Starboard Sauced
In ancient courts, the jester could speak the truth to the king with impunity. But today, given safe spaces and trigger warnings, being an honest jester carries risk, but so too, does the king carry risk in exacting revenge against an honest jester. Dewey Beach’s entertainment king, the ubiquitous Starboard, stands for many things, including operating perhaps the most well-known and popular bar/club in the State of Delaware and being tied to numerous restaurants in the Delmarva region. Opening in 2023 a neighboring stand-alone pizza and sub place made geographic and economic sense, as last-call patrons stumbling out of Starboard and every other local bar need a place to grab a slice or a late-night sandwich. Perhaps the owners, catering to the flood of drinking revelers packing the streets nearly every summer night looking to carb-load their pending hangover, never thought anyone would notice pizza quality – uninspiring red sauce slathered on cardboard tasting dough and run through an oven – or that the subs, while arranged in front of you, still taste like a disinterested grocery clerk made them by the dozens during his early morning, hangover-induced shift. The former Mama Celeste owners would be embarrassed. Still, Sauced packs them in, owing perhaps to its plum location or maybe because some target visitor palates are too old and tired to appreciate Gen Z food preferences, although at $4 - $5 per slice and $20 per pie, perhaps Gen X is the intended audience? In some ways, Sauced serves a purpose, offering post-bar closing or walk-to-the-beach slices that tease you into thinking there has to be a better fast food alternative – there is: bake a frozen pizza from the local drug store because while the preservatives are no healthy substitute for the tubs of fresh sauce and dough ruined daily by Sauced, your taste buds do not care about the preservatives you ingest, and neither does your brain at 1:00am when the bars close and it remains in a frozen state of disinterest from the pints of crushes you already downed. Hmm, the jester is cautious: maybe red sauce slathered cardboard is not so bad after all . . .
