The inside story of how $13 fries at the beach tore a tiny Jersey Shore town apart

On a warm and windy night in July 2023, more than 200 people descended on Loch Arbour, a well-to-do Jersey Shore enclave famed for its sandy beach and multimillion-dollar homes, for a village meeting.

They were furious about a snack bar.

The gathering was so large it didn’t fit in the municipal building, forcing everyone to convene on the beach. And under a darkening summer sky, the village was reduced to vitriol, shouting and increasingly troubling accusations.

At first, the complaints were about the food.

“My grandchildren will not be buying the costly french fries,” a resident complained. “I’m not giving each of them 40 bucks for lunch.”

Then several people said the eatery wasn’t welcoming.

“(The snack bar) was supposed to be set up for everyone but it doesn’t feel that it was…” said one attendee. “That’s how we all feel.” Defenders of the eatery howled in outrage, shouting that the speaker, in fact, was not speaking for everyone.

On and on it went, until a mic drop moment: One would-be customer claimed the restaurant refused to seat her.

And there it was, out in the open. This outrage wasn’t about french fries at all.

Was a group of Syrian Sephardic Jewish businesspeople and homeowners discriminating against people who were not part of their religious community? Or was that summer’s makeover of the snack bar being greeted with undercurrents of xenophobia and antisemitism?

For certain, the two groups of millionaire homeowners wanted very different futures for the idyllic hamlet, and neither side was going to give up easily.

“The village was about friendship, just camaraderie. Everyone knew each other, everyone said hello to everyone,” said Dianne Williams, who has owned a home in Loch Arbour for 60 years and is Jewish. She said life in the once-peaceful village changed when the snack bar did.

For the last 18 months, the two groups have waged a knock-down, drag-out fight over the beach’s only business, the dinky little food shack that’s way smaller than the average Wawa. It’s a fight that’s been building for years, residents say. Now neighbors are spying on neighbors, lawsuits have been filed and nasty accusations have taken down a mayor. And it’s still unfolding.

After its lease changed hands in spring 2023, the snack bar — formerly known for beachside fried fare and ice cream — was transformed into a high-end kosher restaurant.

Gone were the burgers and hot dogs. Instead, quinoa tabbouleh salad and grilled yellowfin tuna steak filled the menu.

Or for $13, you could buy crispy shoestring french fries tossed in fresh garlic, herbs and Parmesan cheese. And you could wash them down with an $8 Italian Frozen Cappuccino.

The kitchen was closed on Saturdays, typically one of the busiest beach days of the week, but for those who keep Shabbat, or the Sabbath, it’s a day when no business can be conducted. On other days, beachgoers were no longer allowed to come inside to get out of the sun without ordering anything, beachgoers said. Anyone who brought in their own cooler was ushered out the door, they said.

Those sweeping changes and the whiff of exclusion got people off their couches and turned them into activists, and in short order, the sides were drawn.

On one side, residents insist a group of homeowners is running roughshod over the longstanding traditions of their community to favor one group over another.

“This is a private takeover of a public space supported by local residents’ tax dollars,” said Dianne Williams’ son Jeff, who grew up in the village. “It is inappropriate for any town to condone the conversion of public property in this way for private commercial advantage.”

On the other side, the snack bar’s operators and the extended Syrian community — historically resistant to speaking with the media — argue they only want parity.

“I keep kosher. I don’t think it’s discrimination,” said one homeowner at a public meeting. “To say it’s discrimination? I couldn’t eat there for 20 years.”

The snack bar fight has become a flash point for long-simmering undercurrents in the village. It is the culmination of a culture clash between homeowners who live there year-round and a community of Syrian homeowners who some residents say spend only summers there.

Similar controversies are playing out in other towns in the Jersey Shore region, including Lakewood, Jackson and Howell, and taking place against an increasingly fraught global backdrop where antisemitic bias incidents are on the rise and arguments surrounding the Israeli-Hamas war have riven communities and college campuses.

The fallout in Loch Arbour brought forth allegations of voter fraud in a local election that some residents are convinced was essentially an organized coup. It led to a lawsuit by one group of homeowners against their neighbors and a five-month long investigation by the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office that “concluded without the recovery of evidence of criminal activity or the filing of criminal charges” in late October.

