Start from 20 curated places around Smyrna, DE, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Brick Works Brewing and Eats
Smyrna's craft-beer anchor, housed in a converted brick building on Dupont Boulevard. The rotating tap list of house-brewed ales pairs well with a menu of elevated bar food — think cast-iron cornbread, smash burgers with local cheese, and rotating seasonal specials. Loud and lively on weekends.
Boondocks Restaurant & Package Store
A no-frills seafood shack on Lighthouse Road that has been family-run since 1982. The crabs, clams, and rockfish come from nearby Delaware Bay watermen. Cash-only carry-out option alongside a tight dining room. Lines form on summer weekend evenings — worth every minute.
Trails & outdoors
Bombay Hook Wildlife Drive & Walking Trails
The 12-mile auto tour loop at Bombay Hook doubles as the best wildlife-viewing experience in Delaware. Three short walking trails (Raymond Tower, Bear Swamp, and Shearness Tower — each roughly 0.25 miles) branch off the drive to elevated 30-foot observation towers overlooking the impoundments. Flat terrain, all-ages friendly.
Tybout Tract Trail (Blackbird State Forest)
A quiet 2.1-mile loop through the oldest parcel of Blackbird State Forest, purchased for conservation in 1941. Wide, well-marked, and well-maintained paths through mature forest with scattered benches. A 2,200-foot wheelchair-accessible nature interpretation trail branches off the main loop. Dogs welcome. Almost always uncrowded.
Things to do
Smyrna Opera House Cultural Arts Center
The nonprofit Smyrna-Clayton Heritage Association programs nearly 30 performances annually in this meticulously restored 1870 venue — everything from community theatre and musical revues to folk concerts and holiday shows. Tickets are priced for locals, not tourists, making it one of the most accessible performing-arts experiences in the state.
Painted Stave Distilling Tastings
Delaware's pioneer craft distillery runs regular guided tastings Thursday through Sunday in their Commerce Street tasting room. The experience is informal and educational — staff walk you through the distillation process and pour samples of whiskey, rum, vodka, and seasonal specialty spirits made entirely on-site.
Landmarks & sights
Smyrna Opera House
Built in 1870 and the last surviving second-story opera house in Delaware, this extraordinary building at the corner of Main and South streets has hosted Frederick Douglass (1880) and William Jennings Bryan (1900). Restored in 2003 after a 1948 fire, it now functions as a working performing-arts venue staging nearly 30 productions a year — theatre, music, and community events.
Duck Creek Historical Society & Smyrna Museum
The Smyrna Museum complex on South Main Street is home to one of the last original examples of late-18th-century Swedish Delaware plank dwelling architecture — a cabin discovered during a house demolition and carefully relocated here in 1962. The Duck Creek Historical Society runs free rotating exhibits on local history and maintains archives spanning 200+ years of Kent County life.