Soul food, the black tradition of Southern country cooking, tends to come with big, long-simmered flavors that are bracing with black pepper and pepper sauces. Ruby's has been open, according to owner Napoleon Yates, for a year and two months. He named the restaurant for his mother. Yates said he has been cooking since he was about 14 and worked in various hotel kitchens around town, including The Peabody and the Radisson Airport. For 10 years, his family owned Joe's Hot Wings on North Main in the Pinch District.
Service is cafeteria-style, though the staff is friendly and helpful.
The restaurant seems to do a large take-out business. A number of items at Ruby's satisfied the craving for comfort food, but a few nagging and disappointing details distracted, especially in the area of side dishes. Smothered pork chops, though not thick-cut, were surpassingly tender and scarcely needed a knife to part the succulent fibers. Baked chicken was moist and flavorful and fell apart with the gentle urging of the knife and fork. Vegetables and other side dishes, as a whole, were neither particularly fresh nor impressive.