And then there’s the alleged intimidation and pressure campaign, with “thinly veiled threats” to publicly label opponents of the revamped snack bar as antisemitic.

It was about so much more than $13 french fries.

‘DISTURBING — AND INTOLERABLE’

The uneasy intersection of religion and politics — the blurring of the lines between church and state — has become a hot button issue in recent years as legal fights over biblical mandates in the classroom and prayer on the football field have landed in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Those feuds have splintered towns, churches and school communities as each side remains wed to its position, unwilling to budge, no matter the cost, indicative of these divided times.

Rarely, if ever, has such a fierce dispute involving nasty recriminations and lawsuits played out over a nondescript little beachfront shack.

From the outside, Loch Arbour, a mere 0.13 square miles of prime oceanfront real estate just north of Asbury Park, looks like the kind of place that would be insulated from that level of strife.

But after that fiery meeting on the beach two summers ago, it was clear a new era had begun.

Faced with the discrimination claim, the commissioners quietly hired an independent investigator.

Loch Arbour denied a public records request to see the investigator’s report. But an Oct. 4, 2023 letter from the village’s then-attorney to the operators stated clearly that the “snack bar employees engaged in discrimination.”

“The results are most disturbing — and intolerable,” the village’s attorney said of the investigator’s report.

MORE: Read the letter.

The letter said the investigator, a Hispanic male, was told by a snack bar employee that he couldn’t sit inside with his cooler of food because it is a “kosher establishment” and his food was not kosher.

Later that day, the investigator, who asked for a menu, was told he would have to eat outside because there was no inside seating available, the letter said.

“Not only were the two couples in line behind the investigator admitted into the Snack Bar and seated, but the investigator, as he ate outside, observed a number of empty tables inside the Snack Bar,” the letter said, adding that the patrons “appeared to the investigator to be Jewish (based on their clothing and accessories).”

In addition to the alleged discrimination, the eatery violated several other lease provisions including not opening on Saturdays, doing work without permits and serving hard liquor without a license, the letter said.

The lease was officially terminated with the October 2023 letter.

Some homeowners were relieved, thinking it was all said and done. Others saw it as a call to action.

CALLING ALL VOTERS?

The text messages frantically started bouncing between Loch Arbour and New York in the fall of 2023 and winter of 2024.

Supporters of the newly upscale eatery were mobilizing, spreading the word of a clandestine mission and rallying people to register to vote, according to several people who saw the texts.

It seemed to work. By April 21, 2024, there were 271 people registered to vote in the village. It was an extraordinary number given that the year before, there were only 144 people registered. The voter rolls nearly doubled in less than a year, and there were now more registered voters than the total population of 222, which included those under age 18.

A group of residents said they knew why.

“The numbers and dates speak for themselves,” one resident said. “(The voter registration surge) was inspired by the whole snack bar issue.”

The group insisted many of the new voters were vacation homeowners and did not live there full-time, and therefore, were ineligible to vote.

Nearly 40% of the homes in the village were not occupied full-time, according to the 2020 Census. Ninety-four of Loch Arbour’s 154 housing units were “occupied” and the other 60 units were considered “vacant,” which is defined as “no one is living in it at the time of the interview” or “one which is entirely occupied by persons who have a usual residence elsewhere.”

Indeed, voter eligibility is tied to your so-called domicile, which is defined as your fixed, permanent and principal home. It’s the address of record on your bank accounts, your tax return and your driver’s license. If you own more than one home, only one can be claimed as your domicile, election experts said. To vote there, state law requires people to be residents of the state and of the county for at least 30 days, said Christopher Siciliano, the Monmouth County Superintendent of Elections.

Had a throng of people who were traditionally summer-only residents pulled up stakes to become full-time residents of the village? All at the same time?

So deep was the distrust in the community that residents who doubted the new voters embarked on a covert plan to expose what they believed was a voter fraud scheme to take over the local government.

Overnight, residents became amateur spies. The senior citizen walked their dog, trying not to draw any attention. A bicyclist nodded to a neighbor, and a driver took the long way around the village to get home.

