Bardea Restaurant Group is taking over management of the DE.CO food hall and is renovating the former Stitch House Brewery
The buzz on Market Street in downtown Wilmington is all about Bardea—and with good reason.
The restaurant group—which owns Bardea Food & Drink, Bardea Steak, and The Garden at Bardea on the 600 block of Market Street—is renovating the former Stitch House Brewery at 829 N. Market St.
However, the ripples running through the business district concern Bardea Restaurant Group’s partnership with Buccini Pollin Group to manage DE.CO Food Hall at 111 W. 10th St.
“We’re taking over the whole food hall,” said Scott Stein, who operates Bardea Restaurant Group with Chefs Antimo DiMeo and Pino DiMeo. He says the original concept was a great idea, but “with the challenges since the pandemic, it’s hard for small operators. A food hall is not the [business] launchpad it originally intended to be.”
Bardea is no stranger to DE.CO. The group’s Pizzeria Bardea was an original vendor, and Taqueria El Chingon opened in early 2022. Those two will remain, along with Al Chu’s Sushi.
In early 2025, the company will open Casa Nonna, a full-service restaurant, in DE.CO.
The strategy breaks with the approach that made food halls so popular between 2016 and 2020 when the next generation of the food court included a mix of artisan restaurants, food purveyors and other boutique businesses.
What does that mean for the concept, which blends the community with the culinary?
Delaware’s First Food Hall
Before the pandemic, food halls popped up in cities such as Philadelphia and Chicago. Some are substantial endeavors. DeKalb Market Hall in Brooklyn is 36,000 square feet.
These attractions differ from a traditional mall food court in several respects.
Vendors are often new entrepreneurs who want to test-drive a concept. If they are chains, they feature an elevated take.
Most food halls—including DE.CO and The Chancery Market Food Hall & Bar—have alcohol, as does The Market at Liberty Place food hall in Kennett Square, one of the area’s first.
Some might say that Riverfront Market is Delaware’s first food hall. However, the original Wilmington Riverfront market was part farmers market.
The Buccini Pollin Group (BPG) opened the 12,000-square-foot DE.CO in 2019 in the DuPont Building. The name, pronounced Deck-oh, is short for Delaware Collective, and the eight original vendors, including Al Chu’s Sushi and Pizzeria Bardea, offered choices in an attractive environment.
The pizza stand is an offshoot of Bardea Food & Drink, which opened in 2019.
Weathering the pandemic
The 2020 pandemic closed down restaurants just before DE.CO’s first anniversary. By September 2020, Stripp’d, a cold-pressed juice stall, had departed.
Admittedly, an operator’s decision to leave a food hall is multifaceted, maintained Gaby Indellini, who handles marketing for The Chancery Market Food Hall and Bar, which opened in 2022 at 1313 N. Market St.
“I don’t know that there’s any one-size-fits-all answer,” she said. “Three [Chancery] stalls turned over because of new locations—bigger places that vendors can run on their own.”
For instance, Justin Womack of Oath 84 had a restaurant on King Street when he opted to take a stall in The Chancery. He left to open a location on 902 N. Market St.
Dan Butler moved staff from his pizza stand in The Chancery to the Blue Bird Café when it opened on 500 Delaware Ave.
Eat Clean left in 2023 because owners wanted to focus on the 225 N. Market St. site, according to a Facebook post announcing the change. However, the Market Street space later became Marley & Me Pet Spa.
As with any restaurant, concept missteps and a lack of business acumen can contribute to a vendor’s decision to depart.
Andrew Cini, who owned Mezze in The Market at Liberty Place from 2017 to 2018, opted to leave because he wasn’t earning enough. He’d rented the space to use the kitchen for his catering business, but he was so busy with the retail that he couldn’t do outside jobs.
At DE.CO, BPG replaced some available stalls with proprietary concepts, including Rebel Ramen and Stu & Sammy’s. (The group also operates Makers Alley at 804 Orange St. and Wilma’s at 900 N. Market St.)
