Most people probably don’t think much about pizza. For many, it’s something cheap to eat after a night of drinking or a cost-effective way to feed a group of people.
But for Chef Bogdan Mocanu, pizza is a way of life.
Mocanu owns Dolce Vita, one of the newer additions to the Baton Rouge food truck scene. He operates the eatery entirely by himself, from dough-making to dressing and baking pizzas on a wood-fired oven.
Dolce Vita is the end of a long journey for Mocanu — one that began in his home country of Romania. After completing school, he started a job that only paid about $500 per month — a wage Mocanu attributes to the country’s political situation.
Following the advice of friends, he worked in a cruise ship’s restaurant. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, the ship’s crew docked in Port Allen to assist in hurricane relief.
The next day, Mocanu met the woman who would become his wife aboard the ship, which housed hurricane refugees.
“I was the maître d’ at the restaurant onboard, and of course we had rules we had to follow to act professional,” Mocanu said. “But when I saw my wife, I was like, ‘Screw the rules.’”
Mocanu was fired after his employer discovered he was dating a guest. He then made his way to New York City, where his uncle was living at the time.
He worked in Little Italy at an Italian restaurant called Florio’s. Mocanu said his cooking skills improved immensely during that time.
“New York and Little Italy are amazing,” Mocanu said. “I learned so much from that job; it helped me out a bunch.”
Mocanu then moved back to Louisiana and married his wife, but he was sent back to Romania for a year to complete his immigration process.
In 2009, he returned to Louisiana and enrolled in the Louisiana Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge.
“I had done a lot of cooking at places like the cruise ship and a couple of restaurants, but I wasn’t professionally trained,” Mocanu said. “After being trained there, I wanted to work for the best.”
Mocanu was hired at Nottoway Plantation before he left for a job at Domenica, a John Besh restaurant in New Orleans. He said this experience was more beneficial than almost anything else.
“It was there that I learned the technique of wood-firing a pizza,” Mocanu said. “They taught me a lot of other stuff too, like putting the cheese on a pizza before the sauce and just drizzling the sauce over the toppings to complement the rest of the pizza.”
Following his eight-month stint at Domenica, Mocanu moved back to Baton Rouge and worked for the Hilton Hotel downtown. He was then the executive sous chef at the University dining hall, The 5. But Mocanu soon found himself itching for something else.
“The LSU job was great — they paid me well, and I really enjoyed the job,” Mocanu said. “But I really wanted to work not for an institution, but for myself.”
Despite the advice from his friends who said his idea for a pizza food truck wouldn’t work, he had a truck built from the bottom up, customizing it with everything he would need to make wood-fired pizzas.
“I’m really proud of this truck because when I bought it, it was just a flatbed trailer,” Mocanu said. “The coolest thing is the stone from my oven — it comes straight from Napoli in Italy because that was the stone from which I had the best pizza I’ve ever tasted.”
Mocanu opened Dolce Vita early in 2012 and was soon brought into the circle of Baton Rouge food trucks by the owners of Curbside, the burger food truck.
“The guys from Curbside were great. They tried my food without telling me who they were because they wanted to see if it was good enough for them,” Mocanu said. “After they tried it, they invited me to join them at the round-ups on Wednesday, which was a huge boost for my business.
But Mocanu can typically be found downtown at the corner of Fourth and North streets. His day begins early there, with his business opening at 10:30 a.m., but he must arrive at 6 a.m. to begin preparing the food.
Mocanu prides himself on his own creations. He serves the classic pepperoni and cheese pizzas, but he largely prefers his specials, such as the roasted duck with tangerines and a Jim Beam honey glaze.
“I make my specials simply based off of what I want to eat or just whatever pops in my head,” Mocanu said. “I’ll just take a bunch of great ingredients and throw them on a pizza to see how it tastes. If it’s good, then I’ll make that a special.”
While many restaurant owners focus on how to expand their business for more profits, Mocanu said that for now, he’s content with things staying the way they are.
“Right now, I’m making enough money to support my wife and our 17-month-old, which is enough for me,” Mocanu said. “My business has been growing steadily, and there’s nothing I would change. I’m perfectly happy with the way things are.”
