Longtime Wichita chef is getting back in the restaurant game with a new sandwich shop
.jpg "Derby Sandwich Bar is taking over the old Sharon’s Place space in Derby.")
Chef Roni Attari has been mostly out of the restaurant business since he stopped working on the Hopping Pita food truck in 2013.
But soon, that will change.
Attari, who in the early 2000s was known for owning restaurants like Soleil and Yuca Latin Bistro, spent much of the last decade as a chef at an assisted living center. He was laid off from that job two years ago, though, and since, he’s been doing catering on his own.
Recently, though, his best friend Brant Dumford — a real estate developer and owner of The Coop in Derby — approached him with an idea. He was looking for a tenant for a restaurant space he owned at 141 E. Kay St. in Derby, which had become vacant after Sharon Behler closed her 5-year-old Hawaiian restaurant Sharon’s Place earlier in the summer.
The two decided they’d collaborate on a new sandwich shop that used fresh-sliced meat and fresh bread made by Delano Bakery — which Dumford’s family owns. They’re planning to call it Derby Sandwich Bar, and they hope to have it open within the next month or two.
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“Derby needs a sandwich place,” Attari said. “They have the Subway, but I don’t know of any other besides that.”
The menu will include sandwiches designed by Attari — like a smoked turkey with crispy bacon and avocado, a French dip on hoagie and barbecue beef on an onion bun — plus two kinds of soup and a couple of salads. Those who order a sandwich will get chips and a pickle on the side.
“It’s going to be as simple as we can possibly make it, but it’s going to be well thought out, high-quality stuff that’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg,” Attari said.
The space is small with room for only about four tables, Attari said, so the restaurant will be set up to easily handle grab-and-go service and call-ahead orders. It’ll likely be open roughly from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Attari and Dumford have been friends for years, and they even collaborated on another idea pre-pandemic: In 2019, Dumford announced plans to open a French breakfast restaurant called Toast that would have an Attari-created menu and operate in the same strip center as Sharon’s Place. But the pandemic forced him to scrap those plans.
This story was originally published September 26, 2022 at 11:17 AM.
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