Baton Rouge, LA 70817
225-753-5375
http://www.ronniesribs.com
For ten years now, Veronica (Ronnie) Carter has been producing the great tastes of Jamaica right here in Baton Rouge. Lured away from her native homeland by husband Jimmy Carter (no, not the peanut eating crazy ex-President) she has successfully transformed a little corner of a nondescript strip mall on Jones Creek Rd into a culinary paradise.
The main feature of the restaurant is the daily buffet, served at both lunch and dinner for the extremely affordable price of $7.95 and $8.95, respectively. Featured are a small but delicious variety of Jamaican staples, from smoked jerk chicken and pork to steamed veggies, mac & cheese, salads and soups. Along with the jerk pork and chicken on the buffet, menu items include Ronnie’s famous jerk marinated smoked ribs; tender baby back ribs that spend some quality time in her homemade marinade of Jamaican spices before being smoked over wood from the native Pimenta tree. This tree produces berries, which when dried become allspice. This wood along with the allspice flavor are essential elements to authentic Jamaican cuisine, and Ronnie adheres to that religiously, despite her geographical disadvantage.
One of my favorite dishes she offers is featured on the buffet, and is a delicious variation on a Cajun staple. Brown stew chicken is basically the chicken stew that most of us grew up on, but with the volume turned up to eleven. It’s very flavorful, seasoned well with her Jamaican spice mixture, but not spicy hot. One common misconception about Jamaican food and jerk is that it is extremely spicy. While the Scotch Bonnet pepper is used (also known as the Habanero), it is not the main spice, and it’s use is typically quite minimal. Ronnie’s offers jerk sauces on the buffet, one mild and one spicy, so you can enjoy based upon your desired degree of heat.
Besides the buffet and smoked meats, Ronnie’s also does some specialty items, including smoked and fried turkeys and rum cakes. These items are prepared with the same homemade care and quality that goes into all her food. The turkeys are injected with Ronnie’s own homemade mixture made from a combination of fresh fruit juices and spices. Her spice mixtures are also on sale at the restaurant, made from only quality whole spices and not loaded with salt. As a brief aside, if you don’t know, ingredient labels on products you buy list the ingredients in the order of quantity, meaning that the first item on the list is the one present in the largest amount in the product. This is why in most store bought spice blends you see salt as the first ingredient. While this is a very cost effective method of stretching out the more expensive spices, it isn’t the way she does things.
That same level of quality control is present throughout everything she does, and you can actually taste it when you visit her restaurant. If the food and the affordability haven’t already convinced you, her personality should seal the deal. She warmly greets everyone who enters and makes sure that you are comfortable and satisfied with your meal.
So, before you pull up to the drive thru to retrieve that burger from beneath the heat lamp, served up by the incoherent headset wearing drone that has all the enthusiasm of a root canal patient, think about visiting Ronnie’s Ribs. You’ll be glad you did.
