Corner Cupboard Inn: It’s time to close the doors

They called it “The Inn That Was In Before Inns Were In.” They served “Eastern Shore Cooking With a Southern Flair.” People drove, rode their bikes and walked to it on the last dirt street in Rehoboth Beach. And soon it will be no more.

The owners of The Corner Cupboard Inn at 50 Park Ave. have decided it’s time to sell the historic property. Leslie Inkster said it’s time to move on from this established piece of old Rehoboth Beach in the section of town known as “The Pines.”

“It’s time to raise our three children in a normal life,” said Inkster. “I’ve been here for 10 years working summers, weekends and evenings. It’s time for a change.”

Inkster said she’s in the process of sending letters to long-time guests of the inn letting them know that it will no longer be open for meals or lodging.

In business since 1935, the Corner Cupboard Inn at one time included 18 guest rooms in two side-by-side houses and a restaurant serving three meals a day. Alice and Jesse Gundry at first rented the houses where they established the inn and bought them a couple of years later. Their niece, Elizabeth Gundry Hooper, known as Els, bought the business and began operations in 1974. Inkster, a second-cousin-once-removed-by-marriage to Hooper, bought the business in 2000.

Before she purchased the business with a former husband, Inkster worked side-by-side with Hooper in the inn and restaurant. “My most vivid memory is being in the restaurant on Sunday mornings and working as a waitress - just humping. With Scotty playing jazz on the piano, you couldn’t help but keep moving.”

In high season, people filled all the tables while others waited outside in the comfortable, book-lined living room that served as the inn’s lobby.

An expansive screened porch served as the dining room, surrounded by the thick pitchy air of salt-glazed pines. Diners ate from plates loaded with fresh kippers, kidney stew, fried green tomatoes and creamed chicken on waffles and listened to Scotty, accompanied by Phil Miller on the bass, playing jazz standards and classic hymns like “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.” It was one of old Rehoboth’s classic scenes.

When the Gundrys were in full swing as innkeepers, they operated the Corner Cupboard during the summer months and the Winter Inn, in the next block of Park Avenue, during the winter. “They served dinner at the Winter Inn,” said Inkster.

When Els Hooper bought the Corner Cupboard, she tried to get a liquor license so her clients wouldn’t have to brown bag in their liquor and wine for meals. The businesses began when there was no zoning in Rehoboth. When the city established zoning, the Corner Cupboard found itself in a residential zone. Though its business operations were grandfathered in and allowed to continue, adding a liquor license was deemed an expansion of a non-conforming use and denied.

“Els took the issue all the way to Delaware’s Supreme Court but ultimately lost the battle,” said Inkster. “With so many restaurants opening up in town, we really couldn’t make a go of it without a liquor license.”

Inskter noted that there’s a contract now on the Winter Inn property, which ceased operations years ago and became a residence; the Lingo Market property is going to auction and it looks likely that that 100-year-old institution will close; and now the Corner Cupboard Inn is closing. “It’s really weird,” said Inkster.

She’s not the only one feeling unsettled. Armand Girard, a Rehoboth summertime resident for decades, worked for a time at the Corner Cupboard for Alice Gundry. He recalled enjoying the work at the inn and later, as a customer, “wonderful candlelight dinners on a soft summer night with my favorite wine.”

For him, the Corner Cupboard was “a refuge of tranquility and peace – away from city life.” In a note to the Cape Gazette, Girard wrote: “With Lingo’s Market gone – I am very sad at the Corner Cupboard leaving. All of ‘old’ Rehoboth is practically gone.”