Food fight showdown: Controversial Jersey Shore eatery wins back lease despite outcry

The tension and disdain in the little room on Main Street was palpable, even before a single vote was taken.

On Wednesday night, officials again awarded the license for Loch Arbour’s snack bar to the company that was in charge for the last two summers, ensuring that the kosher eatery entangled in a long-running controversy would be open for business come spring.

The license was granted despite the objections of many residents and after officials said last fall they were unhappy with the company and intended to deny it another chance to run the eatery.

“It’s unconscionable,” resident Bob Wiener said of the new agreement, which permits the eatery to be closed on Saturdays in observation of the Sabbath. “We are not a religious community.”

No one at the meeting spoke in favor of bringing the operator back.

The eatery has been a source of acrimony in the village for nearly two years, ever since it morphed from a dinky food shack to a high-end kosher restaurant, drawing the ire of residents who opposed having a full-service eatery in front of their homes.

The license was granted Wednesday even as new controversies surfaced. The latest dispute centers on whether to spend up to $350,000 of taxpayer money for improvements to the snack bar. Opponents of the spending plan gathered enough signatures to force a special election on the issue in May. And in another move that illustrates the ongoing vitriol in town, two residents were removed from committee positions. Officials confirmed that the residents were removed because they spoke out publicly against the kosher restaurant and the spending plan.

“Of course it’s retribution,” said Melanie Nowlin, who lost her position as an alternate on the Deal Lake Commission. “Mayor (Saul) Tawil said very clearly to me, ‘You’re not playing along with us. You’re opposing us.”

THE NEW AGREEMENT

The fight over the eatery began simply enough.

Residents and beachgoers were shocked by the snack bar’s transformation in the summer of 2023, and the complaints piled up: The food was expensive, with $13 french fries and lots of entrees costing more than $20. It was not open on Saturdays. People could no longer bring in outside food or come inside to get out of the sun without buying anything. And the dinner hours — the first in the eatery’s history — brought unwelcome nighttime noise and traffic to the area.

Soon, larger issues erupted.

The operator’s lease was revoked in the fall of 2023 after an allegation of discrimination, sparking what became a drawn out and uneasy fight between two groups of residents — members of the local Syrian Sephardic Jewish community who supported the eatery and other residents who didn’t. The dispute led to an alleged intimidation campaign waged against the eatery’s critics and election fraud accusations that would rock the tiny Monmouth County oceanfront village.

READ THE SPECIAL REPORT: Food fight: The inside story of how $13 fries at the beach tore a tiny Jersey Shore town apart

This fall, for a moment, it seemed as if the two sides in the village could be aligning.

Officials, who previously supported the kosher restaurant operator, said they did not want it to return for the summer of 2025 because it had been “uncooperative” and because of “multiple and ongoing lease violations.” In December, they called for a new concessionaire to bid on the space.

The village received two bids, officials said. One was from the former operator, led by brothers Sal Smeke and Alberto Smeke. The other was from a company called Mouadeb RE, which public records show is not registered to do business in New Jersey. The Brooklyn-based company is owned by Eizac Movazeb, who works in the jewelry business and has no restaurant experience, according to his LinkedIn page.

Village officials said they had a video call with Movazeb about his bid on Jan. 10, and he visited the property the next week. But since that time, he ghosted the village, and all attempts to contact him went unanswered, officials said. Movazeb did not respond to requests for comment by NJ Advance Media.

That left Sal Smeke with no competition when the commissioners voted last Wednesday.

Smeke said at the meeting that he planned to be open three nights a week until 10 p.m. and remain closed on Saturdays.

“... Are we going to be allowed to (bring in food) or is that off limits?” asked Cindy Sharer of Ocean, who said she’s been coming to Loch Arbour’s beach since 1968.

“That’s off limits,” the mayor said.

“Are there going to be open hours on Saturday?” resident Catherine Cunniff asked.

“No,” Smeke said.

