Just-vacated Logan’s Roadhouse in east Wichita is getting a new tenant from a nearby town
The just-vacated Logan’s Roadhouse space at Kellogg and Rock Road in Wichita won’t stay vacant long.
A new restaurant is moving in, and its owner is a colorful, wise-cracking chef from Winfield.
Stan Lerner, a California transplant, settled in Kansas in 2013 and that same year opened a restaurant in Winfield — Chef’s Table at 815 Main St. Now, he’s expanding into Wichita and plans to open a restaurant he’ll call Chef’s Table Roadhouse in the former Logan’s space at 353 S. Rock Road.
“It’s not very catchy,” Lerner said of the name. “But a lot of people know Chef’s Table. Half of our customers in Winfield are people from Wichita or Sedgwick County.”
Lerner said he hopes to be open by Labor Day, and the new restaurant will serve dinner only from a small menu featuring the entrees he’s become known for at Chef’s Table and an adjacent bar he opened next door two years ago called Dusty Boots Saloon.
Among the offerings will be steak, salmon, chicken, homemade soups, salad, and rotating specials like meatloaf and beef stew. There will also be a full bar, though it will likely won’t be operating when the restaurant first opens.
“It’ll be like Chef’s Table,” he said. “Our menu is very simple. It’s not a big menu. But whatever I do, I try to make it the best so that when you leave you’ll say, ‘That was the best steak I ever had in my life.’”
Lerner, who worked as a chef in Los Angeles before moving to Kansas and has done stints at places in Wichita like Koch’s employee cafe 37 West, Kneader’s Bakery and Little Caesar’s, said he’s always wanted to have a place in Wichita. When he noticed restaurants were closing during the pandemic, he thought it might be a good time to find a space, he said.
He considered the vacant Zoe’s Kitchen space at 13th and Webb but ultimately decided that the Logan’s building better fit his needs, he said. He isn’t having to do much remodeling other than to make the place look a bit more “rustic” and to add a retail area where he can sell his signature spice blends.
He’ll open the restaurant with about a third of the occupancy that the restaurant could handle in non-pandemic times, he said.
“One of the nice things is that it’s a really a large space where we can keep people distanced,” he said.
Lerner said that people have been asking him for years to open in Wichita, many of whom discovered Chef’s Table when in town each fall for the Walnut Valley Festival.
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His business in Winfield is “seasonal,” he said, meaning he closes it every August and January — and really any other time he feels like it. Diners in Winfield have come to understand that the chef is in if the rocking chairs are out front. If they’re not, the restaurant is closed.
Lerner said he’ll use his August shutdown to get the Wichita restaurant going. Once it’s ready, he’ll hire a full staff and keep regular hours. The Winfield restaurant will also continue to operate, he said.
“I love cooking for people, and I love being involved in a community in that way,” he said. “I think that having our kind of restaurant in Wichita rather than just a big chain, especially with whats’ going on today, is going to be really good. It will be good for the Wichita community to have a community restaurant.”
Earlier this week, I reported that the east-side Logan’s Roadhouse had closed for good though the west-side restaurant in NewMarket Square remains open.
I’ll keep you posted on an opening day for Chef’s Table Roadhouse.
This story was originally published July 28, 2020 at 5:34 PM.
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