Perico Ripiao Latin Food

At the Kissimmee restaurant Perico Ripiao, food menus are fashioned like giant Dominican passports, and drink menus like boarding passes. The two documents are fitting gateways into a restaurant that tastes and feels like a vacation, or a homecoming, to the island nation.

One section of the restaurant is decked out in the pastel colors, iron lamps, and tidy balconies of a colonial Dominican town. Another set of walls is fashioned to look like the inside of a cave, with vines crawling from the ceiling—a nod to the cave dwellings where the Taíno once lived.

“We have people cry when they walk in here,” said Brenda-Espinal, one of the family-owned restaurant’s proprietors. “I had a lady hug me the other day, because she said that when she walked in, she felt like she was walking into her grandma's kitchen.”

But the most striking recollection of the island comes in Perico Ripiao’s food. The passport-menu takes customers on a trip through the island’s many cooking styles and regions: there are little baskets made from fried green plantains and filled with chicken, cheese, and an assortment of salsas; salmon samaná, cooked in coconut reminiscent of the coastal town of Samaná; and fried rice with pork, eggs, and fried green plantains, titled Barrio Chino RD, or “Dominican Republic Chinatown.”

Espinal, who was born in the Dominican Republic, worked in restaurants in Boston for 16 years before opening Perico Ripiao. In 2019, she and her entire family—husband, kids, siblings, and parents—moved to Kissimmee to start Perico Ripiao in a pint-sized storefront.

In 2022, they moved into a 6,000-square foot space that they turned into a celebration of the Dominican Republic. In one corner of the restaurant is a gift shop selling Dominican goods, ranging from crema de oro, a milk-based liqueur, to island-ready sandals. The restaurant also boasts a bar, stage, and dance floor.

The menu, largely created by Espinal, who learned to cook from her grandmother, features dishes from all over the island. Paella Naguera, a version of the traditional rice stew with a coconut sauce, comes from the coconut-exporting city of Nagua in the country’s north; chillo Boca Chica, a lightly breaded and deep-fried red snapper, comes from the southern beach of Boca Chica. 

The restaurant’s attention to detail extends to its desserts, which are all baked in-house. Their gluten-free coconut cake, Nostalgia de Mi Tierra, comes with homemade dulce de leche and is flecked with bits of orange and lime; coco con batata, is a classic home-style sweet made from stewed and spiced coconut and sweet potatoes, served with crackers.

Beer comes served in a bucket made of a wooden drum, which the restaurant patented and commissioned from artisans in the Dominican Republic. 

“Perico Ripiao” is the colloquial name for a traditional form of meringue, a beloved Dominican musical genre that Espinal describes as “in our blood.”

“It just means party,” she says of the restaurant’s title. “When you come here, you know, you have the music playing, the servers are dressed in typical uniforms… It's a vibe.”

From Friday to Sunday, the restaurant hosts live performers, often from the Dominican Republic, who play merengue, bachata, and salsa. On Mondays, customers belt out their favorite tunes for karaoke. “On the weekends, at nighttime, especially, be ready,” Espinal says. “Bring earplugs.”