Chef's Corner: At 14 Global in Bethany Beach, Kevin Daughaday leads worldly menu

Kevin Daughaday has done pretty much everything a chef can do in the food industry by age 33.

So it makes sense to see him commanding a tapas-style, globally-inspired menu at 14 Global in Bethany Beach, where flavors, textures and ingredients from all over the world fuse together at 14 N. Pennsylvania Ave.

A native of Columbia, Maryland, where his family owned a catering business that included serving food at The Preakness, Daughaday has worked on the Pennsylvania Avenue, too, in Washington, D.C.

His culinary path started in Columbia and brought him to Bethany at age 16, where his parents Mark and Bonnie owned and operated Ryan’s Cafe from 2000-2004. There, he got his first taste of the kitchen as a line cook.

“I loved learning how to do anything in the kitchen,” Daughaday said. “It grabbed my attention immediately, the pace of it, the adrenaline.”

An Ocean View resident who paid to go to Stephen Decatur High School, Daughaday went to culinary school at Johnson and Wales in Providence, Rhode Island, where he would stay and work his first few years as a professional, training in Providence’s well-known Federal Hill section, a mecca in New England for Italian cuisine.

After a few years he went back to his roots in the Delmarva area and spent time in D.C. and at the beaches, working at the since-closed Venus on the Half Shell in Dewey and Bluecoast in Bethany, where he spent too much time baking bread.

“To this day I will never bake another loaf of bread,” Daughaday said.

In search of a job when Venus closed, he turned to longtime friend Tia Sexton, a veteran of the food industry on Delmarva who was ready to open her first restaurant. Sexton had been a beverage manager at the old Magnolia’s in Ocean View before taking the same job at the famed Agave in Lewes, where she spent two years before fulfilling a dream by opening her own eatery. 

When it came time to hire a sous chef at Sexton's 14 Global, Daughaday was also looking for a job. The perfect match also saw Daughaday help out serving and managing the front of house. When Sexton needed a new chef, the promotion of Daughaday was easy, even though Sexton’s now-fiancé John Speziale also worked in the kitchen.

“I couldn’t have anyone else do it,” Sexton said. “We just pair really well together. He’s easy to get along with. For a chef, that’s hard to come by. He’s got a very tolerant personality. And when the heat is on, Kevin is right in there with it.”

Daughaday and sous chef Speziale lead one of the more worldly menus in the beach region. The once tapas only menu has transformed a bit into small, medium and large plates. Sexton said the clientele at the beaches is better suited for a menu like this rather than a traditional small plates menu.

The menu at 14 Global features fried goat cheese balls ($11), house smoked fish spread ($11) and a popular tuna tartare ($14) in its “small plates” section. Spanish pork belly ($16) and white miso glazed duck confit ($15) make up some of the medium plates and pasta section, and so, too, does the pan seared scallops served over a corn and edamame succotash, watermelon radish, wasabi greens and a lemongrass sake reduction.

Sexton said the scallops were once in the “large plates” section but didn’t sell as much. Now, they’re one of the most popular menu items at a reasonable $18.

Large plates include various fresh catches, seafood pasta and a 16-ounce bone-in strip steak ($36).

And while the food is starring, Sexton’s cocktail menu is full of natural and healthy ingredients, not loaded with sugar.

Sexton makes infusions in house and uses fresh herbs to create a cocktail menu not found often on Delmarva.

“I just wanted good drinks,” Sexton said. “I like to go out and have good cocktails and they’re hard to come by. It’s sour mix and stuff that’s not super healthy for you. Even with the Shirley Temple’s for the kids I make blueberry pomegranate simple syrup so they’re not using Maraschino cherries.”

Daughaday’s favorite to cook on the menu is the dozen little neck clams ($16), which are sautéed with saffron, cumin, cilantro, garlic, shallot, sun dried tomato, chorizo, wine and butter.

He said lately he’s been into Creole cuisine but hasn’t incorporated it onto the 14 Global menu yet.

At 14 Global, the five years he’s spent mark the longest he’s spent at one restaurant. He’s getting comfortable as the business picks up. As far as the future, he said one day he’d like to start a food truck and serve pierogies, citing a good recipe he has from his grandmother.

That makes sense for a guy who was practically born into cooking.