They were among the people who set up watch to see what driveways were empty and how many cars with New York license plates sat in front of homes. They peered across streets to see if lights were on, if curtains were drawn, if deliveries were made and if anyone, ever, opened the door.

Then there were seemingly innocent conversations that raised suspicions even more.

Melanie Nowlin, who has lived in Loch Arbour for 28 years, described a conversation she had with a woman when she went to pay her property taxes at town hall.

“I had never seen her before and I said, ‘Do you live in town?’ She said, ‘No, no, I live in New York. I’m here in the summer,’” recounted Nowlin, who added they introduced themselves to each other. “She was one of the people who voted,” said Nowlin, who said she has reviewed the voter rolls.

Where did the new voters actually live? Where were their permanent homes?

The drumbeat grew louder.

THE ELECTION

“Vote Legal” signs popped up on lawns and street corners throughout the village last spring.

Nowlin was one of the people tasked with putting the signs in public spaces next to the curbs.

Almost immediately, she said, she encountered resistance. David Dweck, a full-time Loch Arbour resident who some have called a leader in the local Syrian community, insisted she couldn’t put the signs there, she said.

“Of course I can. It’s a public space,” she said she told him. Nowlin said Dweck followed her to a second street corner. “He said, ‘I’m filming this and I’m going to call police.’ I told him, ‘Go ahead, call anyone. Call your mother. I don’t care,’” she said.

When the police arrived, they said the signs were legal because they were on public property, she said.

Dweck did not respond to texts about the sign incident and he declined to be interviewed at public meetings.

People passed the “Vote Legal” signs on their way to the April 2024 public meeting, when supporters of the shuttered restaurant clashed with then-mayor Paul Fernicola.

One supporter of the restaurant warned that switching back to a non-kosher eatery could be considered discrimination. Another accused officials of trying to shut down the eatery because of their “personal agenda.”

Some residents said more “thinly veiled threats” followed, specifically to label the mayor as antisemitic.

The mayor felt the pressure building, and the fear of being labeled was so intense that he made a momentous decision just two weeks before the May 14 election: He dropped out of the race. Residents said they were stunned.

He said his reputation had been threatened with a “smear campaign” and “outright fabrications.” And he went further.

“I have come to this difficult decision due to the ongoing harassment that myself and my family have endured over the past several months,” the mayor’s April 30 letter to residents said.

Meanwhile, county election officials were eyeing the new voter registrations.

Before Election Day, 82 of the new voters received so-called challenge letters from election officials. The letters told voters they needed to confirm their eligibility before they could cast a vote, said Siciliano, the county elections superintendent.

Some responded. Some ignored the requests.

Twenty people confirmed their eligibility before Election Day, as did 17 others on the day of the vote. Seven others were denied, and the rest did not respond so their status was unresolved, Siciliano said.

When the ballots were cast and the votes were counted, Loch Arbour elected three new commissioners in a decisive landslide with double the typical turnout. Jacob Hedaya, Jason Elo and Saul Tawil, all members of the Syrian community, were elected.

Hedaya received 114 votes, Elo received 113 votes and Tawil, as a write-in candidate, received 104 votes. Fernicola, who was still on the ballot despite dropping out, received 69 votes.

In the previous election, the winning three candidates received 52, 51 and 50 votes respectively.

It was a blowout. But there would also be blowback.

NEW ALLEGATIONS, NEW PUSHBACK

The beach season began in Loch Arbour in May under a cloud of controversy.

In a highly unusual move, two days after the May 14 election, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office announced it was opening an investigation into “allegations that certain individuals may have improperly registered to vote and/or voted in a previous election in Monmouth County.” Several current and former law enforcement officials confirmed Loch Arbour was part of the investigation.

The prosecutor’s office dropped the probe after five months “without the recovery of evidence of criminal activity or the filing of criminal charges,” a spokesman said in late October.

But if local elections officials hadn’t intervened, the investigation might have had a different outcome, said Siciliano, the elections official. He said the challenge letters weeded out people who could not or did not prove Loch Arbour was their primary domicile. If they hadn’t, there could have been trouble.

“Some people might have been charged with fraudulently voting. They might have broken a few of these laws,” he said. “If we had let them vote, there would have been fraud, whether they knew it or not.”