“So (what happens) for people who don’t keep kosher and Saturday is not a holy day, but we still go to the beach and we like to eat?” she asked.

Officials said they planned to have a food truck on Saturdays, something that failed previously because the trucks said they didn’t make enough money.

It’s “unconscionable” for the eatery to be closed on Saturdays, resident Bob Wiener said, noting that other beach communities with large Orthodox populations have managed to offer food on Saturdays.

Cunniff echoed Wiener’s comments.

“It is pretty unconscionable to have a fiefdom in the state of New Jersey that is going to operate under a religious observance,” she said, citing disputes over religion and beach access in Ocean Grove and questioning whether a restaurant that follows religious rules in a taxpayer-funded location would stand up under legal challenges.

“Right now we have no other bids,” Tawil said. “You have to do what’s good for the town.”

Smeke left after the public comment period, and the commissioners took a vote.

The kosher restaurant was unanimously awarded the three-year license with permission to close on Saturdays, to keep non-customers out of the building and to stay open three nights a week.

“(Smeke) didn’t stay to hear the vote,” one resident said with a sigh. “It was already a done deal.”

“Holy mackerel,” another resident said quietly.

The Smekes did not respond to telephone, email and text messages.

THE ‘RETRIBUTION’

Some residents said they saw the decision as a big loss, but they were not surprised.

The month before, a group of homeowners filed a petition saying they wanted voters to decide if the village should spend $350,000 on improvements to the snack bar, a measure previously approved by town officials. The group sees it as an attempt to use taxpayer money to benefit the kosher restaurant rather than to benefit the entire community.

“The plans are substantially similar to a restaurant renovation proposal submitted by the lessee over two years ago,” said Robert Fernicola, a resident who spearheaded the petition effort. “Residents are concerned that taxpayer money is being used for a restaurant that they don’t want in their town.”

“I hope for a fair election,” Fernicola said of the coming May 13 vote, for which the town has budgeted $15,000.

After homeowners flexed their civic muscles, the retribution started, several residents said.

Two residents who signed the petition — including one who was interviewed by NJ Advance Media for its first report on the snack bar — lost their longstanding positions on village committees in January.

Nowlin said the mayor called her with the news the night before the January meeting.

“He said, ‘Well you know, if you’re just going to fight us about everything all the time, you even came out against us in the paper,’” she said. “Of course it’s retribution. It was astounding. I said to him it was petty.”

The mayor confirmed his reasoning during the January meeting.

“They were not selected because they don’t trust this administration and if they don’t trust this administration, then we don’t trust them,” he said. “How can we put trust in people who don’t trust us?”

“The fact that you mentioned that you were eliminating these people on the idea of trust? It’s not a reason that makes sense,” resident Ed Lee said.

The deputy mayor’s brother was appointed to the position instead.

The second replacement — the sacking of a member of the village planning board who was valued because he works in construction — was even more controversial, residents said.

He was replaced by Deborah Shams, who lost a series of lawsuits and appeals against the planning board dating back to 2018. The village said Shams did construction at her home that was not approved by the planning board, and violations are still outstanding, officials said.

Wiener, chair of the planning board, objected to Sham’s appointment at Wednesday’s meeting, calling her someone who has “shown disrespect for the board.”

“I’d like to understand why, out of anyone in town, that it would be someone to be put on the board who already showed contempt for the laws that were put in place and the rules that were made,” he said.

The room broke out in applause, and the mayor said officials would “take it under advisement.”

Shams, who was not at the meeting, could not be reached by telephone and her attorney did not respond to voicemail or LinkedIn messages.

“It’s such a Trump-like kind of move,” Nowlin said of the committee reassignments. “If you don’t agree with them and you don’t go along with the program, you have no right to serve? If you don’t march in lockstep here and agree with everything they are doing, you don’t have a right to participate?”

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NJ Advance Media Research Editor Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on X at @KPMueller.