By Joseph Sapia
HIGHLANDS – Instead of being born into the business, the Inlet Café was more or less born to Robin and Doug Lentz.
“We didn’t choose this business,” Doug said. “It chose us.”
They were young children when their parents opened what was then a clam house on the Cornwall Street waterfront, where the Shrewsbury River dumps into Sandy Hook Bay. “They got famous for their steamers,” Doug said. “Back in the day, they used to just throw them up on the dock,” Robin said.”
Now, owner-operators Robin, 56, and Doug, 54, are throwing a 50th anniversary party for the Inlet Café, now a seasonal tavern-restaurant. The party is Sunday, June 5, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., with a complimentary cookout, specials, children’s activities and Big Boss Sausage providing music.
When Millie and Leslie Lentz started the business in 1966, it was a tavern with a small clam bar and four outside tables and was called the Lobster Pot. The name was changed almost immediately to the Inlet Café because there was talk of building in inlet in the area. The inlet never happened, but the name remained.
Their mother, Millie, came up with the idea for eat-all-you-can eat dining, Doug said.
“Very casual outdoor dining,” said Doug, who lives in Highlands.
“I started working here in fifth grade, waiting on tables,” said Robin, who lives in Middletown.
Doug started in the kitchen. He has hosted, bartended and cooked.
And the Inlet Café remains, but now a full service, full menu tavern-restaurant seating about 150 inside and outside.
“Our parents were old school,” Robin said. “We like to go with the trends. Our parents didn’t like to change.”
“It’s more like the old-style work ethic remained the same,” Doug said.
The Lentz siblings took over in 2001, when their mother, who had been divorced from her husband soon after opening the restaurant, retired.
Doug said he and his sister “had gone separate paths.” He had worked in construction, along with operating a Long Branch luncheonette and Sea Bright’s Waterfront Café.
“I was just working in various restaurants,” Robin said.
John and Barbara Loftus and Barbara’s sister, Renee Geary, all of the Highlands, were lunching at the Inlet Café on a recent day. They have been customers for years – and their kids worked at the tavern-restaurant.
“If I come for dinner, I get the catch of the day or flounder,” said John Loftus, 81
“The seafood’s delicious,” Geary said. “And the lobster salad sandwich, ooooh. And the fish and chips.”
“I get everything,” said Barbara Loftus, 79. “I remember the days when we just came here for steamers.” They normally sit outside on nice days, as they were on this day.
Robin and Doug sat down with a reporter to tell the Inlet Café. But they were still busy at the table – Robin, for example, checking on things as she sat.
“I think that’s why we lasted – hands on,” Robin said. “That’s the secret, you’ve got to be here every minute.”
Doug had just finished being up on a ladder, working on hanging an awning.
“They call me the king of ADD,” Doug said. “I do all the maintenance. I literally re-built the place after Sandy.”
Superstorm Sandy hit in October 2012, leaving the Inlet Café under 5-1/2 feet of water, windows blown out, dock debris washed up. But the Lentzes had the Inlet Café open for Mother’s Day 2013, meaning they re-opened for the season only about 2-months-late.
Sandy was the second major setback for the Inlet Café. In 1975, it was destroyed in a fire that spread from a neighboring hotel, now the site of the Inlet Café’s parking lot.
The fire put the Inlet Café out of business for a year or so. But it brought the expansion of the facility, too.
Is there a job in the restaurant that Doug and Robin cannot do?
Robin laughed, “No!”
Boats can pull up to “dock and dine,” Doug said. There are views of Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook Bay, Manhattan and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Inlet Café worker families are multi-generational, too.
Gigi DeMars, 50, is a server-manager and Edie Moskowitz, 40, waits tables. Their children have worked at the Inlet Café. “This is like home,” said DeMars, who has worked at the Inlet Café 15 years. “It’s a great place to work” – get a tan, get a workout, have good customers and get good money. “I’ve raised three kids doing this job.”
Both DeMars and Moskowitz praised the Lentzes.
“I work with a great team, we read each other’s minds, get along,” said Moskowitz, who has been at the Inlet Café nine years. “It’s an easygoing atmosphere.”
There may be a next-generation taking over. Robin’s daughter, Sarra, 18, has worked at the Inlet Café. Doug has younger daughters – Danielle, 14, and Dylan, 13.
“A lot of people have a lot of memories, ‘We got engaged here, we got married here,’” Doug said.
“I guess you can say we’ve created a lot of memories,” Robin said.
“The food’s good here, the atmosphere,” said DeMars’ daughter, Jackie, 32, who is a server, bartender and manager and, as with her mother, is at the tavern-restaurant 15 years. “I’ve been here a long time, it’s just wonderful here.”
The Inlet Café is at 3 Cornwall St. on the water, Highlands; 732-872-9764; inletcafe.com. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. from about St. Patrick’s Day to Thanksgiving.
This article was originally published in the June 2-9, 2016 edition of the Two River Times newspaper.
