Feast on Fine Food in Lewes, Bethany and Fenwick

From DiFebo’s to Nantuckets cravings are covered.

DiFebo’s | Coastal shellfish risotto  is made with shrimp, lump crab, calamari, cherry tomato and fresh baby arugula.Rehoboth has benefited from the lion’s share of the growth in the 1990s, but other beach towns also won their own culinary celebrities. In Lewes, Jonathan Donato opened The ki in the Devon Hotel on Second Street. It became so popular, it moved down the block to a beautifully renovated Victorian home in short order. Today regulars would feel adrift if it ever closed. Where would they get the addictive seafood chowder?

Pioneers in Bethany Beach include The Parkway restaurant and Lisa DiFebo-Osias, whose family opened DiFebo’s in 1983 as a 40-seat deli-café in an old cottage on Del. 26. In the early 1990s, DiFebo-Osias started occasionally offering Italian food on the tiny porch in the evening. By 1998, demand had grown so great that the family razed the old cottage and built a new place as a full-service restaurant. The wait on summer nights for DiFebo’s modern Italian fare is well worth it.

In downtown Bethany, Jonathan Spivak, a native of Manhattan, in 1993 opened Sedona, a Southwest-influenced restaurant that evolved to serve upscale yet approachable cuisine. Though he sold the restaurant in 2006, both Sedona and The Parkway which opened in 1997, remain staples in Bethany Beach. 

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In Fenwick Island, the Twining family capitalized on David Twining’s New England roots with cozy Nantuckets. Famous for its quahog-scallop “chowdah,” it opened in 1991. It remains a favorite on the town’s slender strip between the bay and the ocean.

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