THE Jersey Shore has long been the turf of nightclubs that cater to the young and the restless, with booming sound systems, all-you-can-drink specials and dress codes that allow a seamless transition from hung-over beachgoer to late-night barfly.

But beyond the Wide Mouth Wednesdays and No Shower Happy Hours, a wave of stylish new spots that promise a more sophisticated experience have opened along the shore in recent years, from Sea Bright to Cape May.

At the Langosta Lounge in Asbury Park, for example, a glowing green Buddha presides over a bar made of reclaimed glass and shells, where patrons nibble appetizers like edamame and Cuban fried olives. In the basement of Congress Hall, a restored 19th-century grand hotel in Cape May, the Boiler Room has a cool speakeasy feel, with exposed brick walls, metal ceiling beams and low red lighting. And the sleek metal bar at Daddy O, a boutique hotel that opened in 2006 on Long Beach Island, draws crowds even in the off-season.

“Everything down the shore was flip-flops and jean skirts,” said Denise O’Hare, 28, a high school teacher from Hoboken who often goes to clubs in Manhattan but has also been going to Avenue Nuit in Long Branch on summer Fridays and Saturdays since it opened in 2005. She used to visit the party towns of Belmar, Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights.

Speaking of Avenue Nuit, Ms. O’Hare said, “During the summer, you can get a little dressed up and really feel like you’re going out rather than rolling off the beach and walking into a bar with everyone who’s already half blasted.”

Avenue Nuit is part of the 25,000-square-foot Avenue club and restaurant complex designed by David Collins, a London architect whose firm designed the bar at the Claridge’s hotel there, now open for its third summer. Outside, hopefuls wait behind a velvet rope, seeking to join the guests who are drinking and dancing under cool orange lighting or flirting and smoking on a patio with a luminescent swimming pool, beds that serve as tables and ocean views.

The recipe for this new wave of bars? One part real estate boom, one part transplants and visitors from New York, and one part homegrown ingenuity.

“We let go of all pretenses and how a restaurant and bar should be in New Jersey,” said Marilyn Schlossbach, an Asbury Park restaurateur who opened the Langosta Lounge late last year in what had been a windowless dive bar on the boardwalk.

The push to redevelop Asbury Park began earlier this decade. In 2003, Madison Marquette, developers based in Washington, began rebuilding the Asbury Park boardwalk to attract both New Yorkers and regular shore visitors put off when the town fell into disrepair in the 1970s.

“Rather than waiting for the market to come to Asbury, we created something for people to come back to,” said Anselm Fusco, a senior vice president at Madison Marquette.

The fruits of redevelopment on the boardwalk include Watermark, a lounge with ocean views from butter-soft leather chairs inside and cabanas outside, and Tim McLoone’s Supper Club and the Salt Water Cafe, two bars set inside a former Howard Johnson’s.

And those with an appetite for big city glitz and glamour are finding they don’t have to go to Atlantic City to indulge it.

“A lot of people don’t realize there’s Jersey after Atlantic City,” said Erin Donnelly, 32, of Manalapan Township, N.J., as she sipped a martini at Elements in Sea Bright, a restaurant with a lounge (including D.J.’s and bottle service) that opened in 2003.

Ms. Donnelly, who goes to Elements three or four times a month, is a sales representative for a liquor distributor, and works with bars all over the state. “I wanted that Manhattan atmosphere at the Jersey Shore, to get dressed up and get a $10 or $12 martini,” she said.

To some extent, the new bars are catching up to the rising price of shore real estate over the last decade, as ramshackle bungalows and rowdy summer shares gave way to new development aimed at wealthier renters.

“The Jersey Shore has gotten increasingly more expensive and attracted a more upscale audience,” said Martin Grims, a restaurateur based in Philadelphia who opened Daddy O in Brant Beach on Long Beach Island in 2006. “There was a lot of demand, and not a lot of supply.”

If people are happy to pay New York prices for drinks, they’re also showing a willingness to buy them all year round.

“People look at the Jersey Shore in just one kind of way, very seasonally and traditionally — tiki bars and basic restaurants — without a lot of flair,” said David Barry, president of the Applied Development Company, a Hoboken concern that developed Pier Village, a restaurant, retail and residential complex in Long Branch that opened in 2005. “That’s starting to change now.”

Farther south, Mr. Grims also opened Plantation, a tropical-themed restaurant and bar on Long Beach Island, in 2003 and the Inlet, a bayfront bar and restaurant in Somers Point in 2007.

“It’s a different atmosphere for an island bar,” said Glen Burke, 48, of Hazlet, N.J., as he leaned on the bar at Daddy O, which is inside a boutique hotel with the same name. Mr. Burke, who has owned a house on Long Beach Island, for 10 years, goes to Daddy O for Friday night happy hours when he’s on the island, even in the off-season. “Getting dressed up for dinner here doesn’t just mean putting on a clean T-shirt,” he added.

Even Stone Harbor, a sleepy town just north of the Wildwoods, is getting into the act a little bit. This spring, the seafood restaurant and bar Blackfish opened in what used to be Henny’s Cafe, a 78-year-old bar and restaurant that closed in 2008.

But its raw and stripped-down space, which belies the glamorous image it tries to project, is only a temporary situation. Blackfish’s final home is to be a resort and spa complex across the street that has a 2012 completion date.

And at the state’s southern tip, Cape May, pockets of cool have been carved out amid the town’s hundreds of stately Victorians. In 2002, when Curtis Bashaw rehabbed and reopened Congress Hall, a rambling and glamorous hotel that dates back to 1816, he set out to avoid relying on the “12-week crash-and-burn season” that is typical of more traditional shore entertainment spots, he said.

The Congress Hall project includes the Brown Room, a 1920s-inspired lounge, and the Boiler Room, an underground dance club with live music some nights.

Overlooking the ocean on Beach Avenue is Martini Beach, a second-story tapas restaurant and bar that opened in 2003 with what could be called a tropical luxe theme. Alicia and Victor Grasso, Cape May residents who were high school sweethearts, were sharing drinks there recently.

The Grassos grew up in Sea Isle City and moved to Cape May after living in big cities — Ms. Grasso, 32, in Manhattan and Mr. Grasso, 31, in Los Angeles. Ms. Grasso is now the marketing director of Cape May Stage, an equity theater in town, and Mr. Grasso is an artist who shows in New York, Philadelphia and Cape May.

“It’s a social bar,” said Ms. Grasso, who counts Martini Beach and the Brown Room as year-round regular spots, “and has the class that a lot of people don’t expect to find down the shore.”