Twisties Tavern is back — and Strathmere just got its soul back too!

I saw the Facebook post this morning and I actually stopped scrolling.

Twisties Tavern on the Bay in Strathmere had a soft opening last night. No announcement. No fanfare. Just the doors open, the bar filled, and the bay right there where it has always been. The post from their page said it simply: they were overwhelmed by the love and support, grateful for the well wishes, and ready to serve everyone all summer.

I cannot tell you how good that felt to read.

Twisties closed during the 2025 season and went up for sale. I was not sure it was coming back. A place like that — 95 years old, red building on the bay, the kind of Shore institution that cannot be invented or replicated — when it closes you hold your breath. Because those places do not always come back. And when they do not, something irreplaceable goes with them.

This one came back.

SEE ALSO: Strathmere: The best free beach day on the Jersey Shore 

Ninety-Five Years on Strathmere Bay

Here is what makes Twisties different from every other Shore bar you have ever been to.

The building at 236 Bayview Drive has been there since the 1920s. During Prohibition it operated as a speakeasy — windows covered, the custom of the time — under a man named Harold Charleston and his wife Gert. Legend has it that Al Capone himself once visited. Gert apparently lent Al’s wife a dress so she could go fishing. That is a sentence that exists in New Jersey history and I love everything about it.

The Charlestons started collecting fish. The walls filled with barracuda, sailfish, moray eels and grouper, each mounted on its own wooden plaque. And those coconut heads — each one carved by Seminole Indians, each one unique, brought back from Florida during the Charlestons’ annual winter trips — still sit in the soffits above the bar today. They have been looking down at customers for nearly a century.

In the 1950s Jimmy and Rose Twist took over. Philadelphia natives who transplanted themselves into the quiet beauty of Strathmere and ran a full Italian restaurant out of that red building on the bay. The place eventually became the Bayview Inn, then in 2000 Gary and Denise Riordan renamed it Twisties Tavern on the Bay — honoring the Twist family, honoring the history, keeping the paneled walls and the coconut heads and the jukebox exactly as they were.

What Makes It Worth the Drive

I have been going to Strathmere my whole life. The free beach, the no-crowds, the way it still feels like the Shore used to feel before everything got expensive and curated. And Twisties has always been the place you end up at the end of a perfect Shore day.

You can drive up, walk up, or boat up. First timers sometimes drive past it twice because it does not announce itself the way a modern restaurant would. It is just the red building on the bay. But once you find it you never forget where it is.

The bar overlooking the bay at sunset is reason enough to go. But do not miss the food. It looks like a classic bayside bar — and it is — but the kitchen produces things that will surprise you. Fresh seafood, artisan pizza, a menu that earns its Zagat recommendation without ever feeling pretentious. My wife Linda and I have been going for years with our kids. It is one of those places that shows up in family memories without you even planning it that way.

And the jukebox. The old tunes with some new ones mixed in. You pick something and it plays and the bay is right there and the sun is going down and that is it. That is the whole thing.

Go Soon

Twisties is back. After a year away — after the uncertainty of the sale, after wondering if that red building would ever open its doors again — they are back and they are ready for summer.

Strathmere is already the best kept Shore secret in New Jersey. Now it has its soul back too.

236 Bayview Drive, Strathmere. Drive up, walk up, or boat up. Just go.

Jersey Shore restaurant is a waterfront hidden gem

Gallery Credit: Dennis Malloy