‘People grew up here’: The life of New Jersey’s Black Horse Tavern and Pub

When the Black Horse opened 283 years ago, the Revolutionary War was still decades away, New Jersey was a colony ruled by the British, and the restaurant and inn was one of the first buildings erected in what would become the community known as Mendham.

Nearly three centuries later, plenty has changed. We know that the war for independence was successful, the British are long gone, and Mendham, located about 37 miles west of New York City, is filled with historic buildings and has become one of New Jersey’s most affluent areas. 

One thing hasn’t changed, though: The Black Horse Tavern and Pub is still dishing up food and slinging drinks, though more to local community members than the travelers who once frequented the space that’s believed to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant in New Jersey.

These days, the Black Horse is often the backdrop to some of life’s most joyous and difficult moments, said Kevin Felice, who started working at the Black Horse as a 23-year-old executive chef and is now the vice president of operations for the restaurant’s parent company, 40North Restaurant Group. There are the birthday and engagement parties and the gatherings after funerals; there are the celebrations to commemorate a child’s first home run or meals with parents and grandparents. 

“People grew up here; they grew up in these booths,” Felice said. “Their best moments, their worst moments have really been spent here in these walls, so there’s a lot of emotional connection here.”

Under the Black Horse’s wooden beams that once made up the tavern’s original floor at its founding in 1742, Felice described a restaurant that helped the town of Mendham to grow in its earliest days, that has welcomed people from near and far, and that continues to be part of the heart of the community. Located on what’s now called Main Street and was once a popular commuter road known as the King’s Highway, the tavern is flanked by other historic buildings, including the Phoenix House. Now the Mendham Borough Hall, the Phoenix House started as a women’s academy and became a tavern not long after the turn of the 19th century.

Ebenezer Byram, who’s credited as a “founding father” of Mendham, opened the Black Horse after moving with his wife and eight children from what is now Massachusetts to New Jersey’s rural landscape. With their farmhouse located on a road popular among travelers, he started welcoming those in need of a bed and food to his home. Byram then went on to make the space a tavern and inn and called it the Black Horse.

Over the course of nearly three centuries, the Black Horse has accumulated a trove of guests, stories and lore. George Washington, whose headquarters was located in nearby Morristown, is said to have dined or slept at the Black Horse, though Felice has some doubts about the latter, considering how close the tavern was to Washington’s New Jersey residence. 

“We know more about the most recent kind of stuff,” Felice said. “Whitney Houston was a great guest here for a long time. Her and Bobby Brown, I guess they had a house in town, and I guess there was a recording studio in the house.

“They would have their whole team in for recording and come here and buy a bunch of lobsters and hang out,” Felice continued. 

Those who count Byram as their ancestor also frequent the establishment, Felice said. 

“There’s a lot of descendants of the original owners that will come in and out and give us pieces of [the restaurant’s history] as well,” he said. “You’ll get every once in a while a visitor that is a fifth-level relative or whatever. It’s quite interesting.” 

The restaurant has always drawn a lively crowd, though these days it appears to be a bit less combative than it once was. In 1882, S.B. Axtell described a raucous scene at the Black Horse. 

“The old Black Horse tavern on election and training days was full of life,” Axtell wrote in his account of Mendham’s history. “Once a noisy, brawling fellow became a public nuisance and the landlord abated him by knocking him down with the dinner-bell. The boys took him out to the pump to wash off the blood, and bind up an ugly scalp wound. He said he did not so much mind being knocked down, but he hated ‘to be dingle-dongled over.’”

In more recent years, there have been big changes at the Black Horse. Brothers and Mendham residents Anthony and Biagio Scotto, the owners of 40North Restaurant Group, in 2007 purchased the Black Horse from Anthony Knapp, who had owned the restaurant for about 40 years.

“The Knapp family’s tenure as owner of the Black Horse is probably most memorable for long-time Mendham residents,” podcasters Ryan Ross and Katie Feather wrote in a 2024 post about the Black Horse. “Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s the Black Horse was the site of the most elegant dining you could find in New Jersey.” The Black Horse was previously split into a more formal restaurant and a laid-back pub, which was located in the old barn where travelers would keep their horses while eating and sleeping at the next-door tavern and inn.

In January 2025, the Black Horse reopened after being closed for about a year for extensive renovations. Currently, the restaurant operates out of the old barn building. While the Black Horse was undergoing renovations, there was a fire at the building that once housed the upscale restaurant and the old tavern and inn. Felice said the owners are now working with borough officials to figure out the next steps for that building. 

“It’s 300 years old, so it needed some love,” Felice said of the renovation.

“Truly, it’s not just a restaurant that people — it’s really meaningful to them — which is why we put all this time and money and effort into [the renovations],” Felice continued. “We want it to be here for another couple hundred years.”