Special sauce returns to the Grove

Calvin Williams used to stand at Douglas Road and Grand Avenue selling ribs, chicken and collard greens to residents and visitors to the Village West community.

“There was a time when in this town here everybody used to do it,” said Williams, a life-long resident of the community known as the West Grove.

But in 2006, he stopped selling his food on the street after being told that he needed a license to keep his stand.

“The laws changed and I had to come inside,” said Williams, who is now set to open a new restaurant, Golden Ribs, at 3809 Grand Ave. He is partnering with Myriam Angulo, who owns Coral Bagels.

“We knew that this type of restaurant was not in the area, and it was the type of food that appealed to the area,” Angulo said. “It was a menu that wasn’t being served.”

Williams found the property after House of Wings shut down in March. The new restaurant, primarily a takeout place for lunch and dinner, will be open daily. Opening Day is pending a green light from the state in the form of a license, but the owners anticipate an early October start date.

The restaurant will cater to the culinary culture of West Grove with Southern home cooking, offering ribs, chicken and fried fish. It also will offer side dishes including conch salad and oxtails.

“People here like real food and the flavor of real food, food that their mothers and grandmothers made for generations,” Angulo said. “They want real meat. They want a real piece of chicken. They want fish that’s fresh. It’s almost getting back to basics.”

Leon Leonard described Williams’ food as being similar to Southern family recipes.

“I don’t know the recipe for his special sauce, but I know it’s special,” said Leonard, a city of Miami police officer. Leonard grew up with Williams in the West Grove. “It’s like homegrown.”

Williams will stick to the basics while experimenting with a few innovations. Although it’s still in the planning stages, a “Grove Burger” will be one of the menu offerings, Williams said.

“The Grove Burger, it goes along with the Grove,” he explained.

Because Williams’ food is known, the two Golden Ribs owners say they are less afraid of opening a restaurant during the recession. The two say the demand for Willliams’ food will bring people from all over Miami.

“There was a lot of demand for his food,” said Angulo referring to Williams who cooked up specialties last year at the bagel shop. “A lot of people from the West Grove started to come over to Coral Bagels following him.”

According to Angulo: “Everybody was saying, ‘When are you gonna do ribs, when are you gonna do ribs?’ We have that lunch special every other week, and on that day it’s packed.”

Williams has been in the restaurant business since 1969 an dsaid he started cooking because he enjoyed helping others.

During Hurricane Andrew, most of the restaurants were shut down in the West Grove. As a result, Williams fed most of the neighborhood.

“I just like feeding people,” he said.

Angulo began cooking as a hobby. She would have dinner parties for friends before she and her husband Mike took over Coral Bagels, 2750 SW 26th Ave., in 2005.

“It had a business face but it was more appealing for me to be able to put together what I liked for my hobby into a business application,” Angulo said.

Now the two will put together what they both know to make Golden Ribs a success, they say.

“Part of the beauty of being in a larger community is that you have a wide variety of people with different tastes, different lifestyles,” Angulo said, “and you have the opportunity to serve them.”