Twenty-five years ago, Lasse Sorensen traded his corporate gig in California for the keys to a then-75-year-old restaurant in De Soto, Illinois: He made Tom’s Place a dining destination in rural Illinois, serving up fresh pasta and a stellar tasting menu. Critics loved him, and, for years, the restaurant was packed.
“It’s like a rock band performing, and everyone standing at the end,” Sorensen recalls.
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No doubt, some days were more grueling than others, but Sorensen and his wife, Mary Jane, thrived on the adrenaline. Eventually, though, reality caught up. “Today, I’ve been slinging pasta all day. My hands are tired from standing at a sauté station,” Sorensen said after closing on Thursday evening. “We were three people in the kitchen today. We should have been six.”
That’s been the reality of the past three years. “It’s so hard to find the people,” he says. Not only is it hard to find staff, but he’s found it difficult to keep pace with wages and food costs, which he says have increased exponentially in recent years. In addition, Mary Jane has endured health challenges, he says, including cancer several years ago. While she’s doing well now, the treatments took a toll, he adds: “When you have a mom-and-pop and something happens to Mom, it becomes really difficult.”
Last Sunday, June 18, two of his employees didn’t show up for their shifts, he says. Sorensen was in the restaurant alone after brunch when he decided that it was time to end his tenure at the now-100-year-old restaurant. “I worked as hard as I could, as long as I could, but now it’s at the tipping point,” he says.
Sorensen announced the decision on social media on Wednesday, and the traffic suddenly picked up. “I had seven reservations yesterday—at 5 p.m., I had 70; today, I’m sold out,” he says. “And I’m sold out every day until July 1, which is my last day.”
The irony of a booming last hoorah in the midst of a labor shortage isn’t lost on him. He knows this last week will be a push to the finish, but he’s ready to leave it all on the table. What comes next, he’s yet to decide.
The Future
“Today was a great day for my ego,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve had five people call with job offers.”
He didn’t accept any of them—or hasn’t yet anyway. In the immediate future, he’s turning his attention to Food is Love, the show that he created (and funded) to showcase the diversity of St. Louis through the kitchens of the city’s most renowned restaurants. He’s produced three seasons already, with the third set to air on CreateTV starting in September. He plans to begin production on the fourth season next week. He plans to focus on the content and creating fundraisers to produce more episodes.
Then there’s the notion of travel. “I’d like to go somewhere with my wife,” he says. For the past 25 years, when one left town, the other always stayed behind with the restaurant. Sorensen has his heart set on seeing Hawaii together.
After a few trips and a little downtime, however, he has hopes of something else, both for himself and the restaurant that he’s loved owning these past 25 years. For Tom’s Place, he’s hopeful that someone will come along with the same gleam in their eye that he had when he bought the place—someone with the energy to navigate the economy’s challenges and reopen the doors.
As for himself, Sorensen is open to the possibility of another chapter, maybe one that starts with an offer that’s too good to pass up or one that starts with the doors to a new restaurant—maybe, he’s willing to speculate, a restaurant of his own in St. Louis.
