CITY GUIDES | NORTHEAST
One Coastal Is Delaware’s Small Dining Room With Well-Deserved National Attention
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By Maria Rodriguez | Feb. 4, 2026
Chef-owner Matt Kern made history when he became Delaware’s first-ever James Beard Awards finalist, and his restaurant, One Coastal on Fenwick Island, explains why. The menu is precise and unshowy about it, even when it is doing a lot: hen of the woods au poivre comes chicken-fried with porcini and green peppercorn gravy; potato and leek soup turns smoky and briny with confit potato, trout roe, and leek ash; and beans on toast shows up loaded with Sea Island red peas, Benton’s bacon, a seven-minute egg, and fried milk bread.
The mains keep the same logic. New Jersey monkfish osso bucco lands over kale and white bean ragout with preserved lemon vinaigrette, and Chesapeake rockfish comes with sunchokes, oyster mushrooms, toasted leeks, and blood orange preserves.
The vibe matches the food: a small dining room, a lively bar with open-kitchen seating, and the kind of tight footprint that makes reservations feel less like a suggestion and more like a basic survival skill in Fenwick Island. Kern’s cooking is rooted in local agriculture and fisheries, and that through-line is the point: big recognition, small room, and a menu that stays stubbornly Delaware.
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