Today’s Special: Deari’e’s Surf & Turf

Talk about a dream summer internship. 

Deari’e Allick, who’s 14 and a student in culinary arts at Eli Whitney Tech, spent the last two months whipping up dishes that range from lamb chops with smashed potatoes to the Pineapple Bowl to, on a recent afternoon, Surf & Turf.

Her boss is her father De’Ari Allick, owner of Dope N Delicious, a pocket-sized joint specializing in southern comfort food, seafood, and soul food at 300 Dixwell Ave. De’Ari learned to cook from his mother Audrey Maysonet. De’Ari passed it on to Deari’e.

“It’s like she gets to see her dream so she can take the torch and move forward with it,” he said, as Deari’e (pronounced dee-Ah-ree-ay) set a piece of steak on the grill in the brightly lit kitchen.

“The meat is gonna take the longest to cook,” she said, pivoting to the cutting board where she chopped a few stalks of asparagus before setting them on the grill. 

Deari’e said she’s been cooking for as long as she can remember. ​“I feel very comfortable in the kitchen, like this is something I know I can do,” she said.

She’s been assisting Allick ever since he began selling meals out of the Westville Manor housing projects in 2019. 

“That’s how we got established,” he said, as Deari’e slid half ears of corn into a pot of boiling water. ​“It went from us selling two dinners, Pineapple Bowls and seafood platters, to us getting our first place in Bridgeport and that brought us here.”

For the last dozen years, Allick has been on another quest. In June 2011, his older brother Donell, a Hillhouse basketball star who played for Providence College and Louisiana Tech, was gunned down in an apartment in the Beaver Hills neighborhood. 

Around that time, De’Ari, himself a decorated shooting guard at Hillhouse, started the Stop the Violence, Start the Love Basketball Tournament, as part of his nonprofit Fearless Builders, which seeks to steer New Haveners out of trouble.

“We’re losing friends every day,” he said at a panel discussion on stemming the tide of violence he organized at Stetson Library in 2014. He was 25. 

“We’re burying friends, we’re burying family members… I’m in the middle era, from all the young kids to all the older people. I feel like my era, my age bracket needs to come out and step out more. So this is me taking a step in bravery, to liberate my peers.”

To that end, Allick, who was selected by Connecticut Magazine as a ​“40 Under 40” influential figure in 2018, was spearheading comedy shows, youth festivals, and benefit concerts. He also founded the Fearless Youth Academy, a summer camp for kids in his community with a focus on entrepreneurship and hobby development. 

“The good thing about our camp was kids got hot breakfast, bacon and eggs, hot lunch, fresh food that me and my moms always cooked,” he said, a siren sounding from the street. ​“It made me realize how many kids don’t get a good meal.” 

In early 2020, Allick heard about an opportunity to open a restaurant at 1500 Reservoir Ave. in Bridgeport.

“I just decided to take a chance,” he said, as Deari’e set pieces of pre-seasoned shrimp on the grill, then sponged down the counter and replaced a few ingredients in the industrial refrigerator.

“Clean as you go,” she said. ​“Learned it during my freshman year, and learned it here from my dad.”

At that moment, De’Ari Jr., 7, emerged from the back area and stood at a distance, watching the proceedings. 

The Bridgeport business, De’Ari Sr. said, ​“was struggling during Covid and was trying to keep things going, so they brought us in as a partnership and we started off from there.”

That meant there was already a full kitchen. ​“Everything was set up for me to succeed,” he said. ​“I told my partners [James Nelson and Kiwa Bolden] that I’m going for it, this is something that I don’t think will come again.” 

It went well. ​“I liked the peace of mind of having a place,” he said. 

While delivering for Slocum & Sons, a wine and liquor distributor, around that time, he noticed a For Rent sign in the window of 300 Dixwell. 

They moved in May 2020, and opened as a take-out spot three months later. 

“It did better than I expected, but we weren’t used to 20 orders coming in at one time,” he said. By then Deari’e had sliced the beef and was arranging the strips over a bed of rice and beside the asparagus and shrimp. 

“We never had that overflow and rush when we were in Bridgeport. But it just forced us to work a little harder, be a little better, get up a little earlier.” 

Since then, ​“we’re expanding, we’re elevating,” he said, with eater.com recently naming Dope N Delicious one of 13 essential dining destinations in New Haven, as well as a back area he created for outside dining.

“So they wouldn’t have to deal with the street traffic,” Allick said.

There, in the sanctuary-like space, David James was enjoying steak over eggs while reading ​“The Marathon Don’t Stop: The Life and Times of Nipsy Hustle.”

“De’Ari is doing a real good job,” said James, an old friend of Allick’s. ​“It’s awesome. It’s good for the community. A lot of his friends come and eat and enjoy his food. It’s a nice spot for everyone to hang out.” 

The challenge, Allick said, ​“is they’re gentrifying all over, so it’s a lot of confusion of what direction the community is going.”

With that comes a sense of instability. ​“We don’t own the building, so the landlord can sell once Yale comes at them,” he said, watching Deari’e add the seafood-based, umami-rich D n D sauce. ​“If Yale comes at you with $1.5 million, and you value us at $400,000, you’re going to take that.”

He thanked Alder Troy Streater for his ongoing support. (In a separate interview, Streater praised Allick’s efforts. ​“Who better to represent this area than De’Ari, who was born and raised here?”) 

That’s how Allick views it, it seems. ​“I see this as an opportunity to reinvest in this community while bringing delicious food,” he said. 

That, and, ​“bringing awareness to violence and being pro-active and having preventative efforts put into place, and that’s our basketball tournament,” he said. ​“That’s programming, that’s mentorship, that’s being there for our youth.” 

If Deari’e’s creation was any indication, Allick is succeeding, from the steak, with its tender juicy interior and crust charred to perfection; to the shrimp, succulent and enlivened by a hint of rosemary. With the corn and asparagus absorbing their flavor, the dish as a whole evoked the rich comfort of grandmother Audrey Maysonet’s kitchen.

“This is about having a business that feeds my neighbors good food and disrupting generational cycles of violence,” he said. 

That starts with everyone Allick can reach in his Dixwell neighborhood, but especially with Deari’e.

“She’s a natural,” he said.