Filling hundreds of bellies each week
Chef Duff uses food to ‘bring love where there is hate’
NEW HAVEN — Chef Paul Solomon McDuffie, also know as Chef Duff and “Dat Hood Cook,” is considered an “angel” by many throughout the state, as he feeds thousands a week on the Green and in neighborhoods and the suburbs of New Haven, Fairfield and Hartford counties.
McDuffie, 54, pretty much a oneman show on the ground, delivers boxes of groceries anywhere they’re needed, as well as and home-cooked meals.
“I’ll go anywhere my vehicle will go ... even if I have to take back roads,” he said. “The need is great.”
What he cooks and donates in groceries, and how much, depends on monetary or food donations each week by grocery stores, universities, individuals and inside food networks. It could be a pasta, even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or two crowd favorites, jerk chicken and chopped barbecued turkey.
Fans say even when his truck was destroyed recently on a mechanic’s lot and all his big chef equipment stolen, including grills, coolers and a griddle, McDuffie was out there the next day. Someone gave him a 2007 van to replace it and, while he’s grateful, it has some mechanical problems, so if he’s going far he now has to take back roads. His tire rod broke Sunday, just as he ran out to get a donation.
Criscio said she wishes he could get another vehicle and is hoping he can get some help.
“When that happened to me I started to go down another path. Ready to give it up,” he said. “But I’m a Buddhist so I don’t stay mad.”
McDuffie said he loves changing people’s lives through food.
“My goal is just basically trying to bring love where there is hate,” he said. “I keep this going because hate goes 24 hours a day and love takes a break.”
McDuffie’s wife of 18 years works as a New Haven Police Department call taker and dispatcher and gives 20 percent of her pay to her husband’s cause. He has been helping people in need of food in various ways since age 15, but it all took off on a grander scale about five years ago
McDuffie said he learned from the best — his late mother Mary Cross McDuffie, a food stamp recipient who had to make every dollar stretch and still managed to help feed other kids in the neighborhood with her big pots of spaghetti and meatballs. As a teen, he was designated by his mother to do the shopping because his siblings were embarrassed by the food stamps. He learned how to find quality in bulk.
“My mother, Mary, raised us by ourselves. She was like my rock,” he said. “She could work miracles in that kitchen.” He grew up in the Newhallville neighborhood and in those days the neighborhood was a mix of Italian, Polish, African American, Hispanic – and they all pitched in to feed one another.
Alder Honda Smith, D-30, who grew up next-door to McDuffie on Shelton Avenue, stopped by the Green to give him some food recently and said, like her, he was always a good kid, never in trouble.
“He’s been a one-man show for years,” Smith said. “I love everything he does. He’s keeping his mother’s legacy alive.”
McDuffie said the need for food has been high for years, but it’s reached extraordinary levels because of the pandemic and job loss, so he’s busier than ever.
Before the pandemic, his average was to feed between 50 and 200 people per day, including meals and groceries, and since COVID the average is 200 per day three to seven days per a week. The peak was 600 to 900 people per day in summer, when he often served breakfast, lunch and dinner on the Green, with the line 100 deep. Those extreme highs came when the soup kitchen was closed, he said.
“COVID has taken it to another level,” McDuffie said.
“You couldn’t tell from the outside they were in need,” he said.
When he brought the boxes in, the tearful woman asked if she could give him a hug.
“You have a quarter-of-a-million house and you have a Black guy pulling up and bringing you food,” he said. “I’m just trying to show people we have positive people of all colors, all races.”
A grandmother, Ruth, who asked her last name not be used, has been donating what she can to McDuffie for years, but recently became the one who needed help, as she had to feed a daughter and grandchildren. She called McDuffie to say she had hamburger to make meatloaf, but needed something to make it stretch.
“He spoke his favorite saying, ‘I got you.’ … It was a weight lifted off my shoulders.” Ruth said. McDuffie showed up with a box of food to last seven days, including meats.
“He is an absolute godsend. I call him my guardian angel – he doesn’t like that,” Ruth said with a chuckle. “He’s an awesome, awesome guy. Really compassionate. His mission is to help the community.”
Jones, Ward 30 vice-chairwoman, said McDuffie is “just never going to be defeated,” including when his truck was destroyed and in moments of trouble just says, “I have to do better.”
“I like his style. I like that he has no problem being social” with the people he serves. “He says take what you want – first come, first served.”
McDuffie begins his day at about 5:30 a.m., checking his texts and Facebook page for requests and donations. If a supermarket notifies him there are 20 dozen eggs available for pick up, some group in need will be having breakfast.
His cozy, immaculate condo is where the magic begins. The doors of the kitchen are fronted with chalkboard so he can make his to-do lists for the day, including the food to be cooked.
His kitchen is fronted by a granite counter that is open to the living room which partly serves as a food pantry for groceries – rows of cans meticulously lined up, spilling over from his kitchen stash. It’s not lost on McDuffie that he’s lucky his wife doesn’t mind the spillover. Buddha statues line the front wall.
In his chef ’s coat and mask, McDuffie started on a recent day at about 11 a.m. making a meal for those on the Green — homeless among them. He already had made grocery deliveries that day and
picked up donations.
On this day, it’s four-cheese baked ziti because those are the ingredients he has.
The sauce simmers on his kitchen stove, a big pot of water is heating for pasta and he’s chopped a wheel of brie, as the other three cheeses already are shredded.
His wife, Jamone Lyde McDuffie, walks around tidying up before her work shift, and said she’s glad to contribute financially because “it’s for a good reason.” The couple met at the YMCA 22 years ago when he was assistant child care director and she was a secretary.
