As Southern & Wild as Ever
Baton Rouge hot sauce connoisseur and butcher Jordan Ramirez is thriving as a restaurateur.
Observing Jordan Ramirez in action is like watching Tony Hawk at the skate park. Keep your eye on him, there will be unexpected maneuvers.
Ramirez has been a fixture of the Baton Rouge food scene since he started working at Tsunami in 2006, before stepping up to manage the specialty foods section at Whole Foods. That experience, he said, opened his eyes to new ingredients, which inspired quite a bit of kitchen tinkering and experimentation.“Whole Foods was basically my culinary school,” he laughed.
It was during this time that, with the help of the LSU Ag Incubator, he fired up his hot sauce brand, Southern Wild, a luscious blend of habanero spice and olive oil, bottled and sold in local shops.
After leaving Whole Foods, he accepted an opportunity helping Galen Iverstine open his original butcher shop on Perkins Road in 2016, receiving world class training in nose-to-tail butchery along the way. In no time at all, his awards from local cooking competitions festooned the service counter.
Seven years later, on a Tuesday night close to quitting time, I’m sitting at the bar at the first restaurant Ramirez could call his own—Baton Rouge’s beloved Pan-Asian hotspot Chow Yum Phat. Opened by Ramirez and Chef Vu Le in White Star Market in 2017, the eatery found its home in the Perkins Overpass district in 2019, and still serves Southern Wild hot sauce on its Taco Tuesday specials.
“I love combining Southern and spicy flavors,"—Jordan Ramirez
I’m passing up the tacos, though, opting instead for the day’s special frozen drink and my first attempt at The Mandu: spicy beef bulgogi dumplings, fried, with melted cheese, kimchi salsa, Gochujang aioli, pickled jalapenos and scallions, and a big bowl of curried vegetables rich with lemongrass-infused coconut milk. As I scrape my chopsticks together, about to dig in, someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s Ramirez out of kitchen uniform, dressed in a pressed shirt, his coffee brown hair tumbled loose from his traditional backward ballcap, stopping by the restaurant after scooping another Best of 225 award, the third consecutive for Chow Yum Phat.
“Crawfish put us on the map,” Ramirez says of Chow Yum Phat’s lip-tingling, Vietnamese version bathed in lemongrass butter and served with edamame, quail eggs, and handfuls of fresh cilantro—along with Louisiana’s traditional corn and potatoes. When it isn’t crawfish season, diners can experience more of what Ramirez describes as ‘fun food,’ including ‘slurping-is-encouraged’ noodle bowls, crispy fall-off-the-bone tender wings tossed with funky sauces, dumplings steamed or pan-fried crisp, and fluffy bao buns stuffed with almost anything, including a soft shell crab or hot chicken.“I love combining Southern and spicy flavors,” he said.
The pro tip for dining at Chow Yum Phat is to go with a table full of friends—allowing for a more expansive sampling experience. The enticing menu makes it almost impossible to order for a single or table for two—when this is the case, order extra for the next day’s lunch, or make plans to return again and again to get the full experience. From the small plates section, the tempura-ish salt-and-pepper cauliflower tossed with fresh jalapeño slices and Yuzu aioli is my go-to, and I can never resist the crispy fish curry.
Ask your server what the restaurant’s most popular dish is, though, and they’ll tell you the ‘Oskar’s Wild,’ ramen bowl, with its smoky broth and Korean beef, kimchi and perfectly-cooked halved egg—named for Ramirez’s now six-year-old son Oskar. His four-year-old daughter June’s namesake dish is the vegetarian version, with house-made vegetable stock. “We roast a bunch of vegetables to make the stock and blend it with soy milk to make it creamy. It’s one of my favorite things,” he said. “I pour it in a coffee cup and drink it for breakfast.”
Celebrating almost four years at Chow Yum Phat’s overpass location, the ever-adventurous Ramirez has some new things up his sleeve. Next door, the beloved old watering hole George’s is now ZeeZee’s, a neighborhood bar and eatery Ramirez opened with other community partners in December. When word got around about opening a George’s-reminiscent community-centered concept (which also nods to the old Baton Rouge institution of Zee Zee Gardens) CYP’s proximity made it a no-brainer for Ramirez to get on board, creating a slightly-elevated barfood menu. Speaking on the success of the last six months, he is quick to salute the kitchen and recommend a menu favorite. “The made-in-house pizza rolls are insanely good,” he said. “Every game, it’s packed. It’s a really cool atmosphere.”
A pinnacle of fresh ideas steeped in respect for Baton Rouge tradition, Ramirez’s last decade seems ever-seasoned by momentum. His gears are always churning. Speaking of his family, and their impact as sustaining inspiration, he mentions his admiration for his sister Janie Ramirez’s venture as executive chef at Dai Due in Austin—a farm-to-table restaurant where everything served is produced in Texas. “I’d love to go work there for a week one of these days,” he said. And I wonder to myself how long before he’ll conjure up a similar concept in Baton Rouge. It’s anyone’s guess. For now, he is happy to credit his success to his wife, Erica. “All the things I’ve done inevitably led me to wanting to open a restaurant, and my wife giving me the support to go out and do this. I blame it on her, for better or worse.”