Atlantic City Dining: Two Very Different Stories in One City

A Big, Established Casino and Tourist Dining Scene

Atlantic City has operated casino gambling since a 1976 statewide referendum passed 56%-44%, and Resorts Atlantic City opened in May 1978 as the first legal casino in the eastern United States. Nine casinos currently operate in the city, generating $2.79 billion in gross gaming revenue in 2022 alone, a 9% increase over 2021. That scale of gaming activity comes with a correspondingly large hospitality and dining infrastructure built to serve conventions, day-trippers, and overnight guests along the 5.5-mile Atlantic City Boardwalk, recognized as the world's longest and busiest.

This page does not name specific restaurants, restaurant groups, or casino dining venues, because no specific current names were independently confirmed during this project's research pass. That gap is not a comment on quality -- a resort economy generating billions in annual gaming revenue almost certainly supports a wide range of dining options. It is simply an honest statement of what this project can and cannot confirm. Anyone planning a visit should check current listings directly with individual casino-resort properties or established travel and review sites.

A Real, Separate, and Current Grocery-Access Gap

Set apart from the casino dining scene is a documented and unresolved problem: as of 2024, Atlantic City had only one functioning supermarket-type store serving a city of nearly 40,000 residents, a Save-A-Lot in Renaissance Plaza, with the nearest full-service supermarket three miles away in neighboring Ventnor City. In 2022, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority ranked Atlantic City second among the state's food desert communities, behind only Camden.

This is a grocery and supermarket story, not a restaurant story, and the two should not be confused. A previously announced ShopRite project broke ground in October 2021 after Village Super Market received $18.7 million in public funding from the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, but that project ultimately failed to open. In October 2025, the city announced a new $20 million redevelopment deal for Renaissance Plaza, expanding the existing Save-A-Lot by 50% to 28,000 square feet, with completion targeted for the end of 2026. As of this writing, that project remains announced and in progress, not completed, and this page treats it that way rather than as a finished fact.

Why Both Things Are True at the Same Time

It can feel contradictory that a city hosting nine casinos and billions of dollars in annual gaming revenue would also rank second in the state for food-desert status, but both are real and independently documented. The casino and boardwalk corridor is built around a visitor and convention economy operating at a scale most small shore towns never approach. The grocery-access gap is a separate, year-round-resident-facing problem, tied to where people actually live and shop day to day, not to where visitors eat during a weekend trip. Treating these as one blended story would flatten a genuinely serious civic issue into a footnote on a tourism page, and this project chooses not to do that.

For a fuller picture of Atlantic City's boom-bust casino history and its ongoing economic story, see this project's other Atlantic City pages. This page's purpose is narrower: to describe honestly what is and is not confirmed about dining and food access, without inventing restaurant names and without minimizing the supermarket gap by folding it into a lighter dining narrative.

New Jersey's Own Tax Rules Apply Here

Atlantic City is this project's thirteenth New Jersey market, and New Jersey has its own real state sales tax and its own property-tax structure, genuinely different from Delaware's no-sales-tax system. Do not assume Delaware-style pricing carries over to an Atlantic City dinner check. Atlantic City's Tourism District has historically applied its own distinct local sales-tax treatment, but this page does not state a specific current rate, since none was independently confirmed this research pass. Current New Jersey state sales tax rates, and any Atlantic County or Atlantic City Tourism District-specific rules affecting dining or grocery purchases, should be confirmed directly with the State of New Jersey and Atlantic County.

What This Page Will Not Invent

No specific current Atlantic City restaurant, bar, or casino-dining-venue name was independently confirmed this research pass, and none is invented here. What is confirmed and stated above is the city's nine operating casinos and their 2022 gross gaming revenue of $2.79 billion, the 5.5-mile Atlantic City Boardwalk, and the separate, documented grocery-access gap: one functioning supermarket-type store as of 2024, a nearest full-service supermarket three miles away in Ventnor City, a failed prior ShopRite project, and an in-progress $20 million Renaissance Plaza redevelopment announced in October 2025 and targeted for completion by the end of 2026.

Before planning a meal or a grocery run in Atlantic City, check current listings directly through individual casino-resort properties, Atlantic County tourism resources, or established local review sites, since specific names, hours, and prices were not confirmed here.