Delaware
A dining spot from Bardea tops new restaurants opening in Delaware
New Delaware restaurants opening or coming soon
Here is a look at some new restaurants and food shops that are coming or have recently opened.
The end of the year is fast approaching, but that hasn’t stopped the Delaware restaurant industry.
Here is a look at some new restaurants and food shops that are coming or have recently opened.
Casa Nonna
DE.CO Food Hall, DuPont Building,10th and Orange streets, Wilmington
A new downtown Wilmington Italian American restaurant has a name that owners hope evokes warm, cozy feelings.
The owners of Bardea Food & Drink said the new restaurant at DE.CO Food Hall will be called Casa Nonna, or Grandmother’s House.
The name is an ode to Italian grandmas of chef/co-owner Antimo DiMeo’s grandmothers and their recipes. The Bardea team said it also represents “all the Nonnas of our region and their contributions to what we know as Italian-American cooking.”
The menu has not yet been released. The opening date, likely in early 2025, has not been set.
The restaurant will occupy the seating area adjacent to the bar in DE.CO that extends along Orange Street. The Italian trattoria will have about 70 seats and a full bar. It will offer lunch and dinner daily.
316 S Ridge Ave, Middletown, 302-295-5657, everestindiancuisinede.com
One of the world’s great treats has landed in Middletown: Himalayan-style momos.
Momos are Nepal’s delicious answer to the soup dumpling, a juicy veggie or meat-filled purse usually served with spicy sauce – and until now, they’ve been vanishingly hard to find in Delaware. Now you can slurp the garlicky minced-chicken middles out of a plate of momos at Everest Indian Cuisine, which opened in August next to Kohl’s in a dense Middletown commercial center along Ridge Avenue.
Everest serves some other Nepalese-style treats, including a chicken noodle soup called thukpa. The rest of the vegetarian or chicken-centric menu includes a broad array of Indian fare that includes biryani; chole bhatura; tandoor chicken; chicken kebab; butter chicken; and Indo-Chinese fare like chilli chicken and chicken 65.
600 N. Broad St., Middletown (inside Land of Spice supermarket), 302-380-2644, littlespiceusa.com.
Indian flavors in Middletown keep on coming, with a second location for beloved Newark-area Indian restaurant Little Spice.
The new location is tucked inside South Asian supermarket Land of Spice Desi Farmers Market. The opening menu is perhaps surprisingly broad for grocery store kitchen, from a wide variety of dosas – crisp South Indian crepes often packed with spiced potato – to a wealth of curries and gravies slathered over veggies, paneer cheese, chicken, goat or lamb.
The Middletown location also boasts street-food-style items perfect for a stroll through a supermarket, including protein-filled frankies sometimes dubbed Bombay burritos, or a sandwich stuffed with spicy ground-goat kheema.
The location allows online ordering for takeout, and catering for parties.
Word is out that the former Cafe Americana, and later the short-lived Ameri Home Cooking, in the Linden Hill Station, 4500 New Linden Hill Road in Pike Creek, will soon become home to Cafe Scalessa.
It’s a spinoff of the flagship Scalessa’s Old School Italian Kitchen in Wilmington’s Forty Acres neighborhood. We don’t have many details yet, but the cafe could open by the end of October, according to a social media post.
1128 Forrest Ave., unit C, Dover, 302-744-8010. locations.cleaneatz.com/de/dover/meal-prep-154.html
On a trip to their son’s hockey tournament in Ohio, Andrea and Ryan Maloney took a chance on a restaurant they’d never visited before. They liked it so much they decided to start one themselves.
In September, they opened the first Clean Eatz in Delaware across from the Modern Maturity Center in Dover.
Closed permanently: These Delaware restaurants and food businesses have closed in the past few months
Clean Eatz has 119 restaurants in 24 states with a menu that includes wraps, flatbreads, build-your-own bowls, protein smoothies and coffees, cauliflower crust pizza and burgers with turkey, bison, salmon or black beans.
They offer meal plans for the whole week, with take-home meals that are made fresh then frozen with directions for thawing or reheating. The meal packages list the calories, protein, fat and carbs in each serving.
