A dining spot from Bardea tops new restaurants opening in Delaware

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.