Aniceto Charles Jr. cracked the seal on a Dr Pepper on Wednesday and sat down at a freshly lacquered table in his family’s Taylor Street restaurant, Tru Jamaica. In the kitchen, a craftsman installed gas ranges as afternoon light slid across the walls.
Nearly three years ago, those walls were covered in soot after an electrical fire scorched the interior in December 2022. It’s been a long road to recovery for Charles, who has operated the beloved East Waco Jamaican joint since 2019 with his mother, Vivia, and sister, Mercedes.
The wait is almost over.
Tru Jamaica’s soft reopening is planned for mid-August — “hopefully just before schools open back up,” Charles said. “We’ll be ready to tempt Texas tummies with Jamaican cuisine.”
A more elaborate grand opening is planned for this fall, once the inevitable kinks of running a brick-and-mortar restaurant are worked out.
Charles said customers can expect a gradually expanding menu with salads, more veggie options and eventually breakfast and late-night drive-through service. He is also hoping to secure a liquor license farther down the line, so he can serve up classic Jamaican rum cocktails from the restaurant’s new quartz countertop.
“It’s like I’m getting a new toy,” Charles said, taking in the rehabbed and handsomely remodeled restaurant. “I feel so much relief, but more than anything I feel joy.”
Community lifeline
Numerous setbacks made what was supposed to be a yearlong rebuilding process into an exhausting, expensive and nearly three-year saga to get to this point, Charles said, but he remained steadfast in his commitment to the restaurant.
“Of course it’s been hard when you’re like, ‘The money’s not there, the bills are piling up, the city is being the city,’ but I never lost hope,” he said. “God doesn’t want us to fail, and when I say us, I mean everybody.”
Wacoans in ways big and small showed they didn’t want him to fail either, praying with him at the supermarket or donating money for repairs. In the case of the restaurant’s outdoor mural, artist Ira Watkins offered touch-ups in exchange for a plate of oxtail.
During the rebuilding process, Charles moved the restaurant into a food truck, which quickly became a staple on the Baylor University campus. Baylor’s law school and basketball team, as well as the Waco Foundation, continued to book Tru Jamaica for catering gigs, a key lifeline for business as he financed restaurant repairs.
“Waco is a community that loves,” Charles reflected, and he and his mother look forward to returning the favor in the way they know best: sharing food.
A family’s legacy
In 2016, Aniceto Charles Jr. and his parents decided to make a new home in Waco (Vivia Charles was a fan of HGTV’s Chip and Joanna Gaines), but food was the family’s route to community long before the move, too.
They operated a Jamaican restaurant called Caribbean Carryout in Virginia in a former Pizza Hut location.
“My father, who was Venezuelan, learned to cook Jamaican food from my grandmother, and my Jamaican mother was like, ‘Hey, I know how to cook too,’ and everything evolved from there,” Charles said.
“(My father) told me restaurants are a great way to be a part of the community, to get to know people, to talk to people… and I’m a people person,” said Charles, who cashed out his 401(k) to help purchase the Taylor Street building in 2017 and realize his parents’ dreams in a new city.
The property even came with three palm trees, perfect for a Jamaican restaurant. It was also affordable, compared with downtown, without being too far from the city center.
But the elder Charles died just before the family moved, leaving his wife and children to carry on the tradition of cooking for others.
“This is really an homage to my father,” Charles said.
For eager diners seeking updates on the restaurant and announcements for opening day, Charles encourages them to follow Tru Jamaica on Instagram or Facebook. You can also donate to the Tru Jamaica GoFundMe page to support rebuilding expenses.
Disclosure: The Waco Foundation is a financial supporter of The Waco Bridge, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from individual contributors, foundations and corporate sponsors. Donors play no role in guiding the journalism produced by the Bridge. Find a complete list of them here.
