It might not be the most intuitive place to open a restaurant, but the Inquirer headed over the bridge and to a bar/restaurant on the Camden waterfront. The new Victor's Pub opened just a month ago. Located in the Victor Luxury Lofts building, the pub is now drawing steady business from Victor residents, Rutgers Camden students and faculty, police officers, judges and lawyers. The pub's owners were surprised by their early success:
Sarin and Romano, owners of Sam's Bar & Grille in Blackwood, took the plunge, knowing a lot of people would be watching their experiment."You've got to get the fear of the word Camden out of people's minds," Sarin said.
The pub isn't the only restaurant downtown, but at quitting time, the professionals go home and the healthy number of lunch spots go dark. There have been other trailblazers, such as the 20 Horse Tavern in the port district, which brought white-tablecloth dining and a dinner menu back to Camden.
But the Victor's Pub might be the most important restaurant in the city right now. It's the type of place boosters have always said the waterfront needed - a keystone to the development envisioned there.
Think Baltimore's Inner Harbor or Hoboken's waterfront. Imagine nightclubs and bistros and upscale shopping, a promenade filled with pedestrians strolling the Delaware's edge.
At night. In Camden. America's twice-designated "most dangerous city."
Camden pub helping riverfront development [Inquirer]
The Victor's Pub [Official Site]