But that investigation was still underway when the new Loch Arbour Board of Commissioners was sworn in at the June 5 public meeting.

Most of the “Vote Legal” signs were removed from the village by then, but feelings among some residents remained raw.

The meeting didn’t make it any better. In one of its first official actions, the new administration voted to reinstate the snack bar lease.

And just like that, the kosher restaurant was back in business.

A group of 22 homeowners did the only thing they said they thought they could do. They filed a lawsuit alleging that 71 homeowners, ineligible to vote because Loch Arbour was not their primary residence, had changed the outcome of the election. The suit also alleged Tawil, the new mayor, was ineligible to run for office because he hadn’t been a Loch Arbour resident for the required year before the election.

The pushback was swift.

Residents said they were targets of a pressure and intimidation campaign designed to get them to drop the suit.

Dianne Williams, the only homeowner who still had a “Vote Legal” sign on her front lawn, said she was targeted at a social event at a nearby Jewish community center that she’s visited regularly since her husband of 68 years, her high school sweetheart, died in October 2022.

The rabbi said that Syrian Jewish leaders wanted to have a meeting with her about the snack bar and the former mayor’s interactions with the Jewish community in the village, she said she was told on July 1.

She said she was taken aback because she’d never had a bad experience with the former mayor, so she didn’t immediately answer the rabbi. When she left him a message the next day, he never returned her call, she said, adding she doesn’t blame the rabbi but instead faults the people she believes instructed him to talk to her.

The rabbi did not respond to inquiries by NJ Advance Media about the incident.

“How could they think they could use (the rabbi) as an intermediary?” she asked. “It was wrong. It definitely should not have happened. They should not mix religion and politics.”

Other threats came in the courtroom during a three-hour hearing on July 10, several residents said. The commissioners’ attorney suggested his clients were considering lawsuits of their own against each of the residents who brought the suit.

“We were threatened that they would sue us individually,” said Marcella Crisci, a 46-year Loch Arbour resident who was part of the suit.

“I thought it was a bullying tactic,” said Nowlin, who was also part of the suit.

The residents decided to drop the lawsuit.

For weeks, Jeff Williams said, members of the Syrian community had been demanding his mother remove her “Vote Legal” sign, but she refused.

Two days after the suit was dropped, someone walked onto her property and removed the sign from the front garden.

‘I WANT THE SNACK BAR’

The eatery reopened for the summer of 2024 without much change and with tensions still high.

The kitchen was still closed on Saturdays. There were a couple of hot dogs on a grill for a few of the Saturdays, but mostly, only chips, candy, ice cream and beverages were offered.

The rest of the week, though, the restaurant was in full swing with a new menu.

Prices weren’t cheap, but the cost of french fries went down to $10. And a children’s menu was added, offering grilled cheese for $8 and mac and cheese for $12.

“It’s not right,” said a couple that was eating their home-brought food, including shrimp, brie, pepperoni and mixed nuts, on a cooler they used as an oceanside table.

“It smacks of exclusivity, that’s the bottom line, and I’m not into that,” said the man, who added he’s been coming to the beach there for 40 years. “There is an attitude that comes from the (Syrian) community that it’s anti-everything else. How do you fight that, or oppose that, without being thought of as antisemitic?”

Tawil, the new mayor, declined to be interviewed, but said in an email through a spokesman that beachgoers “voiced approval of the existing services,” adding that the food truck they tried didn’t return because there wasn’t enough business.

Tawil also said he takes the discrimination claims “incredibly seriously.” But rather than discuss details, he made a statement some residents called gaslighting.

“With the experience of 2023 behind us, we have improved the menu, hours and options,” he said. “We intend to continue upgrading to ensure that everyone can enjoy Loch Arbour Beach Club.”

Residents and beachgoers called it all bunk at the August public meeting.

“Unless you’re living on soda and ice cream on a Saturday, that’s all you can get,” one beachgoer said.

Another visitor said they were denied entry with food they bought elsewhere because it wasn’t kosher.

“This is just people trying to take over. I’m not here to bitch because they’re Jewish,” said Cindy Sharer, who said she’s been coming to Loch Arbour for decades. “I’m here to bitch because I want the snack bar.”

