With garlic butter and brotherhood, Dee’s Xquisite Seafood expands to New Orleans East (2024)

It started with a three-part recipe and the kind of grind that propels a good idea from the backyard to the street to a full-time restaurant. Now, that same equation has brought a second location of Dee’s Xquisite Seafood to a part of town in need of new restaurants.

This new iteration of Dee’s Xquisite Seafood opened last week on Lake Forest Boulevard in New Orleans East. It’s a major step up from the first Dee’s, which opened in 2020 as a takeout shop on St. Bernard Avenue. Dee’s No. 2 has table service, a greatly expanded menu and a large bar in the center of the operation.

But even with a new menu that runs through po-boys, pastas and seafood platters, Dee’s still revolves around the distinctive way with boiled seafood that founder Demond “Dee” Matthews devised, and it’s one that doesn’t stop at the boiling pot.

It starts with Dungeness and snow crab legs, shrimp and other shellfish that are first boiled to soak up spice, then run over the grill to add a whiff of smoke and fire, and finally splashed with a heady garlic butter sauce.

Boiled seafood tossed in sauce is a trend that has been growing in recent years, with the Viet-Cajun template being perhaps the best-known style. Matthews made his own approach, bringing that flame-licked flavor.

When a batch arrives before you, there’s an aromatic wave of butter, garlic, herbs and cheese. The butter sauce gets into the crab and shrimp and sides as you pull apart meat from the shells. You take a few more paper towels off the roll and keep going.

Brotherhood and boils

The story at Dee’s has always been propelled by family, and Matthews defines that in a way that goes beyond his blood relations.

Dee’s Xquisite Seafood started as a street food side gig for Matthews, who was working full time as a mental health tech at University Medical Center. On the weekends, he sold plates on the sidewalk outside of bars on North Claiborne Avenue and by his brother Barry Matthews' barbershop, Xquisite Styles, on Louisa Street.

He was steadily earning a following and had plans in the works to open his own location on St. Bernard Avenue. Then the pandemic hit. Instead of folding, Dee’s Xquisite Seafood soared.

Working off the street, Dee's was already set up for curbside pickup, which suddenly was the only way many people were getting their seafood fix. The Dee's crew would regularly sell out. Matthews added more people and more equipment, and he’d still sell out. There was a car line of customers stretching block after block.

As the business has grown, and Matthews needed more help, he turned to the men who have had his back all his life, friends from the old days growing up in the former Florida housing projects.

Since opening his first restaurant the lines have persisted. Matthews today says he plans to upgrade that first St. Bernard Avenue restaurant, bringing more of the expanded New Orleans East menu.

Expanding in the East

The new Lake Forest Boulevard restaurant is a big place, with a four-sided bar in the center of the room and a mix of high-top tables and banquette tables. All the tables are topped with Dee’s logo, a buttery crab come to life against the New Orleans skyline, based on a mural by artist Kentrice Schexnayder.

From the expanded menu, you can fill those tables with crabcake plates drizzled with Dee’s garlic butter sauce and chargrilled oysters that get a dose of the same sauce. There’s crusty, crunchy fried shrimp with a sweet, subtly spicy barbecue sauce and cheesy spinach dip. The pasta dishes are rich, with one bringing a thick, well-spiced cream sauce thoroughly coating linguine and a gleaming cut of seared salmon over the top.

Dee’s is a place that goes big all around. The boiled platters (called packages) are catering-sized trays that could feed a family, or perhaps keep your hands busy through all four quarters of a football game. They range from $30, for Dungeness crabs, shrimp, sides and turkey necks, on up to $120 with steaks, lobster tails and progressively larger combinations of crustaceans. Then there’s the outlier — the $400 “Big Easy Platter,” which is basically a fishing boat of seafood.

Dee’s Xquisite Seafood

8700 Lake Forest Blvd.

Wed.-Sun. noon-8 p.m.

1401 St. Bernard Ave.

Wed.-Sun., 1-8 p.m.

(see updates on hours and availability at instagram.com/deesxquisite).