In the Kitchen: Nick and Monica Gillespie Expand Dune Brothers with Fox Point Restaurant

New takes on classic seafood using “trash fish” are the lynchpin of a seafood shack’s expansion

Posted

Lobstah rolls, cuppa chowdah, and stuffies are quintessential to the coastal New England dining experience. According to the RI Food Council, the Ocean State’s seafood and commercial fishing industry generates over half a billion dollars in gross sales annually for the state, with numerous beachfront clam shacks and waterfront dining venues populating the scene.

The challenge is standing out as the best seafood spot. With their focus on sustainability, acquiring fresh-off-the-boat catches, and devising consistently delicious recipes, the original Dune Brothers seafood shack has stuck out from the crowd like a pearl in an oyster. Now, husband-and-wife team Nicholas (Nick) and Monica Gillespie have opened a new, expanded location in Fox Point. The dine-in restaurant offers “refined seafood dishes” with an attached fish market, combined with a takeout window that offers classics from the original fish shack as well as a late-night menu on weekends.

This vision has been a long time coming. Nick grew up on Cape Cod, where his father was head chef of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and his grandfather was head illustrator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. His first job was in the laboratory’s kitchen before he trained at other restaurants along the Cape, attended the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, and continued his love affair with seafood while working in fine dining restaurants in Nantucket and Boston. Nick met Monica, who had been working on the customer-facing side of restaurants since she was 16, in Portland, Oregon. They married, moved to Providence, and launched a pier-to-plate concept that spoke to Nick’s passions.

Dune Brothers sources seafood directly from local fishermen and farmers. “It gets them paid more, keeps dollars in Rhode Island, and reduces the carbon footprint,” Monica explains. “In 2024, there is no good reason for locally caught squid to be traveling to China to be processed and then sent back to our restaurants here, when we could be paying our neighbor to do the same job. It’s about equity.” 

In this case, economic and environmental equity starts with the idea of sustainable seafood. To protect the vitality of the ocean, the Gillespies “put a concentrated effort into cultivating a market for the species commonly referred to as ‘underutilized.’ These fish are in our local waters, plentiful, possibly even invasive, and unlike more common species, there isn’t as great of demand,” Monica says. The hope is that by using these fish, Dune Brothers will not only create awareness about some of the broader issues of the fishing industry (like overfishing), but will also bolster local fishermen by buying the unwanted catches, starting a trend of using alternative species to make classic seafood dishes. “In the early days, people would scoff at Nick for using things like dogfish, butterfish, whiting, and scup to make classic fish shack dishes where you’d traditionally only see things like cod or haddock. Now we get patrons who’ve driven up from New York and New Jersey.”

The concept is simple: “buy directly from fishermen at a fair price, make it taste good, and from there a market grows,” says Monica. After seven highly successful seasons at the fish shack, a market has indeed grown for what Dune Brothers serves up. “We are immensely proud of the quality and volume of food our team is able to produce out of a tiny trailer, but it is also very challenging to meet the summer demand when we simply don’t have the infrastructure to support it.” The year-round location in Fox Point will allow the Gillespies the space to achieve their dream of serving customers comfortably and efficiently, while highlighting even more underutilized seafood.

For first-time visitors to Dune Brothers, Monica admits that a warm butter lobster roll will always be a winner. However, she’s been told more than once that the Original Fish Sandwich is “life changing.” Made of pollock (an underutilized species), battered in Cape Cod-brand potato chips, fried, and placed between a brioche bun with Vermont cheddar, house-made slaw, tartar, and bread-and-butter pickles, it perhaps gets at the heart of the Dune Brothers’ culinary philosophy: “we’re paying tribute to the classics, but we’re making them our own.”

 

Dune Brothers

170 Ives Street

DuneBrothers.com

@dunebrothersseafoodshack

 

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here



X