But other operators remained interested. For instance, the Bardea Hospitality Group opened the El Chingon kiosk to meet the demand for casual takeout and keep Bardea’s kitchen crew busy during the post-pandemic lulls.
The new normal
Bardea’s Antimo DiMeo and Scott Stein
Even before 2020, Bardea Food & Drink decided to nix lunch, partly because it did not showcase James Beard-nominated Antimo DiMeo’s range, Stein said. Once COVID hit, “the writing was on the wall,” he noted. “Our lunch business shifted to DE.CO.”
Market Street restaurateurs say that office workers are returning, but only on select days of the week—typically Tuesday through Thursday.
Many use delivery services, which also benefit the food halls. According to BPG, DE.CO achieved sales in 2024 that were comparable to pre-pandemic times.
The two food halls remain alluring for workers like Dan Sanchez, who hits them before other restaurants.
“They offer a variety of options but are most cost-effective,” explains Sanchez, director of advancement and communications at Prevent Child Abuse Delaware, located in the Community Service Building at 100 W. 10th St.
That said, food halls are not immune to the challenges facing all restaurants. Think worker shortages, rising food costs and cost-conscious diners. The sector is experiencing a shakedown.
For example, the 11-year-old Gotham West Market in Manhattan will close at the end of this year.
In 2022, the Deco, also in Manhattan, closed. New owners are expected to turn The Bourse Food Hall in Philadelphia into a wedding venue, and Foodie Hall in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, closed last summer.
A full-service solution
Chris Buccini of BPG Group said that Wilmington’s residential population continues to grow by about 300 residents annually, and they want food and drink options.
Stein and the DiMeos had more than a few ideas, particularly since Pino DiMeo oversees the two DE.CO stands. The partners felt that DE.CO’s attractive bar seemed disconnected from the rest of the food hall.
“If I’m going to a bar, I don’t want to put a food order in through my phone, get up and go get it, then bring it back to the bar,” Stein explained. “We’ve gone to food-hall environments all over the country, and the one thing missing is the dining/restaurant aspect.”
They approached BPG about opening the full-service Casa Nonna (Grandma’s House), a 70-seat trattoria and bar designed by Stokes Architecture + Design, which worked on Bardea Steak and The Quoin. It will be inside DE.CO but distinct.
“It was a natural fit to build on our partnership with Bardea, leveraging their expertise, to take DE.CO to the next level,” Buccini said. BPG will retain management of Wilma’s and Makers Alley.
After the new restaurant opens in January 2025, Stein and his team will address the kiosks. “We want to tighten up operations and have all the food at a certain quality level,” Stein explained. Al Chu’s Sushi will remain independent.
He said Bardea is not receiving any grants or incentives for the project. (The Chancery Market received a grant from Delaware’s Transportation Infrastructure Investment Fund.)
Bardea has a lot on the plate
DE.CO is not Bardea’s only project in progress.
Stein and the DiMeos learned that Stitch House was for sale through networking.
The restaurant wasn’t on the team’s radar, Stein acknowledged. However, the partners saw the opportunity to create a concept that complemented Bardea Steak and Bardea Food & Drink, which he called “anchors” on the downtown scene.
By opening new spots, the partners can ensure that new restaurants won’t compete with existing establishments. Indeed, in the culinary world, there is safety in numbers; national restaurant chains have long put their concepts side by side.
Roost Pub & Kitchen in the old Stitch House space will leverage the brewing operation to produce beer for all the group’s locations. “We want to have a product that represents Bardea,” Stein said.
As the rumor mill starts spinning, some may feel that Bardea Restaurant Group is gobbling up downtown real estate, a sentiment some would apply to its partner, BPG.
That’s not unusual in Wilmington. Rewind to the MBNA halcyon days, and the DuPont Co. reign before it.
Until other developers and ambitious entrepreneurs step up to the plate, to the victor go the spoils. As one Reddit user stated on a Wilmington board: “Until they start jumping the shark and putting out bad food or service, I’m not ready to hate on them just for opening new spots.”
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