Restaurateur Matt Haley and his crew are looking forward to April 15, and not for their tax refunds. While procrastinators are scrambling to calculate figures and fill out forms, the minds behind SoDel Concepts will be opening yet another endeavor in their successful restaurant group — this time in Ocean View.
Haley, designer Bryony Zeigler and SoDel (Southern Delaware) Concepts co-founder Harry Geller are the moving force behind the popular and successful restaurants Redfin Seafood Grill in North Bethany, Fish On! in Lewes and Tommy Joe’s Bar & Grill in Bethesda, Md.
Along the way, the team has grown to include well-known Bethany Beach chef Nino Mancari, his protégé Jason Dietterick and the management duo of Matt Cunningham and Erin Daley.
When it opens in April, NorthEast Seafood Kitchen will bring updated versions of the classic tastes of the northeast coast to Ocean View, in the space formerly occupied by Village Rotisserie.
Dietterick will be the guiding hand in the kitchen, working from a menu created by himself, Mancari and Haley, and designed to focus on the culinary tastes and specialties of the region — from Delaware north to Nova Scotia.
“You won’t see snapper on the menu here,” Haley declared, noting that the fish has its origins in Florida.
That means that while it will show up on the wider East Coast menu of Fish On!, its place at NorthEast Seafood Kitchen is taken by the Portuguese-influenced seafood stews of New England, Chesapeake-area specialties like soft-shell crabs and crabcakes, and classic fishing-village treats like lobster rolls. (Entrees should range between $17 and $21.)
Mancari said the focus will be on using “the freshest local ingredients possible, interpreted with the flavors of the Northeast.” Dietterick called the cuisine “old-school, with a modern twist, and an updating of New England classics.” That includes the traditional sides of cole slaw and cheese-fries, as well as an array of salads and baked goods.
Haley started early in cooking, pushed by his mother (whom he described as a mediocre cook) to learn the craft if he wanted to eat something more tasty than what she prepared. At 8, he was preparing Thanksgiving dinner; at 10, baking cakes from scratch. “I just loved it,” he said of cooking.
He was exposed to the restaurant world through a restaurant his grandfather owned in Georgetown, as well as an uncle in the business. But life detours largely kept Haley out of that world until some nine years ago, when he began his odyssey as a restaurateur. However, he’s made the most of that time. The group together has opened three restaurants in southern Delaware, each successful in its own right.
Haley also transformed his own experience as a child cook into a program to help struggling families. The program coordinates with drug rehabilitation clinics to teach children cooking skills so they can be more self-sufficient and as a method of bonding with their mothers.
The 22-year-old Dietterick said his passion for cooking started simply, when he was charged with making toast for his first job at a diner at the tender age of 14. From there, it was on to a culinary-arts program in vocational school — with a teacher he said truly inspired him — and then to culinary school. A few jobs in Wilmington-area restaurants followed.
Then he met Haley, leading him to his place as chef at Redfin. But Haley’s falling-out with Redfin partner Greg Talcott in late 2003 meant most of his hand-picked staff eventually followed him to found Fish On!
Dietterick became sous-chef at the Lewes eatery, continuing his association with SoDel and Haley, and his culinary education by received further training in Napa Valley, Calif., as well as under Mancari at Fish On! Haley gives Dietterick full credit for his work at Redfin, saying, “When he was the chef at Redfin, it was the most powerful restaurant in Delaware.”
Mancari is, of course, the former chef at Bethany’s well-known Sedona (four years there as sous-chef and another four as the head chef). As part of his own association with Haley, Mancari came to be the head chef at Fish On!
Now, he is also SoDel’s senior chef, helping Haley and Dietterick to guide the restaurant group in developing new menus for the burgeoning enterprises and to train another generation of talented chefs.
Mancari said he also developed his love of cooking at a young age, picking up the basics while helping his mother in the kitchen. And in his early teens, he took a job cooking crabs in Bethany Beach.
Cunningham also rose from the ranks, working at various jobs — including busboy and line cook — at his brother’s restaurant in Lewes, eventually coming to work at Haley’s Rehoboth Beach enterprise, Third Edition. Currently, he’s the manager at Fish On!, handling the “front of the house” issues, including ordering the restaurant’s alcohol supply.
There, NorthEast Seafood Kitchen will also focus itself on the feel of the Northeast, with a selection of regional micro-brews that Haley and his culinary brain-trust are currently exploring.
Daley, too, worked her way up in Haley’s organization, taking her very first job as a server at Redfin just to earn money during her time off from school. She got that job, she said, on the recommendation of her sister, who was already a server at the restaurant.
Working at Redfin for two years, when she wasn’t in school, Daley developed a certain loyalty to Haley and his core group that each of the principals in NorthEast Seafood Kitchen is quick to espouse.