The Dover restaurant is open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
4008 N. Dupont Highway, near Minquadale, 302-991-1044. Visit chick-fil-a.com
On Thursday, Oct. 3, the newest location of the cultishly popular fried chicken spot opened at 4008 N. Dupont Highway, just south of Wilmington near Minquadale. The new location is 5,400 square feet, according to plans submitted with the county, with two drive-thru lanes – a feature that’s become commonplace at fast-food restaurants across the country to accommodate advance orders from phone apps and delivery websites. Chick-fil-A’s dedicated phone-app lane is called Mobile Thru.
The opening date underscores Chick-fil-A’s ever-increasing speed at plunking down new locations. It was just four months previous that construction fencing first came up on North Dupont Highway, in front of a self-storage facility.
The location was opened by franchisee Angelo Santos, a native of nearby Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, who got his first job at the Chick-fil-A in Ridley as a teen. The new location is holding giveaways for Chick-fil-A app users throughout the month of October. Details can be found on the North Dupont Chick-fil-A page.
379 Chestnut Hill Plaza, Brookside, 302-454-9938, tacobell.com.
A Taco Bell near Newark, so busy it was known for drive-thru lines that pushed back onto the street, was demolished this spring. Now it’s back as of the beginning of October, new and maybe improved, with multiple drive-thru lanes and a nubmer of self-service digital ordering screens inside.
The revamp comes as part of a contractual obligation to overhaul old stores, said Joe DePascale, development manager at Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based franchise operator Summerwood Corp.
“In this case, the store does well enough and was old enough to warrant a full scrape and rebuild,” DePascale told The News Journal in March.
The new location is 2,700 square feet, according to plans submitted with New Castle County, built in accordance with an industrywide shift toward delivery, mobile apps and drive-thru – which means side-by-side drive-thru lanes and digital menu boards that theoretically help alleviate some of the drive-thru waits and lines.
9 W. Main St. in Middletown. facebook.com/ppfmiddletown/
The nation’s largest Philly-style pretzel brand opened its newest Delaware location in Middletown on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
Owners are Middletown residents Angela White and Tyeesha Edwards, who began training at Pretzel University at the Philly Pretzel Factory home office in July. Visit the Philly Pretzel Factory Middletown’s Facebook page for hours of operation and menu offerings.
Shops at Sea Coast, 19266 Coastal Highway, Unit 1, Rehoboth Beach. firststatebrewing.com/
First State Brewing Co.’s second location will be in Rehoboth Beach, at the former home of The Pond and TGI Fridays.
First State opened a brewery and restaurant in Middletown in 2020 and, in 2023, was named the best brewery in the country by USA TODAY.
More: First State Brewing Co. to open 2nd location on Coastal Highway in Rehoboth Beach
Details about the Rehoboth location, including an opening date, are still sparse, but First State spokesman Jeff Horne said food will be served there, as well.
Patricia Talorico writes about food and restaurants. You can find her on Instagram, X and Facebook. Email ptalorico@delawareonline.com. Sign up for her Delaware Eats newsletter.
Shannon Marvel McNaught reports on southern Delaware and beyond. Reach her at smcnaught@gannett.com or on Twitter @MarvelMcNaught.
Saturday, May 23, 2026 1:05AM
WILMINGTON, Del. (WPVI) — A 22-year-old man is facing several rape charges after police say he was in a park in Wilmington, Delaware, after hours with an underage girl.
New Castle County Police announced the arrest of Majdi Jones, of Maryland, on Friday.
Officers were patrolling Banning Park early Wednesday morning when they say they found him in a vehicle with a 12-year-old girl.
Detectives determined that he had been communicating with her on social media.
Jones is being held in jail after failing to post bail.
Copyright © 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.
‘Likely that potential donors will refuse to contribute’
Delaware enacted the law in question in 2012 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which permitted corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited money on elections.
The lawsuit targets the provision in the Delaware code that requires third-party advertisers who engage in so-called “electioneering communications” — which name a candidate but don’t explicitly say who to vote for or against — to file reports if they spend more than $500 in an election cycle.
The groups must first register as a political committee and list names and addresses of each officer, as well “a concise statement of the committee’s purposes or goals,” and the name, office sought and party affiliation of candidates they are supporting or opposing, “to the extent such information is known as of the date of filing.”
