Great food,  with a better attitude

Caribbean eatery Ritz is serving up new locations, new dishes and a dash of positivity

By Stephanie Pollard

Photography by Tanisha Palmer-Porter

Ritz Caribbean Foods and Sports Bar is open — in a new location (77 Lower Jarvis St.), with new menu items and to a new kind of crowd. The only thing that won’t change is founder Richard Moore’s standard of quality.

Thirteen years and five restaurants later, it is these standards (plus a betterment mentality) that propelled him into culinary success. “I tend to put my stores downtown to elevate the Black community and to show that we’re part of this city too,” says Moore.

With this new location, Moore’s goal is to replace the once-popular Caribbean restaurant Bamboo, which saw a lot of traffic, especially during Caribana. Speaking of Caribana, Moore is ready for the festivities and to welcome his guests, with a slew of activities. “We’ll be having live bands, there’ll be parties going on the weekends … just good vibes,” he says.

While the menu for the celebration will include old favourites like jerk chicken, spicy fries and curry chicken roti, Moore is also looking to add more variety to cater to the larger numbers. “There are certain things that will be put on the menu.

We want to include the rest of the Caribbean population like Barbados, Trinidad and Grenada. We want to start implementing a few dishes that they carry,” he says. Flying fish and cou-cou, a traditional Bajan dish as well as shark and bake, Trinidad’s roadside favourite, are just two of the many additions with which Moore is planning to spruce up the Ritz menu.

Aside from an exciting menu, Ritz allows you to enjoy an authentic Caribbean atmosphere — whether you are looking for the same ambiance you experienced on vacation, or you’d like to briefly be taken out of Canada. Moore is especially keen on making his restaurants an exception to negative concepts people may have about Caribbean eateries.

“With a lot of Caribbean places you get the comments when you come in there, the people are rude to customers by kissin’ their teeth, all that kind of stuff,” he says. “We need to get out of that. We came to this country to better ourselves, so let’s do that and move forward and be better than everyone else.”

For Moore, part of being better was ensuring that his restaurants were placed away from low-income areas, as well as implementing a zero tolerance policy on any kind of disturbances. However, his betterment attitude did come with its challenges, sadly, from the Black community. “It was like crabs in a barrel,” he says of the jealously he faced. “You try to get up there and they try to drag you down. We need to get out of that mentality.”

Despite the adversities, Moore doesn’t plan on stopping his restaurant expansion with Toronto. “We’re planning on going to Montreal to open up a few stores there,” he says. “I plan on going to Australia and I’m trying to get into China and Japan because these are the markets that really love our food.”

It took a long time and a lot of discipline for Moore to get to where he is with his newest restaurant. He has a key piece of advice for those who yearn to have a successful, Black-owned business: “You gotta have good credit. Without it, you’re dead in the water.”