Legend has it that silent film star Rudolph Valentino was once a waiter at Marconi's, which served its customers such delicacies as "Sweetbreads Sarah Bernhardt" and "Lobster Cardinale" for 85 years. The restaurant, housed in a 19th-century rowhouse south of the Basilica of the Assumption at 106 W. Saratoga St., counted among its patrons H..L. Mencken, publisher Alfred A. Knopf, actor Walter Huston, opera diva Lily Pons, writers James M. Cain, Alexander Woollcott, Sinclair Lewis and Joseph Hergesheimer, composer Irving Berlin and bandleader Fred Waring. It closed in June 2005. (Barbara Haddock Taylor, The Baltimore Sun)