A new lounge takes you back to Atlantic City’s 1980s ‘glory’ days

“Everybody has their what-if,” reads the menu at Angeloni’s Club Madrid, a hip, retro bar-lounge that opened a few weeks ago in Atlantic City’s Ducktown neighborhood. “What if President Kennedy hadn’t gone to Dallas? What if Whitney never met Bobby? What if the Club Madrid didn’t die in 1981?”

Club Madrid, a watering hole founded in Center City Philadelphia in the 1920s, moved to Atlantic City in 1927 after one too many police raids and later settled into the current building at Georgia and Arctic Avenues.

Club Madrid “died” in 1981 when Albert Angeloni and his son Alan bought the place from longtime operator Tony Parisi. They renamed their Italian bar-restaurant Angeloni’s II, after the original in the Trenton area; they later bought the shady pool hall next door to expand the dining room.

Alan Angeloni retired last year and sold the restaurant to Julie Aspell, who owns the nearby retro gem Tony’s Baltimore Grill. “We planned to just do some retouching and give it another go as it used to be,” said Julia Vain, who oversees the restaurants’ day-to-day operations. “But when we started doing our deep dive, we found out there was so much more history than we even could have imagined with this place.”

What if the Angelonis had kept Club Madrid going after they bought it?

Ergo, the spirit of Club Madrid lives again, a mixture of old-time South Philly and Ducktown. Vain, with designers Kate Rohrer and Annie Serroka of Philadelphia’s Rohe Creative, took the look and feel back to the crushed-velvet 1980s. You sweep inside through a heavy curtain. There’s a restored ‘80s Marantz receiver in an étagère behind the bar. The TV is a Sony Trinitron that plays ‘80s Atlantic City newsreels and commercials from the casinos when they first opened.

Security-camera globes from a casino form part of the lounge’s ceiling. A chandelier that reportedly hung in the South Philly home of mob boss Angelo Bruno hangs in one corner. You can sit at mob boss Nicky Scarfo’s dinner table. A monogrammed car phone belonging to onetime Atlantic City political boss John Schultz is perched on a table. There’s a plastic slip-covered couch, too. “If that doesn’t make you feel like you’re at your grandmother’s house, nothing will,” Aspell said.

Crowds get spirited as the evenings wear on.

Vain’s cocktail list is studded with references to the old days: The Tony Parisi is a gin cocktail. A drink mixing amaro and Cutty Sark is called 26 N. Georgia Ave., Scarfo’s Atlantic City address. Bubbles, wines, and beers fill out the list.

Food — and you can order the entire dinner menu for $399 — is straight-ahead Italian, off a typed sheet encased in a plastic jacket: House-extruded pastas include lumache with pistachio pesto and orecchiette with crab, shrimp, and basil. There’s a wedge salad with sub ingredients from White House Sub Shop down the street. There’s eggplant Milanese and chicken Parm. Among the snacks, they serve focaccia from nearby A. Rando bakery with dip, and spicy garlic cheese spread with fried bread. Cookies on the dessert menu come from Formica bakery down the street.

From 4 to 6 p.m. Friday to Monday, the bar offers a comped aperitivo with the purchase of every cocktail, and brunch is coming in August.

Angeloni’s Club Madrid, 2400 Arctic Ave., Atlantic City. Hours: 4 p.m. to midnight Thursday, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and 4 p.m. to midnight Sunday and Monday.