The village attorney acknowledged a list of ongoing lease violations and said the operators were not welcome back for the 2025 summer season.

But the leaseholders forged forward.

In a late August interview, Alberto Smeke said his organization was negotiating with village officials and it would indeed be back next summer.

Smeke declined to discuss some of the alleged lease violations, but he discounted the discrimination claims, calling the eatery a “place of inclusiveness.”

“If something transpired to reflect otherwise, it was a young kid then, and they communicated something we don’t stand for.”

“We are not egocentric and do only what we want. We want what the town wants and that’s why we’re doing it,” Smeke said. “We’re in a world of so much animosity and hate, all we want is to create a place of peace and harmony.”

THE FUTURE?

The snack bar, closed for the off-season, looks desolate in the winter months.

Its future is still uncertain. And it’s still the main source of conflict in the town.

For nearly two tense hours at both the November and December village meetings, homeowners argued against two new ordinances: a $350,000 bond that would pay for improvements to the eatery and a new lease for the snack bar that homeowners said would give bidders free reign to propose any kind of eatery, beachgoer preferences be damned.

Those residents said the bond proposal — the first in the village, which boasts the lowest property tax rate in the state, since Superstorm Sandy — would be wholly unnecessary if officials would bring back the beloved snack bar of old. What’s more, several residents accused the commissioners of trying to use public space and taxpayer money, through the bond, to give the kosher operators exactly what they wanted.

None of the speakers expressed support for the proposals.

Althea Michals, a high school senior who lives in New York City and whose family also owns a home steps away from the beach, skipped school to make it on time to her first-ever public meeting. She said she grew up at the beach and was a frequent customer of the snack bar before the changes, “rolling off the beach with sand and no shoes on and I’ve always felt welcome. Now I don’t feel that way.”

Michals said she has celiac disease, but she wouldn’t expect the eatery to be all gluten-free “because I know it’s not accommodating everyone.”

But after listening to the back-and-forth at the meeting, she asked why she had bothered to come.

“Now after sitting here, I realize that it doesn’t matter what I say here,” she said.

The homeowners who oppose a more formal restaurant insist the new commissioners are only pretending to listen to their concerns. They also pointed to the results of a survey that was sent by the village to homeowners and all season beach tag holders about the beach eatery.

There were two preference boxes to check: “kosher” or “non-kosher.”

More than 80% of respondents said “non-kosher,” and a majority added comments saying they simply wanted back the old snack bar’s cheap food and welcoming vibe. Only 7% of respondents selected “kosher.”

Despite the results — which the mayor initially claimed he hadn’t reviewed but which NJ Advance Media received as part of a public records request — officials moved ahead with new lease and bond plans.

Further antagonizing some residents, the village attorney noted that no one, including the kosher operators who officials agreed had violated the previous lease, would be barred from bidding on the contract.

Without making any changes based on resident feedback, the village put the new lease out for bid. The bidding period ends on Dec. 20.

NJ Advance Media made multiple attempts to reach members of the Syrian community.

Only resident David Dweck responded by a text message. He asked that his reply be published in full.

Asked about the snack bar, he said:

“I think it’s pretty simple. As the landscape changes, people’s eating habits change, we should let the market speak. The previous snack bar operators saw their revenue dwindle as the demand for heavy meat and fried foods at the beach has declined as people are becoming more health conscious. That’s evidently why they didn’t rebid at the last (public bid),” he wrote.

The former operator declined to be interviewed when contacted by NJ Advance Media.

Dweck continued: “Many of us work hard all winter long at the gym to get beach body ready. I think people are looking for healthier options, faster service and clean living. I have been going to VLA (Village of Loch Arbour) beach since I am a kid. I can’t remember seeing the snack bar busier then (sic) this past summer. Hopefully, that means more revenue for the snack bar operator, more jobs and more revenue for VLA.”

Asked if he believed that residents who complained about the eatery’s expensive menu and snacks-only Saturdays were wrong, he said:

“There is always room for improvement and the snack bar operator should listen to constructive customer feedback.”

He did not respond to subsequent questions.