Keith and I went to Rehoboth Beach for the weekend and after a long drive up we got settled in our hotel, and I was eager to get out and explore the town. I was hungry, yet we ventured slightly off the main strip full of beach themed shops and past other restaurants and wound up on a side street. Situated in a cute red historic house, Stingray had modern decorations inside with subtle Asian flare from the color schemes and lighting effects. Since it was such a lovely evening, we chose to sit outside on the porch. Our server, Kari, was gracious and explained the menu to us highlighting the night's specials. We ordered a bottle of pinot gris (Kari's favorite, but I forgot the exact name) while we took more time to study the expansive menu. There were so many items that it was a bit overwhelming. I made the executive decision to stick to sushi only, even though some of the small plates like braised pork spring rolls and Tiger shrimp ceviche looked interesting.
One of the starter specials especially caught my eye, a chilled Thai-spiced watermelon soup with lump crab meat. The soup was lovely, not overly sweet nor spicy, and a great starter for warm summer evenings. The crab meat was nice, but there was a bit too much diced red onion. Keith chose the Shrimp Shumai Dumplings that were quite large with intense shrimp filling, on top of a decadent buttery coconut crab bisque. The wrappers could not hold up to the thick filling and fell apart in the soup. Nevertheless, both appetizers had wonderful flavor and I was very pleased with our choices so far. Next, we settled on three sushi rolls and three sashimi to share for our main course. It sounded sparse at first, but I figured we could always order more if we were still hungry. As we sipped more wine, our plates of sushi arrived with Godzilla (spicy tuna, mackerel, topped with yellowtail), Crunchy Yellowtail, and the sarcastically named but fully cooked Hairy Mexican (fried shrimp, avocado, topped with crab stick and eel sauce). All of the rolls were very good and ended up being plenty for us to share. We also ate large cut sashimi pieces of fresh maguro (tuna), saba (mackerel), and red snapper. The mackerel had a soft salty flavor that I really enjoyed while the red snapper was extremely mild and borderline flavorless, which is not necessarily a bad thing when eating raw fish.
All in all, we had pleasant dinner at Stingray. The sushi was high quality and competitively priced to other trendy sushi joints we've been to. Service was above average and the ambience was a mix of swanky club on the inside with neighborly charm on the porch.
Total Rating: 4
Food: 4, Price: 4, Service: 4, Ambience: 4, Accessibility: 4
What I ate:
Thai-Spiced Watermelon Soup
chilled with lump crab meat and red onion
Sushi Rolls
Godzilla (spicy tuna, mackerel, topped with yellowtail), Crunchy Yellowtail,
Hairy Mexican (fried shrimp, avocado, topped with crab stick and eel sauce)
Sashimi
tuna, mackerel, red snapper
Shrimp Shumai Dumplings
in a coconut crab bisque
