Very Edible Hockessin
This small suburban Delaware village on the Pennsylvania border is the perfect location for a walkable “progressive dinner” experience.
Are you hungry? Here in Hockessin, it’s only a five-minute stroll down the main street for a four-course, four-restaurant progressive dinner – from appetizer to dessert, with stops along the way for a first course and an entrée.
A small crossroads town on the edge of the semi-circle where Delaware kisses Pennsylvania, Hockessin has only around 14,000 residents and no buildings tall enough to give even mild vertigo. The only action here, before or after dark, is the traffic on Route 41, as large trucks roar through at all hours, pausing only for the village’s three stop lights.
Yet Hockessin is rich in restaurants, with more than 30 places where you can sit down for a meal, more if you want to do take out, more still if you count food markets, plus three places to buy wine, beer or stronger stuff to wash everything down.
Right now, we’re on Hockessin’s fine-food restaurant row, a short strip of two-lane road along Old Lancaster Pike from just south of the seldom-used railroad tracks to the intersection of Valley Road, a few hundred feet away. We’ve whipped up a just-for-fun, four-course progressive dinner along this stretch, one where we can easily take a stroll from restaurant to restaurant between courses without breaking a sweat.
Let’s begin our culinary ramble with a rich PEI mussel bowl in the casual atmosphere of George & Sons’ Seafood Market and Oyster House. Walk across the wooden porch and open the door to George’s, and we could be magically transported to one of those large indoor produce markets in the south of France, perhaps the one in Narbonne on the Mediterranean coast. To the right is a brightly lit row of refrigerated counters filled with fresh seafood for home cooks, stocked with everything currently in season that has fins or wears a shell.
To the left is a seafood bar with a sign reminding us to tip the shucker. In between are several small wooden tables for lunch or dinner. Tyler Esterling, the youngest of the “& Sons,” walks in from the back and pauses to tempt us with a bushel basket full of steaming crabs. Hmmm. The menu is quite varied as well, but we stick with the mussels and a draft beer.
The aromas precede Esterling as he soon appears from the kitchen with a host of narrow black shells rising up from a bowl of creamy, yet tart broth accented with shallots, leeks, garlic, glazed white wine and a squeeze of lemon. Fortunately, there are several slices of fresh baguette to soak up the sauce once the mussel shells are emptied – a great culinary “sop story” to begin our food trek.
From there, we head to the Back Burner, which has served as a popular white-tablecloth restaurant for decades. Go there for Saturday lunch and expect to see young couples, old couples and perhaps a bachelorette party in full cry.
Tonight, the blackened salmon salad sounds great, although when it comes it is considerably more than an appetizer portion. There is a full, lightly spiced salmon fillet on a bed of fresh, small greens with black bean and corn relish, all doused with Chef Chris Peters’ piquant cilantro-buttermilk-lime dressing. To the side are slices of avocado and ancho-coated sweet potato. The dish goes perfectly with nibbles of the Burner’s patented flatbread and a glass of California pinot noir.
If the Back Burner represents Hockessin’s old guard, Nal is at the top of its new wave. The restaurant is smallish, but very elegantly decorated from its mirrored walls to its flashy table settings. Mexico natives Miriam and Ruben Peregrina are first-time restaurateurs who have reached not only into their country’s native cuisine, but also into Central and South America “foodlore” for inspiration.
For example, the Mixiote de Cordero is a pre-Hispanic Mexican dish of chunks of lamb seasoned with chilies and other spices and, traditionally, wrapped in agave and pit barbecued. Chef Miriam’s version has the succulent lamb bites tucked instead into an open pouch of parchment paper with corn tortillas on the side along with Oaxaca-style black beans in a drunken salsa – all savory and delicious. Red wine or a Margarita? Margarita!
And, yes, we did save room for dessert!
Chef Bill Hoffman – who owns and runs The House of William & Merry in a 1922 farmhouse along with his wife, Merry Catanuto, a chef herself who manages the front of the house – makes dishes that are both delicious and intriguing. His cooking is classically edgy without the food tasting edgy.
W&M’s kitchen is an open one to the right of the entrance and opposite a small bar. From somewhere among the half-dozen or so chefs hard at work behind the counter, Hoffman calls out his one-question-fits- all greeting, “How’s it going, brother?” Although he serves as a mentor to his mostly young kitchen staff, he is a very hands-on chef.
For his Tahitian vanilla-dark rum-mango crème brûlée, he reaches into the fridge for a rounded, shallow dish of chilled custard, sprinkles it with sugar and then takes an industrial strength blow torch to delicately caramelize the topping.
Since we are walking, not driving, why not pair the brûlée with the toasty barrel flavors of a fine Cognac? Good idea, Chef Hoffman says, but being an American whiskey aficionado, he suggests instead a Hunter & Scott Bourbon from Virginia, which proves be marvelous match.
Satiated with food and drink, we call the evening to a close, grateful for this gem of a town. Altogether, no other town of its size in the state can compete with Hockessin for the quality and variety of its menus and the many dining atmospheres offered.
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George & Sons’ Seafood Market and Oyster House, 1216 Old Lancaster Pike, 302.239.7204, Facebook and Instagram
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Back Burner, 425 Hockessin Corner, 302.239.2314, Facebook and Instagram
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Nal, 1304 B Old Lancaster Pike, 302.239.4539, Facebook and Instagram
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The House of William & Merry, 1336 Old Lancaster Pike, 302.234.2255, Facebook and Instagram