“I couldn’t imagine working for anyone else,” she said. So, when Haley and the others headed for greener pastures at Fish On!, Daley went with them.
That was true for numerous members of Haley’s staff, though the longer trek to Lewes was a hardship for some of the young bus-staff, he noted. Even his management-level employees largely live in the Bethany Beach area. And some of them had to make do in the intervening period with less prestigious and lower-paying jobs in other restaurants’ kitchens, until Fish On! was up and running.
So, the opportunity to open a new restaurant in Ocean View under Haley’s guidance was a blessing to many of the former Redfin staff, one into which they’ve eagerly put their sizeable stores of energy.
Construction crews are currently building out the interior at NorthEast Seafood Kitchen, preparing what will be a 75-seat restaurant, again designed by Zeigler.
She might be a little more absent from the project than she would have wished, but she’s a busy woman these days, Haley said, studying architecture, interior design, art and a wide range of topics that have contributed to her place as a reputation-maker for the SoDel restaurants.
Haley said Zeigler’s the real face of the restaurants. “She’s 90 percent responsible for the reputation,” he said. And her place at the core of the group is assured on a personal level as well. “She’s been a big influence on all of us,” Haley declared.
Zeigler’s plans for the Ocean View restaurant will come to fruition in the coming weeks, as work moves from structures to finishes. Dietterick described the overall feel of the place as “casual,” “upbeat,” “clean, open and inviting,” while Mancari noted that it would be modern, “but not pretentious,” the kind of place that’s “cool, but where anyone could feel comfortable.”
Haley said the design theme is again focused on that Northeast coastal feel, with driftwood floors, a predominance of white finishes, stainless steel counters, white tile and mint green accents. Eventual plans also include an outdoor portico with seating of black iron, whitewashed wood tables and Adirondack chairs.
“It’s a great space,” he said of the Ocean View location, noting that he had been looking for a promising spot in the area more than a year ago.
Despite the number of established restaurants NorthEast Seafood Kitchen will have as competition, the SoDel crew isn’t worried about their chances of success. For them, it’s not about competition but instead about doing their best at living up to the SoDel motto: “Great prices. Great food. Great service.”
With the wealth of experience behind them in their individual roles and in starting new restaurant enterprises, they’re looking forward to gaining their fair share of the area’s restaurant goers. Haley said he hopes all the restaurants in the area can succeed. “We want them to do well, too.”
“It’s a competition-driven market,” he said, but a friendly one, as far as he’s concerned.
As for Redfin: legal wrangling over the disposition of the partnership’s assets, including most notably the valuable waterfront parcel upon which the restaurant sits, was in its final stages at Coastal Point press time.
Per a court order, it is likely that the property will be auctioned off, with one or the other of the partners, or possibly an outside developer, the big bidder in that auction.
His loyal group of chefs and managers are endeavoring to bring the same cooperative energy to the newest restaurant that they’ve enjoyed at the first two. “This energy just attracts more good people,” Haley said. And the group dynamic is so strong, the people involved so capable at their tasks, instruction is rarely needed.
“When I decided to start this project, I only had to make about 10 calls,” he said. “And I really didn’t have to tell anybody what to do. I just made the calls and it happened.”
That kind of synergy is making life a lot easier for Haley these days. “I used to not sleep at night when we were starting a new restaurant. I’d worry that the mashed potatoes wouldn’t be good,” he recalled. Not anymore.
These days, he just makes a few phone calls and knows he can trust the people he calls to do what needs to be done. That makes his plans to open those two or three additional restaurants in Southern Delaware over the coming years an easy call. He’s even — nearly seriously — planning his retirement to a beach in Mexico or coffee-loving Paris in the next few years, knowing the work is in good hands.
For the short term, though, the opening of NorthEast Seafood Kitchen is looking to be the proverbial “piece of cake,” Haley said. The construction schedule is loose, with completion of the work due within several weeks. That will allow Haley and his crew to take a leisurely few weeks to fine-tune the final few details before they open the doors at the restaurant on April 15.
Assuming all goes as smoothly as they expect it to, the second-season dinner schedule (Wednesday through Sunday, starting at 5 p.m.) will expand within several more weeks to include an eight-item Sunday brunch offering.
And starting in mid-May, NorthEast Seafood Kitchen should be open for the full summer-season week of operation, inviting residents of and visitors to Ocean View and the surrounding towns to try out the latest culinary offerings from SoDel and its successful team of restaurant creators.
As that mid-April opening date nears, even quiet head chef Dietterick admitted to being very excited about the undertaking. It’s a likely bet that gourmands in the coastal towns will also be equally eager for that day, even if it is “tax day.”
(To get a glimpse at what is to come for the restaurant — including a peek at the menu, which is still a work-in-progress — visit the Web site at www.northeastseafoodkitchen.com.)