You Say Tomato stops serving Friday-night dinners…for a while
Randy Parks needs a rest. Since opening the combination neighborhood grocery store and bruncheonette, You Say Tomato, inside the old Weneck Brothers market at 2801 Holmes in 2006, Parks and his partner, Mark Wingard, have put in some long, long hours: cooking, baking, cleaning and all the millions of details involved with running a popular restaurant. Parks, who is also a painter and sculptor, would like to find some time to finish carving a torso out of marble.
“I need a break,” he says. “I really need a break.”
Last Friday was the final Friday evening — in the near future anyway — for the Friday-night suppers that Parks and Wingard have been hosting for nearly half a dozen years. It had always been a limited menu with three entree choices (Randy’s pan-fried chicken was the most consistent dinner special) served with a choice of salad and dessert. The all-inclusive prices weren’t cheap, ranging from $26 to $32, but the food was lovingly prepared and tasted like the kind of home cooking one might find in a small Kansas hamlet. Both Parks and Wingard were born and raised in tiny Kansas towns, where they learned to make crispy fried chicken and pork ribs slathered with blueberry barbecue sauce, pickled peaches, and rich devil’s food cakes.
