People ask us two questions more than any others. How did a Jamaican family end up in Waco? And how did you come back after the fire? This is the long answer to both.
A kitchen that started in Virginia
My mother, Vivia Charles, was born in Jamaica. In 2001 she and my father opened a Jamaican restaurant in Northern Virginia, where I grew up. That restaurant is where she learned what it takes to cook for strangers every day and turn them into regulars.
My father passed away in 2016. After that, my mother and I decided it was time for a fresh start somewhere new. She had been watching Waco grow on television and felt pulled to it. We started looking at the city the way a lot of people look at places now: on the internet, one street at a time.
Three palm trees on Taylor Street
On Google Earth we found an empty restaurant building in East Waco. It had murals by the Waco artist Ira Watkins on the walls, and three palm trees out front. For a Jamaican family, that felt like a sign. The building needed a lot of work, and we spent years bringing it back before we opened Tru Jamaica at 937 Taylor Street.
We chose East Waco on purpose. We wanted to create jobs in our own neighborhood and be part of rebuilding a part of the city that had been overlooked for a long time.
“The tongue does not discriminate. It loves what it loves.”Vivia Charles, head chef
My mother said that when people doubted Jamaican food would work in Central Texas. Waco proved her right. Baylor students, East Waco neighbors, families visiting the Silos, and people driving through on I-35 all found their way to our tables.
The fire
Then a fire shut the restaurant down. The dining room our family had rebuilt with our own hands was closed for nearly three years. For a small family business, that is long enough to end the story.
It didn't end, because Waco refused to let it. Customers checked on us. Partners at Baylor kept working with us. Neighbors, churches, and other small business owners asked how they could help. We are a family of faith, and in those years we leaned on that faith and on this community every single day.
Cooking from a truck
We couldn't use the dining room, but we could still cook. So we put the food on wheels. The Tru Jamaica food truck kept jerk chicken, curry goat, and oxtail in front of Waco while the building was being repaired. It kept our family working, kept our name alive, and kept us connected to the people who had supported us from the start.
Opening the doors again
Today the doors on Taylor Street are open again. My mother still runs the kitchen. My sister Mercedes is here, along with aunts, cousins, and in-laws. When you eat at Tru Jamaica, you are eating food cooked by one family, in a building that family rebuilt twice.
We also run the food truck, cater events across Central Texas, and operate a licensed commissary kitchen that helps other mobile food vendors in Waco get started.
Thank you for waiting for us. Thank you for coming back. Come hungry.
— Aniceto Charles Jr., co-owner
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