During the campaign season, the groups also need to file reports listing the name and mailing address of anyone contributing more than $100, regardless of whether the person earmarked their money for a Delaware race or even knows about the campaign ads in Delaware. The report must contain the total amount that every donor made during the relevant election cycle.
The law has a $1,200 minimum threshold for reporting donations by any contributor that is not an individual.
While the lawsuit centers on disclosing individual donors, the roughly 60 third-party advertisers now registered in Delaware report contributions from affiliated organizations rather than naming individual people, a WHYY News review of filings found.
For example, the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware Action Fund listed $70,000 in donations from the American Civil Liberties Union, listing a New York address for the donors.
Another group, the National Resources Defense Council lists one donation — $100,000 in 2024 from the NRDC Action Votes Federal PAC in New York. During that race, the group advocated for unsuccessful Democratic gubernatorial candidate Collin O’Mara.
Regardless of whether third-party advertisers are naming individual people as donors, Americans for Prosperity argues in the lawsuit that the names of “thousands of donors” who have given its two groups more than $100 since 2022 would have to be disclosed.
Citing the law, the lawsuit said that failing to comply comes with a possible “penalty of perjury” and fines of $50 a day and perhaps referral to prosecutors for not filing the reports, which is a misdemeanor criminal offense.
Such disclosures would harm Americans for Prosperity, the lawsuit argues, because “the vast majority of donors require confidentiality as a condition of their giving.”
Unless the law changes or is overturned in court, the lawsuit claims that Americans for Prosperity could jeopardize its funding stream if it engages in third-party advertising in Delaware.
“It is likely that potential donors will refuse to contribute, and current donors will cease to contribute, because they are too fearful of the reprisal they will face if their names and addresses are disclosed,” the lawsuit said.
Connolly elaborated.
“This is a fundamental, foundational American principle that you should be able to give to causes without fear, whether you give $100 or $1,000 or more,’’ he said. “Everybody should be treated equally and protected equally to engage in the political process as they see fit and not not fear attacks on their families and their businesses.”
Marshall countered that third-party advertisers don’t deserve special privileges.
“The idea is that our elections are sacrosanct and that we ought to be able to at least see who is influencing them,” Marshall said. “The idea that we should have special rules when it’s a third party that’s really set up in practice to funnel extremely wealthy people’s resources in one or a few massive bundles of money, that we should treat that more gingerly than we treat the donation of an accountant who lives in Newark to their local state rep candidate, just feels outrageous.”
Dover, Del. – Health officials, advocates and legislators met in front of Legislative Hall to raise awareness for public health issues being brought up at the state level on Wednesday for the first Delaware Public Health Advocacy Day.
The event, organized by Delaware HIV Consortium, focused on advancing public health policy to increase health equity as speakers advocated for more public health funding and support.
“Public health impacts all of the communities across our state. Public health is the first step of keeping people healthy,” Delaware HIV Consortium Executive Director Tyler Berl said. “And frankly, it’s the cheapest way to keep people healthy and thriving across our state.”
Peggy Geisler, CEO for Sussex County Health Coalition CEO and one of the speakers at the event, stressed the importance of funding for preventative healthcare. Especially, she said, in times of widespread disinformation.
“It’s so important right now is because population health, is under fire nationally,” she said. “I think what’s happening to undermine credible science and actual programming that keeps people like you, me and everyone else safe is a travesty. And I think we in our own state can do something about that.”
Brandywine Counseling and Community Services CEO and President Lynn Morrison was also a speaker and said it was important to make public health a top-of-mind issue with legislators at a time when the federal government has reduced funding after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If there aren’t additional resources put towards public health, then organizations and programs will surely not be able to continue,” she said.
State officials at the event stressed that health care, while lifesaving, is just one of the many ways to keep communities safe and prosperous.
Secretary of the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, Christen Linke Young, was also a speaker and said that access to healthy food, adequate housing, mental health services and community supports were just as essential to building healthy communities.
“That’s what public health is, and that’s what we’re celebrating today, the community institutions that work day in and day out to serve communities and build a spirit of public health,” Linke Young said.
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