WORCESTER — The Mama Roux food truck behind Dive Bar shines as the late-night rain pings off its exterior. It’s a Friday night in April and there’s a line of people waiting in the rain for Jonathan Demoga to make them a fried chicken sandwich and boudin balls. Demoga takes each order and promises to bring the food to them when it’s ready. He’s almost too big for the truck: his shoulders wide and slouched forward as he leans in his thick flannel shirt, his hair a wild mane under his hat, his beard far from hipster-sculpted. Demoga slips the ticket above his head and gets to work. On the glass in the front of the trailer, there are a few stickers but there’s no menu pasted on the truck — the menu is in a plastic holder on the counter. It pains Demoga to see his truck get gummed up. There is one sticker, though, that tells the story of Mama Roux: “New Orleans State of Mind.”
Demoga’s truck gets its name from a Dr. John song, and the food recalls the late blues/jazz musician’s roots in New Orleans. It’s a love letter to a city Demoga lived in for a little more than a year, working as a cook at Cafe Adelaide. While Demoga’s time was spent cooking classic New Orleans cuisine, Mama Roux plays on those expectations the same way Dr. John used blues and jazz to tell stories by taking a form and creating something new.
Demoga’s fried chicken sandwich is buttermilk drenched, served on a Martin’s potato roll, and topped with Worcester’s own Royal Pickles. It’s a take on the traditional Southern classic that brings something from his hometown to make it his own. The boudin balls, jambalaya on this night in April, nail the traditional notes but adapt to local products — andouille is replaced by smoked kielbasa from Golemo’s Polish Market. A gumbo dish a few months later is silky smooth with a lighter than traditional roux made with bacon fat instead of oil. It felt like a grandmother could have made it, but with years of culinary training — the love and technique married, giving me the most decadent meal I had eaten in months.
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Demoga left New Orleans for love, following his girlfriend to Austin, Texas, where he saw the potential of food trucks and worked on a few for a time. Eventually he returned to Worcester — where he had had his first cooking job making sandwiches at the Worcester Country Club as a teenager — bringing food truck thoughts with him. In June 2017, he opened Mama Roux.
“I like the control,” Demoga says. “I like that I do everything myself because there is so little room for error, and if there ever is a problem it is on me. Everything that I’m selling goes through me.”
Demoga lived in the Tatnuck neighborhood in Worcester until third grade, when his family moved to Shrewsbury. He didn’t think to pursue cooking after graduating from high school. Instead, not knowing what he really wanted to do, he went to Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y., as a mass communications major but ended up studying film. He spent three years at Iona before figuring out it wasn’t for him. He transferred to Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island and enrolled in the four-year intensive culinary program.
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In college, Demoga visited New Orleans for spring break and loved the city. He returned in 2012 for a cousin’s bachelor party and met up with some friends who offered him space in a pool house if he wanted to move down. Demoga accepted the offer, packed his bags, and shipped off to New Orleans.
At Cafe Adelaide, Demoga worked for chef Carl Schaubhut, who recalls Demoga’s slow and steady pace in the kitchen. Demoga took pride in his work and made sure the finest details were met, like using plates that were kept at the right temperature for each dish.
“You could tell he had a culinary mind,” Schaubhut said.
Demoga met his girlfriend one night when she was visiting the city with some friends. She lived in Austin. They made the distance work until Demoga decided it was time to make a move. He packed and left New Orleans for Austin with no job. In Austin, the pay for cooks was so low, he struggled to find work. He found a few gigs cooking on food trucks and fell in love with the model. The truck owners helped the bar by offering food, and neither side had to deal with the huge costs of running a kitchen. Then, at Christmas, Demoga’s dad told him he had ALS and his time was short.
Demoga and his girlfriend packed their things and drove north. Demoga took a job at Armsby Abbey, Worcester’s iconic beer and farm-to-table restaurant. After nearly two years, Demoga left the Abbey to become a chef for a fraternity at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a job that gave him more time to see his dad. At the same time, he approached Alec Lopez, the owner of the Abbey and Dive Bar, about opening a food truck at Dive Bar. Lopez always wanted food at the Dive, but had no way of getting a kitchen installed. A food truck solved that problem and he wouldn’t have to be in charge of it: Demoga could cook the food he wanted, and the Dive would have food to compliment its beer list. Demoga parked his truck by the patio and started his next culinary adventure.
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“Everything John does, he’s committed to it,” Lopez says.”He’s done his due diligence.”
Demoga dug deep into his time in New Orleans, and Mama Roux started to get immediate attention. With his limited menu and hours, he can focus on something new every week and perfect it with hours of research ahead of time. Part of this involves sifting through old community cookbooks he’s picked up in his travels, and the result has been offerings like twice baked saltines with parade cheese, which has people begging for more.
Kevin Koczwara can be reached at kkoczwar@gmail.com.