By Johanna Wilson Jones

Loris is a slice of Americana served on a humble plate and likened to apple pie -- familiar, sweet, recognizable, adaptable, and appealing to many.

This quaint South Carolina city has maintained its yesteryear nostalgic personality while tactfully embracing modernism that doesn’t overshadow its distinctive quaintness.

It’s the locale where big city folks retire, and hometown natives celebrate. It’s where Richard “Ritchie” Ward is building a brand that speaks to camaraderie, relationships, comfort food, and memories of a past when candy was one cent a piece and the corner store was a gathering spot for the community.

Ritchie’s General Store & Eatery, at 4117 Main St., is Ward’s tribute to Southern cooking and bonds that tie people together just by taking a bite of food.

“I wanted this restaurant to be different,’’ Ward said. “I wanted this not only to be a place to eat but a part of the community. To do that, the community has to know who you are – and now and then it gets a little personal and a little spiritual, but that’s me.”

Typically, he steps outside of his haven on Main Street and shoots a Facebook video of himself letting folks know what eats he’ll be serving up the next day.

He is usually silly while filming, most times playing himself and occasionally pretending to be a fictitious character. He adlibs everything. Nothing is scripted.

On a recent day, he pretended to be a cousin named Billy Bob Calhoun. Ward is wearing a huge straw hat, black logo T-shirt, blue shorts, and a black apron tied snugly around his waist. A 22-ounce smoked turkey leg is next to him on a mint green bench. He picks it up while filming, puts it inches away from his face, testifies it’s almost as big as his big head, and tells folks it will be served up with collard greens, cabbage, baked macaroni and cheese, a fresh salad bar, hot dogs, bologna sandwiches, and other Southern starlets if they come by and eat with him.

Before ending each monologue, he tells folks that Jesus loves them, as do the staff at Ritchie’s.

“I am a servant of the Lord, and I just share him every time before I get off the video,’’ Ward said. “I let them know that Jesus loves them, and we would love to see them. You never know who that might touch.”

A Different Space, A Different Place

Upon entering Ritchie’s, you collapse back into time, a time in the country, along back roads, where katydids and crickets provided music for the day and night.

It’s a mishmash of a grandmother’s kitchen and den plopped down in the middle of an old-timey general store with contemporary touches.

An assortment of jams, pickles, condiments, snacks, and merchandise are against a wall on the right as soon as customers walk in. There are homemade desserts, an old-fashioned bubble gum machine, bags of roasted peanuts, and small buckets of cotton candy. Some of our favorite childhood memories are back and for sale.

At present, Ward is in the kitchen making his signature egg rolls. He is straightforward in his approach to cooking. His food isn’t fancy, but it’s certainly flavorful. He looks like a food surgeon as he dons black glasses and takes on his task with steady focus and steadier hands.

He delicately takes an eggroll wrapper from a pile and places it in from of him. He then daps on liquified butter at the seams. Next, he takes one full ice cream scoop of chicken bog and places it in the middle. He breaks the small mound into a line of bog before placing a blanket of cooked collard greens on top and rolling it all up. Finally, he dips it into cornstarch before putting it aside for frying later.

Way back when before gray hair mixed in comely with his brunette crown, Ward would cook for him and his sister, Samantha Norris, who is now executive director of the Loris Chamber of Commerce.

His food wasn’t fancy then either. As a boy, he used lots of canned goods, common sense, and occasional ingenuity to make them lunch after school. He was just a boy being practical about nourishment and learning early on that he had a fondness for food.

Before he rooted himself at Ritchie’s, Ward’s career saw him spend time cooking in the kitchens of Marina Bar and Grill at the defunct Dock Holidays and Overtime Sports Café, before pulling up to the House of Blues, where he initially worked in the kitchen as a line cook before becoming the receiving manager.

As a receiving manager, his duties included making sure celebrities' food and beverage requests were fulfilled.

“There were some wild requests,’’ Ward said. “Some of them were vegans and health nuts, and I had to search all of Myrtle Beach. Then, Snoop Dog came and all he wanted me to do was get him a few bottles of Hennessy.”

Once he left there, he broke out of the monotony by becoming a waiter at Carrabba’s Italian Grill.

