Get excited: Here's the scoop for Agave's Rehoboth location
Taylor GoebelThe infamous two-hour wait at Agave may be over — or at least assuaged — thanks to founder Chris McKeown's plans to build a sister restaurant in Rehoboth Beach.
City commissioners voted unanimously in late December to grant McKeown and co-owner Mike Firetti a permit of compliance for the yet-to-be-built, two-story Mexican restaurant.
McKeown said opening a second Agave on Rehoboth Avenue was a dream of his for many years.
"This is something I've wanted to do for a very long time," he said at the meeting. "And now that I'm kind of maxed out in the space that I'm at right now, I'm ready."
This isn't Agave's first expansion
Agave opened in Lewes in 2008, and in the decade since, it has been renovated twice to accommodate more guests.
The Mexican restaurant on Second Street is famous throughout Delaware for serving 100-plus tequilas, margaritas, mahi mahi stuffed puffy tacos and a variety of guacamole (they have shrimp and garlic, pine nut and goat cheese and roasted pumpkin seed with aged gouda, to name a few).
Its most recent expansion in 2017 allows the warm, casual dining area to serve 105 guests.
It still wasn't enough.
With 239 permanent dining seats, 35 bars seats and 54 outdoor patio seats, the future lounge and tequila bar will be able to house up to three times as many people as the original location.
Late nights, outdoor seating at Rehoboth location
McKeown said in an email the Rehoboth restaurant will be a "tad bigger, but we will not lose the atmosphere we have worked hard to retain here in Lewes."
The dining area on both floors spans just over 1,900 square feet, and the outdoor patio will be 750 square feet, according to the application. The lot sits between Summer House and G Cask.
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Agave in Rehoboth will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and will stay open till 1 a.m. — later than the Lewes spot. While the menu will be the same at the new location, McKeown said he has a few tricks up his sleeve and wants to "spruce a few things up."
He is shooting for an October opening.
Rehoboth officials express support
Commissioner Stan Mills said during the meeting that it was one of the first times he's discussed granting a permit of compliance for a building that hasn't been built yet.
He also noted that while screening the dumpster and propane area was a good idea, he normally would have expected a prepared license agreement for it to be on city property.
As long as traffic can move freely on Wilmington Avenue, Mayor Paul Kuhns said the plan was fair.
Carol Everhart commented that the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce would lend its support to Agave on the main avenue.
"We've been looking at an empty lot there for a long time," she said.
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