This restaurant is a buffet of art, music with an ever-changing, all-you-can-eat brunch
Ranada Riley’s right forearm is decorated with brightly colored tattoos of food — papayas, avocados, tomatoes — that she often uses in dishes at her popular restaurant, Ranada’s Bistro + Bar in downtown Lexington.
“This whole arm is all about food,” says Riley, 49, pulling back her sleeve. “This is a shrimp” — she points — “but if I gain any more weight, it’ll look like a lobster.”
The line, and the big laugh that follows it, tells you much of what you need to know about Ranada’s, which has quickly become one of the quirkiest, liveliest, most irrepressibly fun spots in town since it opened in 2018.
With her boldly flavored, generously portioned Southern Fusion menu and her love of showcasing the local music, visual arts and theater scenes — including a hopping, all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch with bottomless mimosas and live jazz — Riley has fashioned Ranada’s in her own outsized, life-loving image.
“He said I have a big personality,” she tells her bookkeeper, Donna Barnhill, when I interviewed them recently at the restaurant.
“A big personality?” says Barnhill, digging into Riley’s sweet and savory Southern Charmer burger stacked with pimento cheese AND a fried green tomato AND a slather of bourbon-bacon-onion jam. “I think there has to be a bigger word for it than that.”
Although the weekday menu is dominated by old favorites like bourbon fried chicken and the bourbon bacon burger, the latter notable for its juicy, locally sourced beef and spicy pepper-jack cheese — “It’ll set you on fire,” the chef warns — she does some of her most creative, improvisational cooking for the brunch menu.
“It’s definitely colorful and vibrant and approachable,” she says of her style. “I don’t want to go so far out on the limb that people are afraid to try something different. But I do try to think outside the box.”
Recent brunch forays have miniature Beef Wellingtons, tiny versions of the classic dish with local tenderloin packed into a marinated mushroom-and-shallot duxelles and rolled into puff pastry; Bloody Mary shrimp and grits; and fried chicken with savory cheddar-and-tarragon waffles.
The offerings change throughout the day, and include vegetarian options. During the morning hours the options steer more towards the breakfast side. But then as the clock gets past noon, the bunch gets more of a lunch vibe. The all-you-can-eat brunch will feature 20-30 items and costs $20 while the bottomless mimosas will set you back $15.
“You’re never going to get the same brunch buffet here twice,” Riley says. “If we’re going to have potatoes for brunch, we can’t just do the same thing. Throw some rosemary on there. Or tarragon. Whatever. Take it to the next level.”
At Ranada’s, that next level is about more than the food. For one thing, it’s about the decor, which is homey and a little off-the-wall in a way symbolized by an old upright piano near the entrance that’s been converted into an aquarium. The conversion was done by one of the restaurant’s investors, Tom Finney.
“It’s the whole experience from the minute you walk through the door,” Riley says. “I want it to be inviting. I want people to come in and feel like they get a big hug.”
It’s about the array of local art on the walls, featuring rotating displays of work by local artists and photographers including Melanie Wisdom, Agustin Zarate, Jeff Chapman and Bill Cole, among others. It’s about the old-school jazz musicians, including regular Thursday and Sunday performances by Gail Wynters, Palmer Tolly and Dave McWhorter and his band Threo.
“This restaurant is about local food, local music and local arts,” Riley says. “It’s such a vital part of our culture, our community, and Lexington is so rich in talent — in kitchens, in music, in art, in theater. But live music is dying off in restaurants, I think, in part because we’re in a world that is just so busy. We don’t take the time to just stop and look at some art and appreciate it, really appreciate our food, really listen to some music — and stay off our phone, be engaged.”
And at its core, Ranada’s is about Ranada herself, who currently serves as president of the Kentucky Restaurant Association’s Bluegrass Region. An Ohio native who moved to Kentucky after her parents divorced when she was 15, she studied gerontology and nutrition at Shawnee State and Wichita State universities, and worked for a time in the kitchen of a nursing home.
“The budget that I had to try and feed these people was just ridiculous,” she recalls. “I was trying to feed an 88-year-old person breakfast, lunch, dinner and supplements on like $3.40 a day. I didn’t agree with that, I didn’t like that. In that setting, that’s what people look forward to: eating, the wow on the plate. So it just wasn’t for me.”
Riley underwent what she calls “a life crisis” in her 30s, traveling the country, working in restaurant kitchens, looking for that wow on the plate. She has found it in her own kitchen, right back where she started. That story, too, is there on her tattooed arm.
“The tattoos are about how we all sometimes have a checkered past,” she says. “But if you can find what your heart loves, it can change your life. You’ve gotta cook from your heart, and get your hands in there! Because where your hands are, your heart will follow.”
Ranada’s Bistro + Bar
Where: 400 Old Vine St #108, Lexington
Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tue.-Thur; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Fri, Sat.
Sunday brunch: 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; live music 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; $20, $15 bottomless mimosas
Contact: 859-523-4141; Ranadas.com