BOCA RATON – Nestled in the heart of West Boca Raton is Rancheritos Latin Restaurant. The restaurant, which has been open for more than 17 years, offers a menu largely inspired by traditional Colombian cuisine, featuring dishes such as Bandeja Paisa and Sancocho.
The restaurant also features dishes from other Latin American countries, such as fajitas and flautas from Mexico.
For Juan Maya and Viviana Molina, owners of the establishment, providing a space that reminds customers of their own Latin American countries is more important to them than catering solely to a Colombian audience.
“We want a Latin identity and a homey atmosphere, where people feel at home; that’s what we want more than anything,” said Maya in Spanish.
15.4% of Boca Raton residents identify as Hispanic or Latino, according to the 2024 Census, and, according to Data USA, the majority of the area’s Latino community consists of Colombians and Brazilians. This is evident in the area’s plethora of Colombian and Brazilian restaurants, including Rancheritos.
Arriving in the U.S. in 2006 from Medellin, Colombia, Maya and Molina hoped to expand their active online business, “Virtual Tienda,” which sold and shipped Colombian and Latino goods internationally. They originally arrived in Coral Springs, hoping to stay near family that lived nearby.
Maya, who studied journalism, and Molina, who studied systems engineering, hoped to one day continue their careers in their respective fields after migrating.
But after meeting a customer at El Bodegon, the local Latino supermarket where the couple worked shortly after arriving, who encouraged them to open their own business in the area, they left those plans behind.
In 2009, after a year of understanding the logistics of opening a restaurant, Maya and Molina opened Rancheritos. Opening the restaurant was not easy at first, but it came with a learning curve, Maya said.
“We had no knowledge whatsoever about hiring staff, about how to obtain public services, supplies, or permits. So we had to learn, read, educate ourselves, and make mistakesMaya recalled.
Maya shared that, in learning to manage a restaurant, he had to learn to bake, cook, and serve all the dishes on the menu. Although this was new to both him and Molina, they began to appreciate the simplicity of home-cooked meals and the traditional dishes that reminded them of home.
“The menu was always created without considering the cost, but rather focusing on the restaurant’s philosophy: traditional Latin American food. We didn’t want to do anything too extravagant or anything like that,” said Maya.
As the restaurant reached more and more people, whether through street promotions or by putting flyers in car windows, they began to afford to decorate the restaurant with old photographs, tin boxes, and vinyl records. Maya said he was inspired by his remembrance of home in the decoration.
“It was simply because we wanted to open a traditional Latin American restaurant where people could connect with their roots, where people would say, ‘Look, this reminds me of my grandmother’s house’ ” Maya said as he pointed to a photo of his family that hung alongside other old images he had collected over the years before displaying them on the walls of the restaurant.
Molina explained that the restaurant that occupied the space before Rancheritos was Thai Country, a local Thai restaurant, and that transforming the space to fit his family’s vision was difficult at first.
“They gave [the restaurant] to us with chairs, but we didn’t have much money to invest, so we had to take off with what we had and reuse as much as we could to avoid costs,” said Molina.
Gabby, Molina, and Maya’s only daughter is now 17 years old, playing a major role in the restaurant’s opening. Gabby shared that one of her fondest memories of the restaurant was its role in helping her embrace her Colombian heritage, even though she was born in the U.S. in 2008.
“They’re very Colombian, and we go back all the time. They emphasized my heritage,” said Gabby. “I think that it’s why my Spanish is so good, because I practice it a lot here,” said Gabby.
Since 2009, Maya and Molina have opened four other locations, including ones in Boynton Beach and East Boca Raton. However, recently, the couple decided to sell all other restaurant locations to focus their energy on providing the best possible experience at the location that started it all for them.
Rancheritos’ main location has reached a wide audience, accumulating over 1,617 Google reviews. Sean Bryan, a local guide according to Google, gave the restaurant a five-star review in 2019.
“The ambience in the restaurant is great and very subtle. It doesn’t hit you in the face with tacky decor when you walk in. The live music was nice to listen to. All of the girls working were constantly smiling and very outgoing and professional,” wrote Bryan.
Maya and Molina share that their most popular dishes include the Bandeja Paisa, a traditional dish from Medellín that consists of brown beans, egg, white rice, plantain, chicharrón, avocado, and steak, all ingredients that make up the large majority of many traditional dishes in Colombia. The dish is showcased on their Google profile as a menu highlight.
Ajiaco, Molina explained, comes as a near second and is a soup hailing from Bogota, the country’s capital, that consists of potato, capers, chicken, and corn.
For the couple, the experience of opening the restaurant helped them appreciate their culture amid the solitude of leaving their country behind and allowed them to build a community largely removed from their home base.
“What we wanted was for people to find traditional food, homemade food. We wanted to play with memory, with nostalgia,” said Maya. “It’s about bringing people who have been in this country for so long back to their roots.”
Gabriela Quintero is a High School senior at Florida Atlantic University High School and will be attending Barnard College at Columbia University in the fall to pursue her B.A. in Political Science and English. Interested in politics, migration, policy, and culture, she hopes to pursue a career in political and cultural journalism.