WAHLBERGS DOT LOUD AND PROUD
Famous fam comes home with Wahlburger food truck
Success and fame aside, the Wahlbergs won’t let us forget one thing: They’re OFD and darn proud of it. Actor Donnie,
chef Paul and their hot ticket of a mother, Alma, proved their local roots are still strong as they showed off Wahlburgers’ new presence in Dorchester.
“There’s part of us who worked really hard to build something for ourselves and for our family, and to follow a dream — dreams that were born here in Dorchester,” Donnie told the Track. “But as much as we always pursued that part of us, we always want to be here, too.”
“We don’t come to town without coming to Dorchester,” he continued. “Just to drive up Dorchester Avenue and go eat at one of the local restaurants
I used to eat at, get a slice at the same old spots …
McKenna’s in Dorchester,
Ashmont Grill — which used to be a full-on bar, everyone would be having fights and now it’s a great restaurant — and just local pizza shops.”
Yesterday’s visit was all business, though. The Wahlberg bunch — including Mark, who briefly videochatted in from his “Instant Family” set in Atlanta — unveiled their new food truck, which will now be in South Bay Center each Thursday through Saturday, and checking out the buzzing construction site for their upcoming brick-and-mortar spot that will also be at the shopping plaza.
“We had to learn to get it right before we brought it back to Dorchester because, if we show
up in Dorchester and screw it up, that ain’t gonna look good,” Donnie said about the long-awaited locale, which they had originally wanted to be the second site within their chain. “There would be nothing worse than coming back to our old neighborhood, opening a restaurant and getting chased out because we didn’t have our system down.”
For the Wahlberg matriarch, it’s especially meaningful for the family to be finally bringing their restaurant to this particular neck of the Hub.
“All my kids were born in Dorchester. We were very poor in Dorchester,” Alma said, chuckling. “But in those days, people helped each other. They cared about each other. It’s a feeling that you can never, never get rid of and you don’t want to.”
“If you didn’t see people for two or three days, you’d say, ‘Uhoh, what’s going on?’ ” she continued, mentioning that one time, she and her fellow Savin Hill comrades stood in front of a family’s apartment to prevent them from being evicted.
“But that’s the way it was back then. People truly, truly cared about each other,” she said. “Everybody was in the same boat. Everybody was getting welfare food, the whole thing. And we all looked out for each other.”
Flash forward to today, where a surge in development has left some areas of Boston nearly unrecognizable compared to a couple of decades ago. While the Wahlbergs have noticed major changes to Dot, they admit the transformation isn’t totally without its perks.
“I want to know how the earth isn’t opening with the weight of all these building that we have. It’s crazy,” Alma laughed.
“On the one hand, there’s a certain charm that disappears when you walk by Ashmont Station and there’s like a skyscraper there — I mean, I call it a skyscraper,” Donnie said.
“But, at the same time, it’s good. If there’s buildings, which there are a lot of being built in Dorchester, that means there’s work in Dorchester, that means the economy must be doing OK for people in Dorchester to be able to afford to live in these places and to want to live in these places. It’s a Catch-22.”