Offbeat Eats

After a nice day at Cape Henlopen swimming at the beach and riding loaner bikes around, we decided that it was time for an early dinner. Since Carol had never experienced Maryland-style crabs before (somehow, our attempts at this on previous visits kept getting thwarted), so this time we made it a point to go find a crab place. Which is actually a bit hard to do, if you were in the situation we were: returning from the beach, looking for some decent crabs and beer without spending a lot of money. After reading a bunch of reviews, we ended up at Lazy Susan’s on the Coastal Highway in Lewes. Well, Lazy Susan’s is definitely a “crab joint”, one of those places that’s primarily decorated with random seashore kitsch, with picnic tables (inside even) covered with paper for the inevitable mess. The beer list isn’t terribly impressive, but the beers were cheap ($2 each), and the waitress quite friendly, so we grabbed a nice table by the window and looked over the offerings…

Every once in a while I find a place that I’m absolutely sure that I’ve already reviewed on Offbeat Eats, but when I was looking at the site archives, I realized that I haven’t actually reviewed any places in Rehoboth Beach, despite several visits here in the last few years. So I guess this trip I’ve got to remedy that. I’ll start with one of my Rehoboth Beach favorites: Fractured Prune Donuts. Fractured Prune is an Ocean City, MD based donut chain that’s been around since the 1970s (the funky name has a backstory, the original location was on land once owned by a Prunella Shriek, who was a woman athlete renowned for her frequent injuries, and was thus called “Fractured Prunella”)…

After we finished up in Philly (including a visit to the very pleasant Morris Arboretum, and an attempt to visit Earth Brewing in Mt Airy that was foiled by them taking some vacation time), we decided to head down to Rehoboth Beach. Along the way, we passed right by Newark, Delaware, so we decided to stop by and check out Iron Hill Brewery. I’ve always had a soft spot for Newark (I actually lived there as a kid from 1974 to 1980), but it’s had a lot of turnover in the 30 years (!) since I lived there. The Gino’s where we’d get chicken and “Gino Giant” burgers is long gone, as are most of the other businesses I remember (although one of my father’s two favorite diners, the Post House, is still alive and well, although Jimmy’s Diner down the way is, sadly, now a Cheeburger Cheeburger). However, one excellent addition to downtown Newark in the mid-90s was a brewery. Since 1996, Iron Hill Brewery has been running a successful brewpub.