Taste of Coastal Delaware

There wasn’t much happening around the Den at Bear Trap Dunes when Executive Chef Bob Webster came on board four years ago.
Coastal Point • SAM HARVEY:
For dining, or socializing after a day on the course, the Den at Bear Trap Dunes is the spot.
“When I got here, the foundation was just a cement pad,” Webster recalled. He was able to put his own touches on the finishing design process, set up the kitchen just the way he wanted it and design the Den’s very first menu.

He may have gone a little overboard.

“We tried to give it that upscale clubhouse feeling — everything’s big,” Webster said. “The chairs are big, the tables are big, the plates are big — even the silverware is big.

“But as much as that has helped us, it’s also hurt us — only because we’ve created such a clubhouse feel that most of the people I talk to don’t think they’re allowed to come into the restaurant.

“They think we’re some kind of private club, and we’re not,” Webster insisted.

Now well into their third year, he said he still found it necessary to explain that on occasion. The Den is open to the public, breakfast, lunch and dinner, 364 days a year (closed for Christmas), and as an added attraction, Webster has taken to providing a bit of entertainment with nightly tableside dining specials.

“As executive chef, I’ve been spending more time in the front of the house — since I can’t cook in the back of the house, I’m going to bring the kitchen to the dining room,” he said.

Chef Tammy Ziskay has taken over on the line at the Den.

“I work closely with her on menu design and theme, but I try to give her as much leeway in creativity as she wants,” Webster said.

Elsewhere around town, as president of the Bethany Beach Volunteer Fire Company, Webster has turned his culinary skills to fundraising. He appeared at Di Febo’s Restaurant early in the year, serving up responder-related specials as a guest chef. Portion of proceeds went back to the fire department building fund.

“It was fun for everybody,” he said. “I got to cook in a different kitchen — and help make some money for a good cause.”

There’s a conference room attached to the Den, and while Webster said they’d only used the Dunes Room a time or two, some cultural events have been trickling in of late.
Coastal Point • SAM HARVEY:
Bob Webster, at the Den at Bear Trap Dunes.
The Village Players troupe presented a pair of dinner theatre performances in recent months — Harold Schmidt’s “Character Analysis” and “Einstein’s Breakfast.”

“The shows were hugely successful,” Webster noted. “I jokingly told them, ‘I need you to quickly write 51 more plays so we can do one every weekend.’”

Next up, the Taste of Coastal Delaware, scheduled for Sunday, June 5. Webster said he hoped to turn it into a weekend-long event, starting wth a wine-pairing dinner on June 3.
He said he was keeping at least one surprise up his sleeve for the Sunday event (1 to 4 p.m., Marketplace at Sea Colony, Bethany Beach), but he planned to bring out some chilled Salad Caprese and the Den’s cream of crab soup. Webster defended his cream of crab as the best in the area (there may be a bit of a showdown, as Shark’s Cove owner Ed O’Malley said he planned to showcase his cream of crab, too).

Webster figured he had about 25 years in the restaurant business. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in 1983, but worked in local restaurants before that.

Originally from the Baltimore area, he said he’d started coming down for the summer in the early 1970s. “I forgot to leave after my senior year,” Webster said.

After a few turns in Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City kitchens, he came to Bethany Beach and went to work for Dick Hale at the Peppermill Restaurant (now the Cottage Café).

Webster said he considered Hale his mentor — calm, cool and collected in the kitchen. “He had an easygoing way of making sure things got done — but he was a perfectionist, and accepted nothing less from the people who worked for him,” he recalled.

He credited Hale with convincing him to pursue his formal culinary education.

So, what secrets did Webster learn at the CIA? He said it doesn’t work like that.

“Tammy (Ziskay) does a fantastic job of keeping the basic techniques of cooking true, and that’s the secret to the high quality of food we’re putting out,” he said.

“It’s not doing anything difficult or involved,” he continued. “It’s just making sure you stick to the basic cooking techniques and stay true to what you’ve learned, and knowing if you continue to do that, you’ll continue to produce a quality product time and time again.”

To learn more about the Den, or make reservations, call 537-5600, ext. 3, or visit the Web site, www.beartrapdunes.com. Or, catch Webster and Ziskay at the Taste of Coastal Delaware on Sunday, June 5.