Fine-dining pioneers reunite in Rehoboth

The founders of two now-iconic Rehoboth Beach restaurants reunited at the Back Porch Cafe to reflect on their experiences bringing avant-garde fine dining to the seaside town.

Back Porch and Blue Moon co-founder Victor Pisapia, who now owns a corporate team-building business, Victor's Food, in Australia, was traveling when he reunited with current owners of the Back Porch Cafe including Marilyn Spitz and also met with former business partner Joyce Felton, with whom he opened the Blue Moon in 1981.

"Rehoboth has changed a lot in 40 years" Spitz said. "When we started here, there was only one red light between Rehoboth and Lewes, and that was at Route 24. There was one grocery store, and there were cornfields everywhere."

Pisapia had worked as a waiter at the Dinner Bell Inn, the predecessor to the Bellmoor, before he partnered with co-worker Libby York in 1974 to open the Back Porch Cafe.

Together they set out to revolutionize Rehoboth's deep-fried dining scene on a shoestring budget of $7,000.

"The Back Porch was here before anything was here," he said. "The tables were built from salvaged boardwalk planks after a winter storm."

Pisapia recalled their desire to serve the freshest local ingredients and his own learning experience moving from the front of the house to the kitchen.

"We just did what we wanted to do when we opened this up," he said. "I was to do the cooking, so I got this book, "Cooking for Crowds," and started the Back Porch."

Soon after, the team expanded, hiring chef Leo Medisch to work in the kitchen, and Pisapia's college buddy, Keith Fitzgerald, came to town for what he thought would be two weeks. Fitzgerald is now a co-owner with Spitz; Medisch worked his way up in the kitchen and would for decades act as executive chef for the Back Porch.

Medisch battled health problems later in his career and passed away in 2013, but he passed the torch to executive chef Tim McNitt, who trained under him for 18 years and has carried on the tradition of superior ingredients, slow-cooked style, creativity and consistency.

"Our kitchen staff is very stable, and one reason they stay is because we let them do whatever they want," Spitz said. "Our pastry chef can do whatever she wants; in the winter, she is a chemistry teacher at Cape High School."

A few years after opening the Back Porch, in 1980, Pisapia met Felton in New York City and brought her to work at the Back Porch for a summer. She had previously been running restaurants for Macy's in New York when they decided to bring some of the city to Rehoboth and opened the Blue Moon in 1981.

"The Blue Moon was really a social experiment," she said. "I think we were a little more urban – we were the first restaurant with a New York vibe," setting itself apart with haute cuisine, style and art in an inclusive atmosphere.

"Before we even opened up, there was a lot of buzz that we were opening a gay restaurant so there was a bit of spice," Felton said.

She compared the early days of the Blue Moon to the glamorous excesses of the notorious nightclub party scene of Studio 54 in New York City.

The restaurants challenged a lot of old assumptions about dining and divisions in the town, Pisapia said, revolutionized downtown dining in Rehoboth Beach.

"We were pre-AIDS, we were pre-fear, we were pre-everything," he said. "We were very free."