Downtown Wilmington Restaurants

We can recommend the following restaurants for three good reasons. First, the food is reliably good. Second, the prices are very fair. Third, we can almost guarantee that you won’t be disappointed if you dine in any of them.

Let’s start with downtown Wilmington, since so many visitors do.

One of the older restaurants downtown is Deluxe, located on Market Street between Front and Second. Deluxe opens daily for dinner at 5 p.m., with a menu extensive enough for any craving. Whether you want seafood, pasta, steaks, pork, inventive vegetarian dishes or anything else you have a craving for, you’ll find it at Deluxe. They also have a very extensive selection of fine wines as well as a full bar. Deluxe serves a wonderful Sunday brunch as well.

If it’s lighter fare you want, try Chelsea’s Wine Bar & Eatery, located at the corner of Market and Front Streets. Chelsea’s offers a number of hearty appetizers, paninis, and interesting tapas you won’t find elsewhere. Chelsea’s also has an extensive beer selection and a full bar. Their specialty is the huge wine selection; the restaurant is designed to look and feel like a fine wine cellar. There is a complimentary wine tasting every Tuesday evening at 5:30 p.m., and unlike many other restaurants downtown, Chelsea’s is open daily for lunch, affording a welcome choice for midday meals.

Caprice Bistro, owned by proprietors Patricia and Thierry Moity, has been designated Wilmington’s best French restaurant for the last several years. New Yorkers who are visiting Wilmington will be right at home here; the restaurant feels like it belongs in Greenwich Village. That’s not an accident: the Moitys owned Café de Bruxelles, a highly regarded bistro in New York. Excellent food at moderate prices is offered here, and you’ll find the best mussels in Wilmington at Caprice. Caprice is open for dinner at 5:00 p.m. daily.

Circa 1922, located on Front Street just off Market, offers diners an exclusively tapas menu – small portions of exquisitely presented food morsels. You’ll find a very large selection of appetizers, pastas, vegetarian dishes and tapas items and should order a little of this, a lot of that in the true tapas spirit. Groups of diners often share large mixed platters, a good way to sample several offerings at a time. In addition to a full bar, Circa 1922 also has a very extensive wine list with many wines available by the glass.

Fat Tony’s Italian Pub has two locations in Wilmington, one downtown on Front Street and another on Racine Drive near UNCW and Wrightsville Beach. The huge menu offers everything you would expect and more: pizza by the slice or whole pies with the choice of a host of toppings, appetizers, salads, sandwiches, numerous pasta dishes, and calzones, among many others. What you might not expect is that Fat Tony’s offers the largest selection of draft beers in Wilmington. At last count, there were 25 beers on tap, available by the pint or pitcher. Numerous wines are offered too. Both locations are open daily from 11 to 2 a.m.; on Sunday they closed at midnight.

If just a pick-me-up is what you’re looking for, try Kilwins Chocolates and Ice Cream, located at 16 Market Street. Numerous varieties of chocolates and ice cream are available and a sweet treat may be just the nosh you need to complete your sightseeing, shopping or exploring trip. But if you really want to treat yourself, take home a box of their creamy, made on site fudge. It is delicious.