Dewey Beach's northbeach resurrects 'Taco Toss' while The Lighthouse is closed

For more than 30 years, summer weekends in Dewey Beach unofficially started the same away: the Taco Toss happy hour at The Lighthouse.

Under its towering faux lighthouse, the bar's Rehoboth Bay deck has always been where hard-charging weekend warriors could find four things: cheap tacos, ice cold drinks, their friends and on-site parking.

But this summer, The Lighthouse bar is closed.

It's part of the Lighthouse Cove redevelopment project, which is bringing condominiums with private balconies and resort-style amenities. But the project also brings back an all-new Lighthouse bar, which will re-open next summer with a larger deck.

Would 2018 be the first Dewey Beach summer without Taco Toss in ages?

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Not in a beach town crawling with competitors.

northbeach, which is located four blocks north of The Lighthouse, saw an opening and ran with it, proclaiming Taco Toss alive and well at their bar. (For the record, no one actually throws tacos at Taco Toss. It's just a fun, catchy name.)

In fact, they quietly began giving away free tacos last summer, but didn't call it Taco Toss out of respect to The Lighthouse, says northbeach co-owner John Snow, a partner with Highway One LLC, which also owns the Bottle & Cork and The Rusty Rudder.

Now, free tacos are available every Friday in the summer at northbeach.

It was in a social media posting on May 2 that Snow mentioned the Taco Toss name: "This Friday and every Friday until September, we will have free tacos from 5 to 9 p.m. And a full band on the main stage starting at 6 p.m. Call it a Friday Jam. Hell, call it Taco Toss. The tacos are free. The music is live. And plenty of free parking, so how 'bout we help kick your weekends off? #thelighthouseisclosedthisyear"

"As soon as I wrote that, everyone just started sharing it and saying Taco Toss is at northbeach now," Snow says. "They used to do it for $1 and I figured why not just give them away?"

If you were in town this past weekend, you could probably hear a grumble or two from former Lighthouse bartenders not thrilled that their beloved happy hour is now in the hands of a rival.

A spokesperson for Harvey, Hanna & Associates, Inc., which owns The Lighthouse and is redeveloping the property, confirmed that Taco Toss would return next year.

"At the end of the day, all businesses in Dewey are in it together and the visitors of Dewey are top priority, so it’s nice to see the tradition continue considering the brief hiatus with The Lighthouse," they said in a statement. 

Snow didn't give Harvey, Hanna & Associates a heads up that his bar would be borrowing "Taco Toss" for the summer, but he says they since thanked him for doing it.

"It's a Dewey tradition. We just wanted to keep it going. It shouldn't die," says Snow, adding that northbeach will stand down and relinquish the name if The Lighthouse does indeed bring Taco Toss back next summer. "There will never be two."

In addition to Taco Toss, northbeach now serves frosé alongside its own long-running Dewey Beach staple: frozen, red Dewey Devil drinks.

On Friday at one of the first Taco Toss happy hours at northbeach, the scene was similar to The Lighthouse version in the past: young, golden-faced party people scarfing tacos in between a steady string of drinks. 

The line for the free food was longer than the one at the door or at any of northbeach's bars.

Since northbeach arguably draws the youngest crowds in Dewey these days -- mostly 21 to 35 --  it was nearly impossible to find a taco-eater who knew anything about Taco Toss as the Memorial Day weekend raged around them with cover band My Hero Zero on the main stage.

"You can't go wrong with free food," shrugged a well-buzzed 21-year-old man while struggling to wipe a dollop of nacho cheese from the tip of his nose.

A few steps behind him was Bridget Cahill, 22, of Potomac, Maryland.

She knew what Taco Toss was because that's where her parents first met years ago.

When Cahill texted her mother from northbeach and told her she was at Taco Toss, her mother was confused. "Really? They still have it. It used to be at The Lighthouse," her mother wrote.

"I wasn't that hungry, but I had a bite. It was good," says Cahill, whose parents named her brother James Dewey Cahill in honor of the town where they met. 

Back then, Taco Toss started at 4 and ran until 9 p.m. with $1 tacos, nachos and hot dogs. You could find a mix of all ages and backgrounds from fresh-faced University of Delaware students to high-powered, Washington, D.C.-based politicos. (Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe was spotted there in 2009.)

With a gaping hole on the waterfront where The Lighthouse once stood, it's hard to imagine that an iconic, rollicking happy hour ever once lived there. But it did. And it will return.

Until then, northbeach runs the only Taco Toss in town, even if many of their customers know it by another, simpler name without any history attached: free food when drunk.

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

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