Our writer goes to Dover to see the Little Creek Inn, Where Pigs Fly, Sewell Biggs, Dover Downs Hotel and other historic sites.
We headed towards Dover Delaware, from another travel assignment in Virginia. What should have taken two hours ended up to be three and one half hours as we got stuck on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge behind a jack knifed trailer truck. After having survived a recent blizzard with Donald, I was glad to be out on the open road, and not prepared to be sitting behind this truck. We laughed about it and listened to music at the beginning, but like most travelers we grew weary of each others company and the 90 minutes dragged on.
Thankfully, we arrived in Dover and stopped to eat at a local restaurant "Where Pigs Fly". The decor was casual, but dominated by flying pigs everywhere! The menu was predominantly chicken, pork, ribs and burgers. Don asked for one of their trademark meals and was advised to try the barbequed ribs served with sweet potatoes and warm apples. This ended up to be a lunch worth sitting in traffic for. I never heard of "pulled" anything, as far as food is concerned, so I tried the "pulled chicken", which is juicy chicken pieces pulled away from the bone and smothered in barbeque sauce. Delicious!
We drove around Dover and stopped at a few specialty stores - Byler’s Country Store, and Shady Lane Selections where I bought a wall quilt. Both stores feature handmade household items made by local Amish craft people.
After shopping and eating, the two staples of any vacation, we found our way to our Bed & Breakfast for the night – The Little Creek Inn owned by Bob and Carol Thomas. Bob is also from the same neighborhood as we are in Marine Park, Brooklyn, and we instantly began to trade stories of shared names and places. Carol is originally from the Bronx, and I'm sure she's heard these stories a hundred times, but she listened too as Bob gave us the run down of how they landed in Delaware from the " old neighborhood". It seems that Bob played for a short time with the Boston Patriots and his nickname was "squeak", since he was a Brooklyn kid who kept "squeaking" by. That stint didn't last long and Bob worked in different venues as a bartender and a waiter. This big, burly, Brooklyn guy decided to go against type casting (we're talking over 30 years ago), and took cooking lessons with Marcella Hazan, a prominent cookbook author. While managing a club in Tuxedo Park, New York, Bob's love of food kept pushing him to ask the Austrian Chef for pointers.
Simplifying Bob's tale, in 1974 he bought a tiny fish market in the Hamptons, Long Island. Due to frequent requests, Bob started cooking the fish for his customers and soon a restaurant was born.
He and Carol opened up this beautiful B&B in Dover a few years ago and later they expanded to open a full restaurant down the road.
The rooms at the Inn are elegantly decorated and our room had a very large bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub that I was looking forward to using.
Bob's restaurant wasn't open this night, so we decided to go out and try another local establishment - the Blue Coat Inn. This Inn is a fine eatery in this area for the last 35 years and its menu was varied, but seafood, we were told was a specialty. Don and I had creamy shrimp bisque. Stuffed shrimp was my entrée and Don had the grilled swordfish. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was nautical.
It's here we learned that Delaware has no sales tax. Since Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New York all have sales tax, Delaware is definitely a great place to shop. Our Delaware dinner companions couldn’t rave enough about their home state. They bragged about how it is the best place to raise a family, especially due to its small town atmosphere, yet it boasts many city amenities like fine restaurants and shopping. After dinner, it was back to the Little Creek Inn and that Jacuzzi.
