The Clam Bar, the popular Jersey Shore bay restaurant known as Smitty’s, will return in 2023

The Clam Bar in Somers Point, N.J., will be around for its 50th anniversary next summer, after all.

The future of the casual seafood shack known as Smitty’s has been in jeopardy since 2021, when the property owner — a trust representing the family of founders Bill and Claudia Smith — put the marina on the market.

The trust allowed Clam Bar partners Patrice Popovic, Angelo DeRosa, and Todd Simpson to operate in 2022. Crowds have seemed extra thick this year, packing the weathered bayside landmark well before its 4 p.m. opening times to secure their spots. The 2022 season will end on Labor Day.

The deal to operate in 2023 was struck only Wednesday afternoon, said Popovic, who started at the Clam Bar in 1974 during her summer off from Pennsylvania State University. She met and fell in love with owner Peter Popovic, who had taken over the year before with friend Denis Dixon, who has since died.

In Smitty’s earlier summers, it was open 24 hours a day, driven by New Jersey’s 18-year-old drinking age and the absence of casinos in nearby Atlantic City.

It morphed into a family spot with bar seating and indoors tables and a menu that spans seafood styles from familiar fried flounder platters and baked scallops to more specialty preparations including halibut puttanesca and baked tuna in a garlic, ginger, and soy sauce. Customers routinely buy extra quarts of the chowder to freeze and portion out gingerly over the winter.

Popovic said the property’s $6 million price tag, which includes 136 boat slips, a boat ramp, and 75 storage spaces, is too steep for her and partners to acquire.