A Fruitful Endeavor

I've now eaten a handful of variations on Wingard's quiche du jour; he always offers at least two choices, and I have a particular fondness for a featured combination of mild chorizo, roasted red peppers, onion and pepperjack cheese. Debbie prefers the mushroom-and-leek version. Diners can order the quiche "naked" or sided with fresh fruit or one of the best pasta salads I've tasted in a long time: doughy fusilli noodles tossed in a light vinaigrette with bits of feta cheese and salty kalamata olives.

Debbie was happily surprised by all of the unexpected attention to detail here. Her organic iced tea, for example, came in a small pitcher alongside a glass of ice adorned with an orange wedge. Plus, all the meals are served on heavy china plates. "It's like eating in someone's house," she said.

Parks makes the fine-crumb bread for the sandwiches and the sugar-iced cinnamon rolls (using a yeast dough that's too heavy for my taste). Wingard bakes, too, including a damned good coconut cake.

One evening, I stopped in on my way home from work and ate a casual dinner of quiche, pasta salad and a generous bowl of hummus with a big pile of warm pita wedges. Only one other customer was in the place, a stocky bearded guy wearing work boots and, I swear, a skirt. That was the same night I ordered a carry-out sandwich — a spicy barbecued beef on bun — for a sick friend and thoughtlessly ate half of it on my way to deliver it to his house. Terribly rude of me, but as it turned out, he liked the mocha brownie better than the barbecue anyway.

The next time I rolled into You Say Tomato, I wished I could transport myself back to 1979, when I had the kind of metabolism that let me eat anything I wanted without gaining an ounce. Instead, I sat at one of the 1940s-vintage kitchenette tables and downed a fattening chicken-salad sandwich (made with lots of mayonnaise, sliced red grapes and celery) on a buttery croissant and a bag of chips. I'd brought along my friend Bob, because he's old enough to remember shopping at Annello's market in the late 1970s, when he was living in one of those old apartments on Gillham.

"It was very dark inside," he told Wingard, who explained that the space is so sunny now because the partners uncovered one of the plate-glass windows that had been blocked by a set of store shelves. Now the windows have curtains made from burlap coffee bags, and the Tomato trio has added more light by replacing all of the old bulbs in the marquee-style sockets above windows that date back to the 1920s.

I stared at an old brick mansion across the street while Bob finished a thick egg-salad sandwich, which he loved. "We sell a lot of egg salad," Wingard said, "although I'm not sure why."

I know why. There aren't many cafés in Kansas City that still sell egg-salad sandwiches, let alone bake their own bread, sell butter by the stick and crush ice every morning for the snow cone crowd. As hard as I try, I can't think of even one other combination coffeehouse, sandwich shack and grocery that's quite like You Say Tomato, in this century or any other.