July 18, 2024
Provided Image/Ocean Resort Casino
Michael Schulson, the restauranteur behind 12 Philly restaurants, says he's no longer planning to open four restaurants in the Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City. Among the restaurants he planned to open: a Pearl & Mary oyster bar in the rendering above.
Michael Schulson is no longer planning to open four new restaurants at Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, because he says he wants the Jersey Shore to remain a place where his family can relax.
Schulson – the restaurateur behind Double Knot, Sampan, Independence Beer Garden and nine other Philadelphia restaurants – said in February that he planned to bring two of his restaurant concepts, oyster bar Pearl & Mary and diner Samuel's, to Ocean Resort. The restaurants were to sit side-by-side in the casino's lobby, replacing the shuttered Sky Cafe and Harper's, which had moved upstairs. Both were set to open "before summer 2024."
Two weeks later, he announced plans to open two more: one with an Asian cuisine focus and another kept under wraps.
But he's since walked back on those plans. In a statement to the Philadelphia Business Journal, Schulson said he's abandoning the restaurants in favor of keeping the Jersey Shore as a place for a"family retreat."
“It has become more of a haven for me and my family — a place where we escape, reconnect, and relax together," he said. "It was a difficult decision but with closer consideration and after talking more with my family, we won’t be opening our concepts there this summer."
Schulson did not return a request for additional comment.
Ocean Casino Resort said it will be making a $5 million capital investment into the space and plans to move forward with a new restaurant partnership, though it declined to share any details or a targeted opening date.
Ocean Casino would have been the second location for Schulson's Pearl & Mary, which opened in Midtown Village in 2022. Schulson opened Samuel's deli above his Italian restaurant Giuseppe & Sons at 1523 Sansom St., but it closed last summer and became Bar Lesieur, a French restaurant.
