Mark’s Score 8.7
I am writing this blog because I have come to love this area. It is a great place to live and play. But, like all places, there are good and bad things about the Delmarva. There are three things I particularly do not like, 1) the summers are too hot and humid, 2) I do not like any of the supermarkets in town, and 3) it is almost impossible to find a good bakery. I come from Boston, there is a bakery on practically every corner. My first few years here were a desolation of store-bought bread and pre-packaged pastries. Life is too short to eat pre-packaged pastry. And nothing is so devoid of taste and nutritional value as a loaf of store-bought bread.
Then one day, several years after we moved here, I stumbled upon Del Vecchio’s, hidden in the middle of a commercial block on Green St. I was walking down the street and I thought, “do I smell a bakery?” There is nothing so satisfying as the smell of freshly baked bread, and just a few doors down I saw the sign for Del Vecchio’s. Not only was it a bakery, it was an Italian bakery.
I walked in the door and immediately on the right, stood a whole wall of freshly baked bread. After several years of wandering in the desert of store-bought bread, suddenly an oasis of authentic crusty Italian, and focaccia bread. Even better, the pastry section had biscotti and cannoli. I had found my authentic old style Italian bakery on the Delmarva. It was so authentic I half expected to see a one-handed Nicholas Cage storming up the basement stairs screaming, “Johnny has his hand, Johnny has his girl…”
They do sell coffee, but sadly they don’t have an expresso machine. If you are going to sell coffee in an Italian bakery you have to have an espresso machine. Life doesn’t get much better than sitting at an outdoor café, leisurely sipping an espresso and eating a biscotti. The only thing that would make it better is a glass of grappa to follow the coffee.
Though they are not particularly Italian, I love their Danish and their raspberry bow ties. It is hard to find both of those pastries, I am bored with coffee shop muffins. There is more to life than muffins. I like Del Vecchio’s so much I am willing to travel 12 miles (19 kilometers) just to buy a loaf of bread or a package of raspberry biscotti.
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