“If we are fine, our bills are fine, I can do a little more,” she said. “I don’t have the patience (to do what he does). He’s excellent person-toperson – they love him. I love what he does.”
McDuffie said of his wife, “She’s been my backbone.”
He is organized, methodical. He portions the pasta evenly into metal trays, adds butter, sauce, the cheeses and puts them in the oven.
“Everything they eat, we eat, if there’s any left over,” Jamone Lyde McDuffie said with a chuckle.
A half-hour later, he loads up the 2007 Odyssey van and drives to the New Haven Green on the Church Street side. He doesn’t have a schedule – he could do the Green several times a week or none. It’s always a surprise when he shows, but the food goes fast.
Sometimes his 22-year-old son or another volunteer helps, but this day McDuffie is on his own.
McDuffie unloads the van, tossing heavy coolers and warmers over a low fence as if they are light as a gallon of milk. His left wrist doesn’t work because of an accident, but one would never know it watching him.
He sets up a tent and uses two tables to serve during the pandemic, one in front where people take the food and he serves from another table in back. He sets up plates, loaves of bread and, in keeping with health rules, separates the utensil packets wrapped in plastic and hanging from the tent.
guard — part-time so he can continue his work — and is thinking of picking up more hours because his slogan is, “Make a little more, give a little more.”
“Doing what I do has its ups and downs. Some of the people I deal with do drugs. I go to bad neighborhoods to see who needs food,” he said.
Some of the calls can be sad. He sometimes gets calls from young children for food, saying they need a meal because a parent can’t give them one.
A friend called him one day about a veteran friend in West Haven who hadn’t eaten in two days – McDuffie delivered meals immediately. In another case, he was met with a . tearful call from a person who apologized for teasing McDuffie about his clothes in the past and was in need of two meals. McDuffie said he never cared about fashion or athletic shoes, buying his clothes at Walmart.
McDuffie said he has people wearing $300 sneakers coming up to him for food, but he doesn’t ask questions.
“My job is to feed you,” he said. “I run it like a restaurant.”
McDuffie said, “People who I thought would never come to me have called me for food …. The worst part of this is when you’ve run out of food and you know you haven’t scratched the surface.”
One of his biggest donors, business owner Troy Nixon, said what McDuffie does is great for the community.
“If we had more people like that the world would be a better world,” Nixon said. “There’s no words you can use to describe him – you have to see him action.”
Lisa Spoerri, a longtime neighborhood friend who recently moved to Derby, said McDuffie will only accepts money to be put back into the cause.
“His heart in the face of heartlessness in these times” is amazing, she said. “He’s out there all the time. He’s the guy who’s always doing something for another.”
She and other supporters are urging the public to donate to McDuffie, because they believe he needs a better vehicle. McDuffie said the 2007 van has “problems” but he doesn’t need another one, just some time to check it out to see if the problems are worth being fixed. He can pay to have it fixed, he said.
McDuffie’s eventual dream is to have an RV or camper that can carry more food and supplies, but that can wait, he said.
“I could show them what Elm City Love is,” he said. “I’m doing my best to show people there are still positive people in the world.”
Spoerri said, “When you find someone like Paul it restores faith and hope.”
“I’ve sent people to Paul and he never turns anyone away,” she said. “He’s struggling like the rest of us, but he gives back every day and his food is amazing.”
A few people who spot him setting up stick around because they know what’s to come.
His rules are strict – women and children first – and if someone breaks the rule, they move to the back of the line.
It doesn’t take long for the line to grow and the food to go – McDuffie isn’t afraid to get on his bull horn and invite people from the other side of the Green: “OK, my people, let’s do this.”
On this day, each person gets a heaping plate of ziti and three pieces of bread.
Some are homeless, some just hungry. Some take their food in a to-go container, others sit at picnic tables to eat together despite the chill.
One man, who didn’t want to be identified, said, “I like the food. I wish there were more people like him.”
“I appreciate you, God Bless You,” one man says as he takes the plate from McDuffie.
McDuffie said they sometimes are joined by police officers, Yale University professors and other passersby, who will give a donation if they choose, but no pressure.
On this day, there was a scuffle about to start after dark when someone thought the food had run out, but McDuffie diffused it, understanding, he said, that it’s what food insecurity and hunger can do to a person. He said there was a time he needed security – even the Hell’s Angels had their turns, but “now I need nobody because they police themselves.”
He didn’t have a chance to pick up water this day, so McDuffie hopped on Facebook Live to make an impromptu plea to his many followers.
“I love to get on the Green. I like cooking fresh, top-quality food because it makes you feel better as a person,” McDuffie said. “It makes me feel good to put a smile on everyone’s face.”
He put his food helping into high gear about five years ago. It started when he was getting out of his security job, had leftover food, and gave it to some teens. He offered them $12 or so to buy more food, but they wouldn’t take it. He then went to the grocery, bought bologna and bread and brought them sandwiches.
“They were so happy,” he said. That was the beginning of what he calls “Mama Mary’s Sandwich Club,” after his mother.
Before that he was known as the neighborhood cook, selling sandwiches and dinners to make money. Now, sometimes if he gets something good, he’ll make luxury meals for 10 of his friends, charge them a decent price and put that money back into helping the food cause.
Although he kept to himself and avoided trouble, McDuffie knows the way of the streets and said he hangs out with reformed criminals , who have become some of his best supporters and donors.
McDuffie still works as a security