A Jewish and Cajun bakery is opening in Queen Village next week
Rougarou Baking opens April 11, with live music, Southern spiced fruit cake, and other exclusive pastries on opening day.
Every Sunday from 2024 to 2025, Paige Wernick would wake up at 3:30 a.m. to bake jambalaya-stuffed hand pies and chocolate babka in her Queen Village apartment while her husband Zach would prep and set up a table outside their home. By 9:45 a.m. a line of hungry neighbors circled the block, arriving 15 minutes early to the couple’s pop-up to score their popular sweet and savory pastries.
Those lines — at least at their apartment — will soon be a thing of the past.
On April 11, the couple will open Rougarou Baking in Queen Village — the former home of Eso Ramen Workshop — with breads, baked goods, and pastries that represent their Jewish (Zach) and Cajun (Paige) backgrounds. Customers walking into the 900-square-foot bakery — with family photos hung on buttercream yellow-painted walls, antique furniture, a hand-carved bread rack, a custom countertop made of hand-carved Louisiana cypress, and a blackboard menu — can expect live music, hummingbird cake (Southern spiced fruit cake often made for celebrations), and exclusive pastries on opening day, which will run from 9 a.m. to sellout.
Paige, an early childhood educator who grew up in “deep South” with generational roots in New Orleans and the gulf coast of Florida, and Zach, a culinary professional with family from the greater Philly area and roots in southern Florida, met and fell in love in working in a Florida restaurant in the fall of 2017. “He was a line cook and I was a server — classic," Paige said.
The couple moved to Philly in 2021 to be closer to Zach’s family, and worked throughout the local culinary industry. Paige bounced between teaching and baking pastries at Machine Shop, Scampi, and Chez Alice Patisserie in Lamberville. Zach worked at Brick Farm Tavern in Hopewell and Curiosity Doughnuts in Furlong.
Missing their roots, the couple sought a creative outlet to share the flavors of their upbringings. A pop-up bakery featuring Jewish and Cajun baked goods was their solution.
“We were both homesick,” Paige said. “This is our way of striking a balance of staying in touch with the cultures we grew up in.”
As bakery owners, the Wernicks have the same mission: to be a neighborhood spot focusing on recipes and flavors representing their childhoods, heritages, and future together.
Take the bakery’s name, for example: Rougarou is a swamp werewolf from cautionary tales Paige grew up hearing. “I have a big love for folk history, and the Rougarou is a tale told at Lent when Catholics give up certain indulgences — sweets being one,” she explained. “Also our dog Trout resembles the cryptid so it seemed fitting.”
Rougarou’s menu will have eight to ten pastries, similar to ones on the pop-up menu. Some examples: New Orleans praline, challah, cardamom bun, king cake, brown butter chocolate chip cookies, chocolate babka, and jambalaya hand pies. There will also be a bread program with at least two kinds of loaves and Ace Outpost drip and cold brew coffee on tap. (The Queen Village coffee shop has sold their pastries since the pop-up’s inception.)
The Wernicks also plan to offer grab-and-go beignet days, host community events, and support Mardi Gras krewes (groups that plan parades for the Carnival season).
“A big thing that I found in Rougarou is that a lot of other Louisiana or southern transplants find us, which is super sweet,” Paige said. “I found a pretty big community that I wasn’t expecting. Having other people reach out and say, ‘Hey, I like having this representation — which is a pretty niche representation — means a lot."
Rougarou Baking: 526 S 4th St., rougaroubaking.com, @rougaroubaking, hours: Friday to Sunday, 8 a.m. to sellout (or 4 p.m.).