The Jersey Clam Shack That Taught Me Everything About Great Restaurants

IT’S AN HOUR TOO LATE FOR LUNCH, too early for dinner and too warm out for me to crave New England’s signature cream-based clam chowder. But I don’t care. My dad and I pull into the broken clam shell—covered parking lot of Smitty’s (legally listed as The Clam Bar, but we’ve never called it that) on the water in Somers Point, a town sandwiched inland between Absecon Island and Ocean City, down the Shore. We wait a few minutes, beer-filled cooler by my feet, for two seats to open at the familiar blue bar that wraps around a corner of the building’s exterior. We grab our stools and start our well-rehearsed routine, placing an order for each of our four courses from a waiter wearing a T-shirt with the house’s salty catch phrase: “You Can’t Lick Our Clams.”

First up, a dozen top-neck clams shucked to order. Next, a bowl of that chowder. Then a fried oyster plate, if I have my way, or an oyster po’ boy if dad has his. Finally, a slice of Key lime pie—”two forks, please.” I can smell the docks, suntan lotion and, above it all, the clams.

This is summer incarnate. It’s the memory (and the photos on my phone) that I reach for in the dead of winter. But, it’s not one specific memory. It is the same memory from years of dining here. The meal, the staff, the feeling I leave with never changes. Eating at Smitty’s is like living Groundhog Day, year after year. This is a great restaurant.

In the decade that I’ve been a food writer, one of the most frequently asked questions of my professional life has been: What makes a truly excellent restaurant? To me, universal rules apply, whether I’m drinking a can of beer I plucked from a fridge nearby or a glass of wine poured by a certified sommelier. The food is exceptionally fresh, the staff are warm and welcoming, no matter how slammed they are, and the experience is consistent— arguably the hardest thing to achieve in a restaurant. I learned those rules at Smitty’s blue counter.

In 1974, Patrice Popovic (née Viola) arrived at Smitty’s to work as a server during a summer off from college. The restaurant was only a year old, opened by Peter Popovic, Patrice’s now-husband, and his friend Denis Dixon, who has since died. At the time, Smitty’s shared the building with a bait shop and a boat engine repair workshop. The drinking age in New Jersey was 18, and the restaurant stayed open 24 hours a day on the weekends, with those in the local bar industry stopping by after their shifts for fried clams, steamers, hoagies and chowder.

When the drinking age was bumped up to 21, the trio switched to a family restaurant format. “It took a while to get people to try any of our dinners,” Popovic says. “I would just give them away.” The menu transitioned from hoagies to seafood plates like fish or scallops prepared five ways (diner’s choice).

Eventually, dinner business picked up. I’ve never been to Smitty’s on a day when it wasn’t busy and the open kitchen wasn’t bustling. Pots of chowder (both the New England I opt for and its rival, the tomato-based Manhattan) are slung onto the roaring stove that I can see from my perch.

“We never really stop putting pots on,” Popovic says. “We try to go through everything, every day,” she adds—sometimes right in the middle of dinner service. On a busy Saturday during the summer, the staff can go through 3,500 to 4,000 clams.

The menu hasn’t changed much in years, and neither has the staff, many of whom are school teachers who opt to work through the summer. “I think our [longest-working] employee [has been here for] 30 years,” says Popovic. “She’s married now. She started when she was 14. Her daughter works here now, too. We have several moms and kids who work here.”

The kitchen is run by her nephew, Todd Simpson, and Angelo DeRosa, who has worked at the restaurant since he was a teenager and is now in his 40s.

“That is really, I think, the essence of why the restaurant is successful— because we have such a great staff,” Popovic says.

When I tell Popovic about my Smitty’s ritual—that I’m a counter (never a dining room) person and haven’t looked at a menu in years, she isn’t surprised. She laughs: “The customers do all have their rituals.”

A place that invites ritual is one that makes regular diners feel that the restaurant is their place. At most restaurants that takes years of consistent year-round patronage. At this seasonal spot, however, regulars take on a slightly different role. There are diners who return to the shore for one week a year. “We may have been waiting on them for 25 years,” Popovic explains. She and her staff have seen families grow up and return with the next generation. They’ve seen engagements, too, including that of two diners who met in the parking lot while waiting for their tables.

Perhaps the greatest strength of Smitty’s is that diners like me, who only make it there once or twice a season, feel like regulars. A great restaurant leaves you feeling better than when you arrived. Precisely the same as it did the last time you ate there— whether that was yesterday, a year ago or five years ago. Smitty’s taught me that.

SMITTY'S CLAM BAR
910 Bay Ave., Somers Point
609.927.8783