Old-school Wichita supper club that opened in 1967 will be revived by founder’s grandkids
An old Wichita supper club from the 1960s is coming back to life.
Eric Peabody, whose grandfather Sam Peabody and his wife, Ramona, originally opened Crazy Horse Supper Club in 1967, has leased the restaurant’s original space at 2539 W. Pawnee and plans to reopen it this spring with much of the original menu, which famously included things like frog legs and alligator tail.
His sister, Jennifer Lawler, also will help run the restaurant.
Peabody said the idea to revive the Crazy Horse came to him last year, when he noticed that the space — which sits in a strip center on the southwest corner of Pawnee and Meridian — was available for lease again.
Its last tenant had been a south location of Riverside Cafe, but it closed in the summer of 2017. When Riverside Cafe moved out, the owners took down a sign that had been covering an old, beat-up Crazy Horse awning, which now is exposed on the building. The awning features an image of the unicorn that had been the restaurant’s mascot.
Peabody remembers spending time at the Crazy Horse as a kid.
“People liked to go there for a good steak, and it was popular with second shift workers at Cessna,” he said. “I work at Cessna now, and a lot of the older folks, they remember the place. It was always popular, always busy. Personally, to me, I always felt like it should still be there.”
Peabody said he has some remodeling to do, but he hopes to have the restaurant open by March with a grand opening celebration in April.
When Sam Peabody opened the restaurant in the late 1960s, he wanted a menu that featured unusual items. Crazy Horse was the first restaurant in Kansas to offer alligator tail, legend has it, and frog legs were a big draw. The menu also featured things like bull fries, lamb fries, chicken gizzards and chicken livers, as is outlined in an ad from a 1983 edition of The Wichita Eagle.
Peabody is interested in bringing back many of those delicacies, which he remembers from his childhood visits and his days of working in the restaurant, which most of his family did at some point, he said.
Crazy Horse remained popular through the years, and when his grandfather died in 1994, he left the restaurant to his daughters. Peabody said one of his aunts took the Crazy Horse over and ran it for eight or nine years, eventually selling it to her brother-in-law.
In 2004, new owners turned it into a Nascar-themed sports bar called Crazy Horse Sports Bar & Grill, and they got rid of most of the delicacies on the menu. That business was short-lived, though, and a bar called Geezer’s operated there in 2009 followed by Vinny’s Sports Bar & Grill in 2011. Riverside Cafe took over the spot in 2013 and left four years later.
Peabody said he’ll have to build a new kitchen, redo the bar top and paint in the restaurant. He’ll also need to get some more tables and chairs.
But Peabody, who says he’ll also keep his job as a crew chief at Cessna, plans to restore the place to its 1970s and 1980s glory.
“My friends and people at work are excited,” he said. “They’re like, ‘We hope it goes well for you. We hope you bring it back the way it was. We missed the place.’”
This story was originally published January 23, 2019 at 5:01 AM.
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