What’s a Rougarou? Inside Denver’s Hottest New Destination for Southern Food

Where:

2844 Welton St., Denver (Five Points)

The Draw:

Personal, lived-in Southern cooking backed by one of Denver’s sharpest bar programs

The Drawback:

Prices are more Sunday special dinner than Tuesday night drop-in

Noise Level:

Low

What To Order:

Chicken on a stick, Sea Island field peas, blackened Georgia trout, savory martinis

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There’s a Chevron gas station in Oxford, Mississippi, so famous for its skewered fried chicken that locals rarely call the business by its proper name. Instead, it’s simply “the chicken on a stick,” as in: “Meet me at the chicken on a stick at nine.” Mary Allison Wright and McLain Hedges—spouses and owners of the acclaimed cocktail bar Yacht Club in Cole and Five Points’ new Rougarou—once spoke that same shorthand as Ole Miss undergrads.

For their first bona fide restaurant (Yacht Club’s hot dog roster doesn’t quite cut the mustard), Wright and Hedges wanted to capture that back-road-at-dusk, swamp-lore feel. And so they enlisted Wright’s brother, JohnDavid Wright, formerly a chef at Hop Alley, Uncle Wash Park, and Odie B’s, to bring his Southern sensibility to their new kitchen.

Rougarou, named for a mythical, bayou-dwelling wolf man (and pronounced ROO-gah-roo), does not serve a menu most Yankees would think of as Southern: There’s neither gumbo nor shrimp and grits. This is Sunday dinner food from Granny’s kitchen and, yes, Mississippi convenience stores.

At Rougarou, that distinction shows up immediately—not in a headline dish but in a simple-seeming lineup of individually priced dips that set the tone. (Really, how many restaurants even do dips anymore?) Instantly, it feels less like eating out and more like showing up at someone’s kitchen table. There’s sharp pimento cheese with seedy crackers and smoked catfish dip buried under a dusting of brick-red seasoning and sided with house potato chips. The West Indies crab salad is mostly meat but also eats like a dip, perked up with mint and serranos and ready to be spooned onto butter-fried saltines.

Next, you might get Rougarou’s chicken on a stick: chunks of thigh meat that the chef gussies up with sweet pepper jelly and comeback sauce (think: spicy Thousand Island). The skewers have been a popular order (and one of my favorites) since Rougarou opened this past August, as has the flan-soft blue cheese tart, which doesn’t get overly funky thanks to the green tomatoes, pickles, and sweet crust that hit enough opposing notes to balance it all out.

The vegetables are where JohnDavid’s Hop Alley and Uncle chops show up. Charred baby broccoli gets a hit of country ham XO sauce (less fishy than the Hong Kong version), all under a flossy cloud of nutty Mimolette cheese. The fairy tale eggplant arrives two ways—charred and hot from the grill and preserved in cool brine—draped in ancho chile peanut butter sauce and little dabs of ricotta.

They’re both excellent companions to the mains, of which a favorite is the confit-tender Granddad’s chicken, marinated and slow-cooked in a peppery, tangy mayonnaise-based barbecue sauce, chargrilled, and then served with a dousing of more of that sauce. I also loved the blackened Georgia trout topped with roe that pops salty and bright. My dining companions preferred the tower of crispy hot-and-sour catfish and sticky-sweet pork shoulder coated in caramel-like sorghum syrup, tempered by crunchy, pungent chow chow relish.

Of the many dishes I’ve ordered at Rougarou, the only one I wouldn’t get again is the side of braised collard greens. It’s vegan, and I grieved the missing meat, because a little fat does for collards what good lighting does for selfies. The side of Sea Island field peas (a legume similar to black-eyed peas, not the mealy green cafeteria kind) is a much better choice. Maybe it’s the way they’re simmered in a rich vegetable stock until tender but not mushy, or the time they spend in the smoker, or the dates cooked in for a baked-bean-adjacent sweetness.

Coming from the team behind the best cocktail bar in America (as chosen by the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation in 2024), Rougarou’s mixed drinks are of course a big part of the draw. The bar, framed in steel beams and exposed brick, is front and center, with the dining tables scattered behind. Martinis lean savory: One is inspired by the classic New Orleans muffuletta sandwich and another by the Cajun culinary trinity of green pepper, onion, and celery. Even the apple martini isn’t the neon-green pucker bomb I drank at 23; it’s more like a Honeycrisp apple, grown-up and self-assured.

Service is consistently great, with a versatile staff that can get weird with you, if that’s what you’re looking for, or take wholesome, impeccable care of your son’s Kool-Aid on fancy ice. The whole space feels grounded and alive, like a manicured garden on the verge of going wild. Really, my only gripe with Rougarou is that the experience doesn’t come cheap: A meal for my family of four topped $250, so no, these aren’t gas station prices. Still, for food that eats like a conversation, the price feels appropriate for time well spent.

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