atlantic than anywhere else. —Andy Clurfeld (Asbury Park Press) Community-focused and independent restaurants are at the heart of every city, town, and village across America and the world. The James Beard Foundation celebrates restaurants that showcase culinary leadership and provides training and resources for chefs and restaurateurs to use their voices for positive food system change. Open for Good is the James Beard Foundation’s campaign to help independent restaurants survive this crisis, rebuild better, and thrive for the long term. Open for Good programs provide critical resources to help independent restaurants build the capacity to come back stronger, more equitable, more sustainable, and more resilient. Learn more at jamesbeard.org.