At the end of his 2001 music video “I’m a Thug,” South Florida rapper Trick Daddy brings fried chicken into a fine-dining restaurant and provocatively tosses a drumstick into a rich woman’s wine glass.
Almost a quarter-century later, Trick Daddy is still tossing wings — along with ribs and cornish hens — except this time it’s into ovens and deep fryers at his new Fort Lauderdale sit-down, Sunday’s Eatery.
That’s because the platinum-selling rapper, long considered an influential figure in South Florida’s hip-hop scene (with hits including “Let’s Go,” “Shut Up,” “Take it to da House”), is serving up soul food on Sistrunk Boulevard as a side hustle to his music career.
The Miami-raised artist’s new restaurant at 2010 NW Sixth St., specializing in Southern and Caribbean cuisine, is set to throw its grand opening on Saturday, Aug. 30, a block east of the Interstate 95 highway underpass. It will be the second location, joining a flagship Sunday’s Eatery he opened in Miami Gardens in late 2019 with business partner Latosia Colvin, whose popular soul-food chain The Licking has nine locations from South Miami to Orlando.
In a South Florida Sun Sentinel interview this week, Trick Daddy describes being a daily presence at Sunday’s, a name that’s inspired by the soulful Sunday dinners cooked throughout his childhood. He wants patrons to associate Sunday’s brand with his constant visits to the dining room, where he rubs elbows with fans, and to the kitchen, where he moonlights as a line cook.
“Sometimes the restaurant gets overwhelmed with 150 people in line, so I’m up in the back going, ‘Pull T-bones and grilled pork chops!’” he says. “Or I’ll go, ‘Drop two buckets of wings now and pull four mac-and-cheese! We got to get rolling, baby!’
“And when that’s done, I pop in the dining room and take pictures with the people so they put it in their archives and appreciate me being there with them.”
Relentlessly polite and charismatic but rarely humble, Trick Daddy is quick to hype his many food-centric projects and is thoughtful about issues like meal affordability in South Florida. It’s the reason he picked the historic Black neighborhood around Sistrunk Boulevard for the expansion of Sunday’s Eatery, he says.
“I traveled from Maine to Spain and restaurants can get a little pricey. We’re trying to bring employment and good food to the Black community,” he says. “Sometimes we profit a little and sometimes we profit none. We’re trying to pay bills and feed kids, not break the people. We keep a street hustler mentality here, working hard to keep the people happy.”
Pork-N-Beans to lobster pasta
Raised in the Pork-N-Beans Projects of Miami’s Liberty City, the rapper born Maurice Samuel Young can identify with a hard upbringing. He recalls only being able to afford “buying gizzards at the corner store” as a teenager and shopping for sneakers, cologne and clothes at the Opa-Locka Indoor Flea Market. His father taught him and his late half-brother Derek “Hollywood” Harris how to sell crack cocaine, which landed him in prison on his 15th birthday.
Because his mother “couldn’t cook worth a damn,” he instead learned Southern cuisine during summers at his grandmother’s and great-aunt’s bean farm in Homestead, he says.
“Life is short and very valuable and you got to enjoy it while you can.” — Trick Daddy
“I’d get up at 4:30 and pick okra, squash, tomatoes, pole beans, like you’d pick cotton back in the day, and I’d bring them to the truck and they’d pay me 30 cents a barrel,” he recalls. “They made me aware of the different textures of greens and how not to overcook the veggies and kill the nutrients in them, and how to do 15 things with a potato that aren’t french fries. There’s so much more to food than wings or burgers.”
Trick Daddy says he didn’t seriously consider opening a restaurant until 2018. At the time, he starred on VH1’s reality series “Love & Hip-Hop: Miami,” which chronicled his divorce and return to rap. It also captured his public battle with lupus, an autoimmune disease that left him depressed and withdrawn from mainstream music.
“I was at a point in my career where after I found out I had lupus, I didn’t like how my skin was becoming pigmented,” he says. “I wasn’t doing shows or rapping much anymore because I didn’t like my face. But I got out of my depression when I realized I loved living. Life is short and very valuable and you got to enjoy it while you can.”
Trick Daddy is actively touring again — he has an upcoming Sept. 26 concert at the Miramar Cultural Center | ArtsPark — but now his career is dominated by food-centric projects.
Along with an untitled cookbook of soul-food recipes expected out later this year, Trick Daddy hosts a weekly YouTube cooking show, “B—-, I Got My Pots!” In the episodes, he prepares fare like oxtail and salmon croquettes opposite celebrities such as comedian Mike Epps and musician Ky-Mani Marley. And they’re peppered with unfiltered war stories, off-the-cuff musings about the music industry, and self-deprecating jokes about his fame.
“I don’t know how many of y’all know Martha Stewart, but you call her up and ask why the hell Trick ain’t been on her show yet to show her some real food,” he says during an episode featuring rapper and frequent collaborator Trina, as he pours heavy cream into a cauldron of lobster pasta. “I’m sure me and Martha got a lot in common since she did prison time and I did prison time. Invite me to your show. Let me take ’em to the hood.”
‘Remixed’ recipes
Trick Daddy says he derived many recipes for Sunday’s Eatery from his grandmother and “remixed” them with help from his business partner. Entrees include T-bone steak, baked turkey wings, baked chicken and fried or grilled catfish, snapper fillets, shrimp and deep-fried cornish hens ($13.99-$17.99, with a side and a cornbread muffin).
Pork chops, meanwhile, can be ordered fried, grilled or smothered in a rich bacon-shallot cream sauce with Hoppin’ John, a traditional Southern dish of black-eyed peas, dirty rice and pork.
By far his most popular dish: fried pork ribs, tenderized in vinegar overnight and battered in flour and his proprietary seasoning blend, Sunday’s Soul Seasoning, which he jokes “goes good on everything except for your girl.”
Other sides include collard greens, pigeon peas and rice, yellow and shrimp rice, string beans, mac and cheese, candied yams, steamed corn and french fries. For dessert, there’s velvet cake and banana pudding dyed in the blue colors of the Sunday’s Eatery logo.
Trick Daddy says he’s aware that some customers crave affordability as much as his flavors, which is why each order always comes with two pieces of meat.
“The tastes are so impeccable they make your tongue slap your brains out,” he says. “Back when we first opened years ago, one woman asked me for two pork chops instead of one, and ever since then we’ve kept on doing that so the people find value in us.”
Sunday’s Eatery at 2010 NW Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale, is scheduled to open Saturday, Aug. 30. Visit SundaysEatery.com.
