The Dish pizzeria closed in Liberty

• The Dish
• The restaurant may be closed, but the Dish pizza lives on in your supermarket freezer case.

“When we opened our restaurant in Liberty nearly 17 years ago,” says restaurateur Mattie Ransom, “there were five restaurants in Liberty. Now there are 80.”

Mattie and Jason Ransom opened the Dish – one of the few restaurants serving deep-dish pizza in the metro – in 1997; it soon became a destination for lovers of the thick, stuffed baked pie. Earlier this month, the Ransoms announced that they would close the restaurant in March, at the end of their lease, in order to focus on their successful frozen-pizza business, which was out-grossing the restaurant revenues. But last Saturday night was the final day for the restaurant.

Mattie Ransom says she doesn’t foresee opening another location of the Dish.

“We now have our frozen pizzas in five states,” she says. “And we just got into the 26 Dierberg’s stores in St. Louis. When we started making frozen pizzas in 2003, it was our shadow business. Now it’s our primary business.” 

It was the success of small restaurants in Liberty – like the Dish and the Hardware Cafe (which is also closed) – that encouraged more restaurants to move into the fast-growing community north of Kansas City. 

“Liberty is changing,” Mattie Ransom says. “It’s moving west. I’m concerned that the city is boxing itself in. And most of the new restaurants are either national chains or fast-food places. Our former mayor was the franchise lawyer for Applebee’s.”

Mattie Ransom says that instead of renewing the lease on the restaurant’s building at 846 South 291 Highway, she and Jason decided to focus all of their energies on the frozen-pizza business.

“We remind each other that Wishbone salad dressing started in one fried-chicken restaurant in Kansas City and became a brand name,” Mattie Ransom says.

(In 1958, the T.J. Lipton Co. purchased the rights to manufacture the Italian dressing created by Lena Sollomi, co-owner of the long-razed Wishbone restaurant at 45th Street and Main; the dressing brand is now owned by Pinnacle Foods.)

“We think this is going to be a great opportunity for us,” Mattie Ransom says.