Drive past 172 Plaistow Road this month and the walk-up window looks the way it always has. Same fry counter. Same order-here-then-find-a-seat routine that regulars have followed since before some of their kids were born. But look at the sign next to the menu board and you'll notice something that wasn't part of the original deal: a seafood market, operating out of the same building, selling fish over the counter to anyone who wants dinner without the fryer involved.
Most people driving Route 125 register this place the way they always have. Fewer realize it's actually running two separate businesses now, sharing one building and one legacy, and that the split says something real about how landmarks on this stretch of road actually survive.
Fifty-Five Years, Then Five Dark Ones
Larry Haggett opened his clam bar at 172 Plaistow Road in 1961. It ran for over five decades as a straightforward New England seafood stand: fried clams, scallops, haddock, a soft-serve window, and the cackling hen egg machine that generations of local kids fed quarters into for a plastic prize. By the time Haggett closed the doors in 2016, the place wasn't just a restaurant. It was the kind of business where regulars measured their own childhoods against it.
Then the building sat empty. It went up for sale that same year with no immediate buyer, and stayed vacant through 2019, the year Haggett passed away at 83. For roughly five years, one of Route 125's most recognized addresses did nothing but wait.
That gap matters. A landmark everybody loves doesn't automatically get a second act. It needs someone willing to actually buy the property, take on a 265-seat building, and bet that nostalgia can carry a new operator through a reopening. That someone turned out to be Bob Pagliarulo, who already owned the Saddle Up Saloon in Kingston and had reportedly had his eye on the Plaistow building for close to a year before he closed the deal in 2021.
What Actually Reopened Wasn't One Business
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only half-remember the headlines from a few summers ago. Pagliarulo didn't just restore the old menu and put a new name on the sign, dropping "Larry's" and reopening simply as The Clam Bar. He also brought in a second, entirely separate operation to share the space: a retail seafood market run by two Revere firefighters, Joe Dusavitch and Joe D'Ambrosio, one of them a Coast Guard veteran. Their market sells fresh fish and specialty seafood products at the counter, distinct from the fry-window ordering system that still handles the clams, haddock, and roast beef sandwiches.
So the building people still call "the old Larry's spot" is now functionally two small businesses under one roof: a walk-up restaurant and a fish market, each with its own ownership, sharing the same nostalgic shell that's stood on that corner since 1961.
There's a small, satisfying symmetry buried in the timeline too. The building sat empty for about five years after Haggett closed it. As of this year, it has now been open under Pagliarulo for roughly that same stretch of time. The dark years and the revived years are running neck and neck, which is as good a sign as any that whatever Pagliarulo and his seafood-market partners built has staying power rather than being a short-lived revival act.
A Few Miles Up the Road, a Completely Different Survival Story
If The Clam Bar's path was closure, vacancy, and reinvention, the Early Bird Cafe at 160 Plaistow Road tells the opposite story. It's been serving breakfast and lunch on Route 125 since 1993, and it never had a gap to fill. The cafe's own account of its staff turnover says a lot: many employees have been there over 20 years, some since opening day, which is unusual in an industry known for the opposite. Generations of the same families have eaten there, worked there, and folded it into their weekly routine, including regular support for Timberlane, Sanborn, and Haverhill students and the local fire and police departments who stop in.
Two landmarks, a few minutes apart on the same road, took completely different paths to still being here in 2026. One had to close, sit empty for half a decade, and get bought and partially reinvented by an outsider. The other never needed a comeback because it never stopped. Both outcomes tell you something true about Route 125: staying open here isn't about the location doing the work for you. It's about somebody, whether that's an original owner who never left or a new one willing to take on an empty building, deciding it's worth keeping alive.
The Rest of the Strip, If You Haven't Looked Lately
Route 125 through Plaistow gets called the Golden Mile by people in the commercial real estate world, mostly because of how much retail frontage sits along it. For residents, the more useful description is just the corridor where you actually decide what to eat on a Tuesday. A few spots worth knowing if your mental map of 125 is a few years out of date:
- The Clam Bar, 172 Plaistow Road, for the fried seafood and roast beef sandwiches that made the address famous, plus the seafood market counter for anyone cooking at home.
- Early Bird Cafe, 160 Plaistow Road, for breakfast and lunch with the kind of staff continuity that turns servers into people who know your order.
- SaNouk's Lao & Thai Eats, in the small plaza at 5 Plaistow Road, for a different flavor profile than the diner-and-clam-shack reputation the road is known for.
- Sushi Time, also at 5 Plaistow Road, sharing that same small stretch of storefronts.
None of these are new discoveries if you've lived here a while. What's easy to lose track of is how much has actually turned over inside familiar buildings, and how differently each business got to where it is now.
Why This Is Worth Knowing If You Already Live Here
None of this changes anything about buying or selling property on this corridor. It's simply a more accurate picture of a road most Plaistow residents drive several times a week without registering what's actually happening behind the signage. The clam shack you remember from childhood weekends is technically two businesses now. The diner you've never thought twice about has quietly outlasted almost everything else on the strip by never needing a second act at all. Both are still worth the stop.
If you want the wider view of what makes this town tick beyond one stretch of road, our Plaistow neighborhood guide rounds up more of what makes the area worth paying attention to.
And if any of this, the way certain towns hold onto their landmarks while others turn over completely, ever has you thinking about your own next move in this area, Sonia Bramhall is always glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
