
Chris Jay
Fish tacos, a special at Brenda's Puerto Rican Kitchen.
Each time the front door of Brenda's Kitchen Puerto Rican Cuisine in downtown Leesville swings open, cool air carrying salsa music and the unmistakable scent of frying pork slips out. The flag of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, known as “la Bandera,” hangs in the window next to a sign that reads: “Welcome, Y’all!” Inside, multicolored pavas—straw hats traditionally worn by sugar cane cutters, coffee pickers, and other agricultural workers in Puerto Rico—hang from the walls. These straw hats represent the culture of jibaros, or rural farm workers. They signal to customers who are familiar with Puerto Rican culture to expect food that is hearty, unpretentious, and richly seasoned—in other words: expect country cooking.
Co-owner William “Rico” Sanchez Ocasio, a retired Army veteran, looks after the front-of-house, while his wife of thirty-seven years and co-owner, Brenda Sanchez, leads a small, talented team in the kitchen. Rico is from Vega Baja, a beach town near San Juan known for its numerous beaches and crystalline, electric-blue waters, while Brenda hails from Morovis, a small town further inland.

Chris Jay
Tostones rellenos at Brenda's Puerto Rican Kitchen
The couple opened the restaurant in September 2021 after a trial run selling plate lunches out of their home kitchen went surprisingly well. Neither of them had any experience in the restaurant industry, but Brenda was developing a reputation as an outstanding cook among members of the local Hispanic community. She’d learned to cook from her grandfather, Nitin Acevedo, who she recalls being one of the most revered cooks in Morovis.
“We have a lot of Mexican restaurants (in Leesville), but most of the Hispanic people here are Puerto Ricans,” Rico said. “My wife is very passionate about Puerto Rican cuisine, which is a blend of Taíno, Spanish, and African traditions. So, we decided to follow her dreams and to open the restaurant.”
Brenda and Rico wound up signing a lease on the former home of The Leesville Café, where locals had gathered to eat, socialize, and catch up on local news for ninety-five years. The space opened for the first time as a restaurant, Leesville Sandwich Shop, in 1929. It operated continuously as a family-owned institution, with only brief interruptions for renovations and changes of ownership, until it shuttered permanently in 2014. “In the past you could pretty well find out what was going on in the parish just by eating there,” a local told the Leesville Daily Leader in 1987, in one of many articles written over the years about whether or not the business could continue to survive economic hard times. It could be argued that no other address has occupied a more central role, for a longer time, in the public life of Leesville, and that the Ocasios hadn’t just leased a building in the heart of Leesville; they’d leased the heart of Leesville itself. Whether or not it could be brought back to life hinged on whether or not rural Louisiana had a taste for the cuisine of Puerto Rico.

Chris Jay
The kan kan pork chop at Brenda's Puerto Rican Kitchen
Much of the menu at Brenda’s Kitchen revolves around two staples of Puerto Rican cuisine: pork and plantains. Carne frita consists of juicy, crisp-skinned chunks of golden-brown pork served with arroz con gandules, a savory mixture of seasoned rice and pigeon peas that is one of the national dishes of Puerto Rico. Thick, crisp green plantain chips called tostones are served with nearly everything that’s not already accompanied by mofongo, a garlicky, double-fried plantain mash. Costillas de cerdo are Puerto Rican-style pork ribs prepared in a pressure cooker and glazed with Brenda’s homemade guayaba barbecue sauce. The restaurant’s top-selling item, the chuleta kan kan, is an unusual-looking (to mainland audiences) cut of pork that includes a rib, two loin pieces, pork belly, and fatty skin that’s been scored before frying so that the final product has a crisp rind of half-molten chicharrónes.
For guests who happen upon Brenda’s Kitchen expecting chips and salsa, fajitas, and frozen margaritas, jovial manager Chris Jordan assists the navigation of the traditional menu with patience and without pretension.
“When I first came here, I had no idea about Puerto Rican culture or any of that,” Jordan said. “Then, when I saw the menu, I saw fried chicken and pork chops, and I was like: ‘Oh, y’all are doing Southern food!’ But those are staples of Puerto Rican cuisine, as well.”
Rico and Brenda have gone to great lengths to make the restaurant’s relatively small menu accessible to different types of guests. There is an American-style kid’s menu, but many Puerto Rican favorites, such as the undeniably fun and delicious empanadillas de pizza and fried sweet plantains, are already great for kids. Brenda’s signature mofongo can easily be made vegan. The fixed lunch and dinner menus, served Tuesdays through Saturdays, consist solely of dishes that are traditionally Puerto Rican, while daily specials provide opportunities for Brenda and Rico to experiment and have fun. Brenda’s take on birria tacos, which began as a one-off, has been so well-received that it’s become the restaurant’s Thursday special and one of its top sellers.

Chris Jay
An empanada from Brenda's Puerto Rican Kitchen, described by the author as the best he'd ever had.
To round out the experience, there are Puerto Rican sodas like Coco Rico and Kola Champagne, as well as Medalla beer and a variety of hard-to-find Puerto Rican rums. Nearly every cocktail on the menu is made with rum, including a refreshing twist on the classic daiquiri that replaces the lime juice with passion fruit. For dessert, choose from three varieties of homemade flan (Brenda claims the cream cheese flan as one of her personal specialties) or tres leches cake.
Rico isn’t surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response he and Brenda have seen these past three years. From the beginning, they knew in their guts that honest home cooking, made with love, would find a receptive audience in a rural community that has never had a restaurant of its own in the area. Within a year of opening, Brenda’s Kitchen presented Leesville’s first-ever Hispanic Heritage Festival, which is now a popular block party held annually in mid-September.
“Just think about what the people need, what the people who you see every day want to have in their community,” Rico said. “If you give the people what they need, you can’t fail.”
Learn more about Brenda's Puerto Rican Kitchen on the restaurant's Facebook page.