“I had a great time,’’ he said. “We had to wear ties, and I had this great tie. I had a (Looney Tunes) Sylvester tie one time. A guy came in and said, ‘I like that tie.’ Well, by the time the meal was over, I presented him the check and I gave him the tie – and he gave me a $200 tip.”

It was then that Ward thought about venturing out on his own. When a former friend started working with him at Carrabba’s, he told Ward he wanted him to help him open a restaurant.

“I said, ‘That is fine, but the deal is that we don’t drink,’’’ Ward said. “I had quit drinking by then and straightened up. I said, ‘We can’t have that drinking if we are going to go into business.’’’

They made the plans, did the legwork, got the money needed to launch the business, and found a building. Everything was a go.

“Sadly enough, he got drunk one night and got killed in a car accident,’’ Ward said.

His acquaintance and would-be business partner died three miles down the road from where Ward opened up The Right Recipe, his first restaurant where his award-winning chicken bog was born.

Although the eatery underwent three location moves, it proved successful until the Global Economic Crisis shut it down. Dollywood was his next destination, and he worked there for eight years.

He came back home, and people wanted him back in the business. With his sister, Samantha Norris, president of the Loris Chamber of Commerce, playing the supportive administrative role and later his wife, Kathleen Hassett Ward, as a kitchen force, he came back with his dynamite skills.

The good grub was back again the Ward way in Loris. Ritchie's debuted on October 22, 2021.

“We’re here now, and we’ve got things worked out well,’’ Ward.

The Chef Community Built

If you know, you know. Southern grandmas can get down in kitchens with talent so tangible that you can feel it and smell it before your mouth ever tastes it.

Ward had such an elder in Belle Sawyer, his paternal great-grandmother who lived in Conway.

“We used to over to her house on Saturdays to cut her grass, and she would be in there fixing us lunch and a nice, huge, delicious poundcake,’’ Ward said.

Sawyer kept it downhome, homemade, and Southern by delivering surefire winners like fried chicken, ham, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and a variety of fresh vegetables from her garden.

“That’s how my grandmother cooked and what she cooked with, and that’s what we do today,’’ Ward said as a smile crept across his face.

Those simple good times that allowed him to gather with family and enjoy fellowshipping while consuming delicious food made recollections that yet made him happy.

Ironically, it was a difficult time that caused him to find his way as a boy cooking in the kitchen alone.

His parents were going through a divorce.

“Samantha and I would get off the bus at the house,’’ Ward said. “We were hungry. So, I just started cooking.”

Castleberry’s Bunker Hill Beef & Beef Stock was a favorite of Ward’s.

“As I learned a bit more, we went a little bit further,’’ said Ward, who was about 10. “We ate. We weren’t going to go hungry. Our parents were working, and our brother was a football practice. So, it was just me and Samantha at the house.”

His go-to meal was the Bunker Hill Beef with corn and rice. He also grilled or fry the frozen hamburgers his dad bought.

“For some, being that young can be kind of scary, but it didn’t bother me at all,’’ Ward said. “It wasn’t long after that that my parents found out I was cooking. But instead of getting upset, they gave me lessons.”

Team Flavor

Everybody doesn’t have the gastronomic game, but Ward learned how to court great flavor profiles through the tutelage of his parents and the women he met at his various jobs.

Ward has a way of surrounding himself with talent. Smart chefs do that, especially ones that have been in the business for more than 40 years. One of his star players is Angela Rowe. She is the kitchen manager at Ritchie’s. She, too, learned her elders and like Ward puts her whole heart into everything she makes.

“We put love in the cooking,’’ Rowe said. “We give our food and our customers respect.”

On their Facebook page, customers give Ritchie’s glorious reviews that applaud the food, friendly staff, and service.

“People should come and check us out because the food is great,’’ said Hassett Ward, as she grabbed plates from the back. “The quality and taste of our food and the freshness of it is exceptional.”

Her man said he would stick with his original plan for Ritchie’s to be a hub where good grub, love, and community are authentic.

“I have learned that simplicity is the best way to go,’’ Ward said. “Keep it simple. Keep it easy. Keep it down-home. When you step in the door, you are family. You’re in a safe place with good food.”