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Public viewing is set for restaurateur KeVen Parker

Mr. Parker, whose businesses included Ms. Tootsie’s on South Street as well as KeVen Parker’s Soul Food Cafe at Reading Terminal Market, will be remembered at the Met.

KeVen Parker, who founded Ms. Tootsie's on South Street with his mother, in a 2019 photograph.
KeVen Parker, who founded Ms. Tootsie's on South Street with his mother, in a 2019 photograph.Read moreDAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer

A viewing will be held from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25 at the Met (858 N. Broad St.) for restaurateur KeVen Parker, who died of cancer on Jan. 14 at age 57. Masks will be mandatory, the family said in a statement.

The service will be private.

Mr. Parker, whose businesses included Ms. Tootsie’s on South Street as well as KeVen Parker’s Soul Food Cafe at Reading Terminal Market, was remembered by his peers and those he mentored and inspired.

Chef Kurt Evans, who recently opened Down North, a pizzeria in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, told The Inquirer’s Craig LaBan: “If you were going downtown and you were Black in the 2000s, Ms. Tootsie’s was the spot. It really embodied that urban culture, and the food wasn’t overly complicated, but what Ms. Tootsie’s did was elevate it and put it on a plate. You could get dressed up and go down to South Street and eat soul food. And for the Black community that was huge … because representation is really important. When I got into being a chef and restaurateur, KeVen Parker, the Bynums [brothers Robert and Benjamin], and Delilah [Winder] meant a lot to me. I can have a restaurant downtown one day, because I’ve seen it.”

The family requests donations in his memory to Eleone Dance Theatre, Box 54340, Philadelphia, Pa., 19105.