Update on March 21: The restaurant has tweaked hours to 11 a.m. through dinnertime Tuesday through Sunday with brunch served until 1 p.m. on the weekend. Closing time will be when the customers stop coming.

March 16, 2022

A mother-daughter duo who hoped to resurrect their family’s food truck last summer but ran into expensive repairs are opening a restaurant to start instead.

Shona and Jordan Randle plan to have Randle’s Kitchen open for dinner Thursday in a longtime bar space on the far east side of downtown.

“This has always been a bar with food. We want people to know this is a restaurant where you can get a beer,” Shona Randle said of the spot at 114 N. Indiana Ave. that most notably was the longtime home of the Little Coalinga and most recently was Da Clique Sports Bar & Grill.

But customers won’t be able to get a beer or a glass of South Dakota wine until the restaurant is approved for a license, which is expected to happen in early April, she said.

After Thursday’s soft opening, Randle’s Kitchen will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a menu that will evolve as they find out what customers are hungry for.

“We’ve got a lot of ideas, and we’ll see how it flows,” Randle said.

They’ll definitely offer the wings, hand-cut chicken strips, hand-pattied quarter-pound hamburgers, patty melts and smoked sausage sandwiches the food truck was known for. The family operated the food truck from 2014 to 2017 and has done some catering since then.

They’ll likely make walking tacos, baked spaghetti and mac-and-cheese.

“We’ve always kind of done Southern cooking,” Randle said, and she expects that to expand. She envisions offering “soul food Sundays” with rotating entrees and sides such as ribs, fried chicken, baked beans, collard greens and cornbread in addition to the regular menu.

The Little Coalinga was known for its lunch specials, and Randle envisions doing “maybe pulled pork, maybe another day tater tot hot dish. We just want it to be home cooking, keeping it fair prices.”

Once they’re comfortable in the kitchen, they’ll consider taking large takeout orders for business lunches, Randle said.

The restaurant will offer seating for about 40 at tables, booths and along the bar. The pool table, dart boards and video lottery machines are gone, but there are still several TVs for watching sporting events.

Randle said she wants the restaurant to be a place for families to come and enjoy good food together.

Keep an eye on the restaurant’s Facebook page for hours; they’ll be tweaked as the Randles gauge customer demand.

They’re anticipating opening as early as 6 a.m. for breakfast daily — expect for Wednesdays when they won’t open until 5:30 p.m. — and likely will close after the dinner rush and later on Friday and Saturday nights. They’re considering the possibility of being open on the weekend for after-bar hours like they once offered on the food truck.

“Back then, we’d stay busy until 3:30 in the morning,” Randle said.

The Randles started refurbishing the food truck last year and still hope to operate it this summer.

“The whole goal of the food truck was to get into a storefront,” Randle said, and when the opportunity came up to lease the Indiana space, they jumped at it. “Why not take a shot at it? If It doesn’t work, the truck is still in the driveway. But we’d like them both to be running!”