KU alumni in Wichita can soon revisit the flavors of a once-famous Mass Street restaurant
During my college days in Lawrence in the early 1990s, my favorite place to grab lunch was Quinton’s Bar & Deli at 615 Massachusetts St.
It’s been at least 25 years since I last enjoyed my favorite meal there — half a club sandwich with Wisconsin cheese soup in a bread bowl and spicy kettle chips on the side — but I swear I can still taste it.
Soon, all of us University of Kansas alumni who fondly remember the food at Quinton’s will be able to get (most of) it in Wichita.
Steven Gaudreau, who owns Crutch & Biscuit at 550 N. Rock Road in Wichita, says he plans to close that restaurant at 2 p.m. this coming Sunday, Dec. 10. He’ll then get right to work on a renovation, and sometime later this month, he plans to reopen the space as Quinton’s — but he’s calling this iteration Quinton’s Bar & Grill.
The new restaurant’s menu will include most of the sandwiches and soups served in bread bowls (minus my beloved Wisconsin cheese — inexplicably not a great seller, Gaudreau said) but will also add some grill items that he hopes will bring in evenings crowds: things like burgers, chicken sandwiches and mac and cheese.
“I learned a long time ago that people like sandwiches at lunch but not so much at dinner,” Gaudreau said.
Back in 1991, Gaudreau founded Quinton’s in Lawrence. It became a popular daytime restaurant and nighttime bar. Crowds would frequently pack in to watch KU basketball games. Over the years, Gaudreau’s restaurant portfolio grew to include several Quinton’s restaurants across the region, and he also opened another version of Quinton’s he called Bison Witches Bar & Deli.
In 2018, wanting to slow down, Gaudreau sold all of his restaurants except the ones he owned in Wichita. The new owners of the Quinton’s in Lawrence weren’t able to keep it open through the pandemic, and the building, until recently, was home to a bar called Mass Street Ale House.
Four Quinton’s restaurants still operate in Iowa, and Bison Witches operates in Lincoln, Nebraska; Norman, Oklahoma; and Tucson. But Gaudreau owns none of them.
Gaudreau — a Wichita native — first entered the restaurant market here in 2014, when he opened Dempsey’s Burger Pub, still a popular restaurant at Clifton Square, 3700 E. Douglas. In late 2018, he tried adding a Dempsey’s Burger Pub on the east side of town. It operated in the current Crutch & Biscuit space but was closed by late 2019. Gaudreau also owned Dempsey’s Biscuit Co. at 3425 E. Douglas from 2017 until late 2020, when he closed it. In 2020, he turned the east-side Dempsey’s into a barbecue restaurant called Crutch BBQ, and later that year, he merged Dempsey’s menu with the one at Crutch — hence Crutch & Biscuit.
But in 2023, that concept is proving too costly, Gaudreau said, especially on the labor side. He needed to make a change.
So he decided to go back to what he knows — Quinton’s — but with a few modifications.
In addition to the more dinner-friendly grill items he’s adding to the menu — which include three types of burgers, two types of chicken sandwiches and a Nashville chicken/mac and cheese bowl — he’s also keeping the popular weekend brunch he’s been serving at Crutch & Biscuit that offers biscuits and gravy, chicken and waffles and more.
The remodel Gaudreau is planning will make the Rock Road space look more like the original Quinton’s on Mass Street in Lawrence. He’s installing its signature black-and-white floor tiles, its glass block bar and its tin ceiling.
“I’m trying to recreate the feel,” he said. “A lot of KU alumni were obsessed with Quinton’s, and a lot of people are upset that it closed.”
The Wichita Quinton’s menu will feature many of the sandwiches KU alumni remember, including The Jayhawk, made with marinated chicken breast and topped with provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato and house-made honey-mustard. The sandwich menu also will include options like a club, a Philly cheese steak and a spicy fried chicken.
Soup options will include the best-selling potato bacon plus cream of broccoli and chili, and customers can order them served in house-made bread bowls.
Gaudreau said the food will taste very close to what people remember from the Lawrence restaurant — except maybe better. He’s sourced high-quality meats, which he plans to smoke in-house.
“The meat quality is so much higher than what we could even get back in 1991,” he said. “I’m pretty excited.”
The new Quinton’s will serve food from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. The brunch menu will be served from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, then the restaurant will switch to the Quinton’s menu. The bar — which will serve Quentin’s famous big beers and margaritas — will stay open later, likely until midnight on weeknights and 2 a.m. on weekends, Gaudreau said.
“We were a big college bar, and I would like to get that bar action back in this place,” he said.
Stay tuned for an opening date for the new Quinton’s Bar & Grill.
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