DO Delaware: It's beer garden season. Cheers!
RAISE A GLASS
Constitution Yards Beer Garden is back on the Riverfront. After a successful debut last summer, the beer garden (308 Justison St., Wilmington) opens Friday afternoon for a special three-day spring opening that runs through Sunday. (It re-opens April 28 and then begins a seven-day-a-week schedule.) Connecticut-based Imian Partners, operators of the 20,000-square-foot beer garden for the nonprofit Riverfront Development Corp., have added two additional sand pits, as well as wood decking throughout the main beer garden area. A new overhead cabling system has also been added to support more substantial shade sails. Expect a return of craft beers and barbecue fare, although with more vegetable-themed alternatives to the meat-heavy BBQ offerings. Games like corn hole, bocce, life-size Jenga and Wiffle Ball will return with new badminton nets complete with illuminated shuttlecocks for nighttime play. This weekend's hours are 4 p.m. to midnight on Friday, noon to midnight Saturday and noon to 9 p.m. Sunday.
PARTY
A month into her run as a contestant on VH1’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Wilmington native Peppermint will come home to perform at the city’s lone gay nightclub, Crimson Moon. The Wilmington High School graduate and New York-based drag performer will meet fans at the club (1909 W. Sixth St.) starting at 8 p.m. Friday. A viewing party for the fifth episode of “Drag Race,” which will feature singer Meghan Trainor as a guest judge, will follow at 9 p.m. Peppermint will then perform in the club's upstairs showroom at 10 p.m. There is a $5 cover at the door.
ANTICIPATE
One of Delaware's favorite Tex-Mex eateries is coming to the 'burbs. El Diablo Burritos has confirmed it's opening its fourth location in Pike Creek. Workers on Tuesday were hammering away in a gutted space in The Shops at Limestone Hills off Limestone Road (Del. 7). An El Diablo sign is attached to a window at the site formerly occupied by Berri Yummi Frozen Yogurt. El Diablo was founded in 2010 in Wilmington's Trolley Square Shopping Center off Delaware Avenue. Partners Roger Andrews, Dean Vilone and Shannon Stevens were looking to elevate simple street foods like burritos, bowls, quesadillas and tacos and perfected the build-your-own-concept. They also have locations in the Branmar Shopping Center off Marsh Road and at 127 E. Main St. in downtown Newark. The opening date for the Pike Creek location is not yet known. The other El Diablo locations are open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Visit the El Diablo Facebook page for more information.
GIGGLE
When Philadelphia-based weed-themed game show “Weeding Out the Stoned” first came to Wilmington in February, a sold-out crowd was waiting. And now, it’s back just in time to piggyback onto 4/20. The game features 16 comedians on stage and all but one has been smoking marijuana. Host and fellow comedian Alex Grubard plays a police officer, grilling each of the contestants and forcing them to do sobriety test challenges, word games and more. The audience votes one participant off after each round. There will be two performances Friday night at Bootless Stageworks (1301 N. Broom St., Wilmington). The early show is at 8 p.m. and the second kicks off at 9:30 p.m. Tickets for the show, which is regularly staged at Philadelphia’s Good Good Comedy Theatre, are $10 for each performance.
EATS
Rehoboth Beach is known for the diversity of its cuisine. It has had Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Russian, British, French, Spanish, Brazilian and Greek eateries, but few, if any, Indian restaurant options. That's changing this summer. Indigo is a new Rehoboth Avenue eatery opening soon that will offer Indian cuisine. It might be the first Indian restaurant for Rehoboth, if not the entire resort area. In fact, it's hard to name another Indian restaurant in all of Sussex County. The restaurant at 44 Rehoboth Ave. is taking over the spot formerly occupied by The Dough Roller, a pizza and pancakes restaurant. Indigo owner Raghu Kumar says his family already operates India's, a well-received Indian restaurant founded by his father Suraj Kumar that's been based in Annapolis, Maryland, since 1992. The family has been searching for a second restaurant location for some time. "We're excited to be here," Kumar says of Rehoboth. "We've been looking around for a while. We finally got the location we wanted."
NOTICE
Delaware's been getting some love on TV in the unlikeliest of places. And no, we're not talking about Delaware native Ben Warheit, who's been known to drop Mr. Celery and Dewey Beach references into sketches on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" as a writer. And we loved it, but we're not necessarily talking about the scrapple shout-out in a recent episode of 'Match Game' with an exchange between host Alec Baldwin, Mario Cantone and Martha Stewart. It was a Chipotle commercial that turned our head. In it, Sam Richardson (the inexhaustible Richard Splett from "Veep" and star of Comedy Central's "Detroiters") admits, during what is essentially a fireside therapy session with a pianist that takes place inside a burrito, that he's never been to Delaware. We're ready for you, Sam. Please visit.