Back Porch Cafe: four decades of cutting-edge cuisine
Keith Fitzgerald often thinks about the first time he visited Rehoboth Beach.
The Wilmington native intended to stay for two weeks, just long enough to help a few friends open a restaurant. He had no idea those two weeks would turn into 42 years, and that the eatery would not only change his life, but alter the fate of an entire city.
Using recycled materials and old boardwalk lumber, Fitzgerald and his friends, Ted and Libby Fisher and Victor Pisapia, opened Back Porch Cafe in 1974.
The group had little, if any, restaurant experience, yet they managed to launch Rehoboth Beach on a course that would make it the state’s capital of fine dining.
"We were in the right place at the right time," he said.
Drawing on experiences from traveling the world together, and an urge to offer the community something new, the group created a "radical" menu featuring options like grilled veggies, exotic variations on lasagna and sandwiches with alfalfa sprouts.
The menu was unlike any other in town.
"Everyone else was doing the same thing, but we wanted to break the mold," he said.
In addition to a daring menu, Back Porch Cafe began to showcase local artwork, a tradition that has never changed. This month, the restaurant's walls are adorned with "fun and folky pieces" created by world-renowned artist Pamella Bounds-Seemans.
Back Porch Cafe also offered live entertainment and outdoor seating — another progressive idea for the time — which was warmly received among locals and vacationers alike. But most revolutionary, was that the restaurant pioneered a movement of understanding and acceptance toward the gay community, a powerful movement which still resonates in Rehoboth Beach today.
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Thanks to a diverse and forward-thinking staff, Fitzgerald said it was easy.
"We didn't care," he said. "Most of our staff was gay anyway so there was never any judgement. Bottom line was, we just wanted people to eat our food. Sexual orientation didn't matter to us."
Word about the restaurant's innovative menu and concept spread quickly. Within two years, Back Porch Cafe had become so popular, the owners decided to expand into the funky old Hotel Marvel at 21 Rehoboth Avenue, taking over the adjacent shops to offer a fully stocked bar and four dining rooms with more than 170 seats.
Soon after the expansion, Pisapia and Libby Fisher left the business to pursue other opportunities, leaving Fitzgerald and Ted Fisher to search for a chef. They hired Leo Medisch and the newly formed trio ran the place until 1985.
As one of the only upscale restaurants at the beach to serve lunch, the need for a daytime chef arose. So, they hired Siri Svasti, a young man from Thailand, who eventually became a partner as well.
With the help of Svasti and Tim McNitt, another eager young chef, Medisch was able to develop and refine the restaurant's menu, bringing Back Porch Cafe's cuisine to unparalleled heights, offering fresh dishes like eggplant moussaka, rack of lamb and crispy veal sweetbread.
Several years later, when Fisher died in a windsurfing accident, his girlfriend, Marilyn Spitz, inherited his share in the restaurant and Svasti left to make a name for himself as Chef McDang, Southeast Asia's most famous celebrity chef. Svasti has remained close with the Back Porch Cafe staff, and intends to visit Delaware in February.
LEARN MORE: Thailand's Chef McDang
After Svasti's departure, Medisch and McNitt worked side-by-side for nearly two decades, putting Delaware dining on the map with countless accolades, awards and national recognition. But when Medisch died in 2013, the fate of the influential restaurant was left in limbo.
"We didn't know what we were going to do without him," he said. "Leo was the backbone of this restaurant."
Luckily, he had trained McNitt well.
When the restaurant reopened, he executed the dishes flawlessly, and many loyal patrons were impressed with his cooking abilities that matched, if not surpassed, Medisch's. McNitt has since revamped the menu with a few dishes of his own, but has been careful to honor the legacy of his late mentor.
Once Back Porch Cafe opened, breaking the mold of the typical beach restaurant, dozens of other upscale establishments followed suit.
In the summer of 1980, Joyce Felton, a New Yorker disenchanted with the corporate world, joined forces with Pisapia to open the now-famous Blue Moon in 1981 — an establishment that would not only turn Rehoboth Beach's dining scene upside down, but would triumph as the first openly gay establishment in Rehoboth Beach.
Today, Rehoboth Beach is widely known for its wealth of eclectic and "cutting-edge" dining opportunities, with several James Beard awarding winning chefs and at least a dozen white-linen restaurants, including The Cultured Pearl Restaurant & Sushi Bar, Victoria’s, a(MUSE.) and Eden. The explosion of fine dining even extends beyond its Rehoboth Beach core, to such establishments like Fager's Island in Ocean City, 1776 in Midway and The Buttery in Lewes.
"We may have paved the way, but we didn’t invent the wheel," Fitzgerald said. "People were doing similar things in New York, California and Europe. We were just the first to bring it here. Like I said, right place at the right time. We appealed to the hip, urban, sophisticated palate that was craving something other than a fried seafood platter."
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Back Porch Cafe
Where: 59 Rehoboth Ave, Rehoboth Beach
When: (October hours) Open 6-10 p.m. Thursday through Sunday for dinner; offering 11 a.m.-3 p.m. lunch Friday and Saturday; and 11 a.m.-3 p.m. brunch on Sunday. Closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Call: 302-227-3674
Visit: backporchcafe.com
Diners are encouraged to call the Back Porch for reservations and updated hours at (302) 227-3674. Patrons may also visit www.backporchcafe.com.