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.
Take a boat ride to Fort Delaware in the Delaware River’s Pea Patch Island
Take a boat ride to Fort Delaware, once a bastion of military defense and a prison camp during the Civil War, on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River.
The Delaware history column features excerpts from The News Journal archives including The Morning News and The Evening Journal. See the archives at delawareonline.com.
May 3, 1926, The Evening Journal
Thousands attend funeral of train collision victims at Barratt’s Chapel
Editor’s note: This report also has excerpts about the collision from the April 29, 1926, issue of The Evening Journal.
Mr. and Mrs. Wilburn B. Friedel and daughters Ruth, 14, and Grace, 11, who were killed Wednesday evening when a train struck their automobile at a crossing near Felton, were buried at Barratt’s Chapel yesterday afternoon.
It was the first time in the history of this church known throughout the country as the cradle of Methodism that four members of the same family have been buried at the same time.
It was also the largest attended funeral in the history of the old chapel. Thousands of persons from all sections of the county and state were in attendance….
Their third daughter, Delma, aged 16 years, who was the only occupant of the car to survive, is still in critical condition in the Milford Hospital.
The son of the deceased couple, Wilburn Jr., 22, who was visiting in New York at the time of the accident, was present at the services.
Mr. Friedel was a farmer living two miles from Felton. He and his family had been visiting his mother, Mrs. Effie Friedel, and were on their way home when the accident happened at the Delaware Railroad crossing just east of Felton.
His mother’s home is but a short distance from crossing. She, with a daughter, was standing on the porch of her home and had just waved good-bye as the locomotive crashed into the automobile….
The crossing is protected with warning signs. The express was northbound. It is thought that Mr. Friedel had just temporarily glanced back to his mother’s home and failed to look down the track before starting across….
The train, known as the American Express Special D-20, left Delmar at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon and was due in Philadelphia at 9:05 that night….
According to employees of the railroad company, the engineer had sounded his whistle on approaching the crossing and the bell was ringing at the time of the collision.
Following the crash, the engineer brought his train to a stop and the task of investigating the tragedy began. The train was delayed for more than an hour….
The railroaders in charge were not detained but were ordered to appear at the inquest….
The funeral services in the old chapel were crowded to the doors. Scores stood in the aisles and around the walls, but not more than one-tenth of the people in attendance could get inside. The others stood quietly in the churchyard until the services were over and the bodies were brought to the graveyard for interment….
Services were conducted by the Rev. D.J. Moore, pastor of Felton M.E. Church, and he was assisted by the Rev. E.H. Collins of Harrington and the Rev. H.B. Kelso of Dover….
Dr. Moore alluded to the fact that the victims were regular attendants and interested in the church. He did not refer to the accident itself but drew lessons from the uncertainty of life and the necessity for being prepared for death….
May 6, 1976, The Morning News
$54,500 traded for $2,725 in armored car money drop
An “honest” Delawarean, who, has apparently been staring at a pile of $54,500 in unmarked, small denomination bills since last Friday, turned his find over to police yesterday.
The man, identified by New Castle County Police only as “an anonymous citizen of Delaware,” collected a reward of $2,725 for returning the cash, which fell out of a Purolator Courier armored truck when it hit a bump on U.S. 202 and a door flew open Friday about 7 a.m.
Lt. Richard LeCates said the man telephoned police Wednesday at about 8 a.m., and said he was bringing the money in. Two hours later, he walked into police headquarters and plopped the moneybags on a detective’s desk.
“It was all there,” LeCates said.
As many as 100 passersby saw a man pick up the two cloth bags of money, and Pennsylvania State Police have been questioning witnesses to learn the man’s identity….
Hoping for more information, police asked the Delaware press to publish the story….
May 9, 2006, The News Journal
New Castle County to increase homebuilding fee 500% for fire service
Looking to cope with rapid housing growth, New Castle County is poised to increase by more than 500% a homebuilding fee that helps pay for new fire stations and equipment.
An ordinance would increase the impact fee from $84 to $510 for a detached single-family home. The fee is paid by developers and passed on to buyers to expand volunteer fire and rescue services….
County Council’s approval of the change could help volunteer fire companies that have applied to the county for money from the impact fee fund but are blocked by a backlog….
The county has collected $1.75 million since the fee was imposed seven years ago, but there is a backlog of $4.75 million for projects that have been approved and are waiting for funding….
Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.
Explaining the Delaware Court System
Delaware’s court system is comprised of different branches. Some of them have their own area of jurisdiction and function. 6/4/25
A 30-year-old man has been indicted in the killing of his grandmother, Delaware State Police said.
The grandmother, 72-year-old Elizabeth Fritchey, lived for 12 days after Dempsey Fritchey assaulted her inside the Hyatt House Lewes / Rehoboth Beach hotel on Jan. 29, police said. This is the first time police have publicly acknowledged the woman’s death.
Dempsey Fritchey was indicted by a Sussex County grand jury on April 13 on a charge of first-degree murder, police said. He remains in the Delaware Department of Correction’s custody.
What happened
The Fritcheys were staying at the Lewes-area hotel, located at 17254 Five Points Square, Jan. 29 when police said he began assaulting his grandmother – striking her with his hands and feet.
He then went to the lobby about 5:45 p.m. and told hotel staff that he’d killed his grandmother, police said.
Arriving officers found Dempsey Fritchey near the hotel lobby. He “told troopers that he may have killed his grandmother.”
Troopers went to the Fritcheys’ room, where police said they found the grandmother. She was unconscious and had injuries to her face and head.
Troopers provided her with medical aid until EMS arrived. She was then taken to an area hospital with life-threatening injuries.
She died on Feb. 10 from the injuries she received during the assault, police said.
Send tips or story ideas to Esteban Parra at (302) 324-2299 or eparra@delawareonline.com.
Here are some ways you can save on gas
Here are some ways you can save on gas. 12/26/25
After brief respite from increasing gas prices, the trend has reversed − and gas prices rose nearly 30 cents in a single week in Delaware.
Delaware’s 29-cent increase week over week is even greater than the national increase, AAA said. The national average was 27 cents higher on April 30 than April 23.
Gas prices are the highest they’ve been in four years, since late July 2022, AAA said.
Here’s this week’s gas price breakdown as we head into the weekend.
DE, PA, NJ, MD national gas price averages
- National average: $4.30 on April 30. This is 27 cents higher than last week and $1.12 higher than a year ago.
- Delaware average: $4.16 on April 30. This is 29 cents higher than last week and $1.17 higher than one year ago.
- Pennsylvania average: $4.11 on April 30. This is 22 cents higher than last week and 97 cents higher than a year ago.
- Southern New Jersey average: $4.25 on April 30. This is 38 cents higher than last week and $1.28 higher than a year ago.
- Maryland average: $4.21 on April 30. This is 23 cents higher and $1.12 higher than a year ago.
Why are gas prices so high?
Once again, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is playing an outsized role in the increase, AAA said.
But with summer on the horizon, gas is also more in demand.
“As motorists grapple with pain at the pump due to rising crude oil prices, increased seasonal demand and the switchover to more expensive summer blended gasoline are seasonal factors pushing gas prices higher this time of year,” said Jana Tidwell, AAA spokesperson.
Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com.
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