Flashback Friday: Some of Wichita’s best Chinese food was once served from a bowling alley
Welcome to Flashback Friday, a feature that runs Fridays on Kansas.com and Dining with Denise. It’s designed to take diners back in time to revisit restaurants that they once loved but that now live only in their memories — and in The Eagle’s archives.
This week’s featured restaurant, The 11th Frame, was a bowling alley restaurant that started in 1966 and became known for its excellent Cantonese fare.
Back in the 1960s, people who loved Chinese food knew exactly where to get Wichita’s best egg foo young.
At the bowling alley, of course.
Though the food served at modern-day bowling alleys tends to be limited to pizza and burgers, six decades ago, a top-rate Chinese restaurant called The 11th Frame operated inside the Crestview Bowling Alley, near the northwest corner of 21st and Woodlawn.
The bowling alley first opened in 1961, at a time when the country was crazy for bowling — so much so that the Wichita Eagle ran a local column — Pin Patter — dedicated to local bowling happenings and scores.
That’s also about the time the game moved from pin boys to automatic pinsetters, and bowling alleys were built all over town. From 1956 to 1964, Wichita added 13 new bowling centers, Crestview among them. Its contemporaries had names like Skybowl, Boulevard Lanes, DeLuxe Lanes, Sport Bowl, Bowl-A-Way, Fireside Lanes and Plaza Bowl
Crestview was on the far east edge of town at the time, built for around $123,000. It featured 32 lanes spread out over more than 32,000 square feet and advertised that it used “subway ball returns,” which automatically delivered bowling balls back to their owners after each turn.
The new bowling center also advertised that it had “eating and snack bar facilities,” a fairly common feature at local bowling alleys. The Crestview dining room was called The 11th Frame (sometimes spelled Eleventh Frame), and for the first few years, it served dishes like pan-fried chicken, baked steak with mushroom sauce, pan-fried trout and baked buffet ham with champagne sauce.
But about four years after the bowling alley opened, control of the restaurant was turned over to Henry Lew, a Caton, China, native who had immigrated to the United States at age 14 and served on the Pacific Front during World War II.
Lew also had previous restaurant experience: Not only had he served as the chef at the Stockyards Hotel on East 21st St., but he also had owned Henry’s Hiway Inn Restaurant at 3900 W. Kellogg. His wife, Lily, ran his businesses with him.
At his previous restaurants, Lew was known for preparing things like chicken fried steaks, burgers and other American fare. But at The 11th Frame, he also added a Cantonese menu. Modern-day Wichitans who ate there say the bowling alley restaurant may have been the best Chinese place in town at the time, and they especially remember its egg foo young, egg rolls, sweet-and-sour chicken, fried rice and hot mustard — as well as its congenial, warm owners.
The bowling alley and the restaurant both operated until 1986. In May of that year, the owners of the Crestview Bowling Center announced that they would close it, citing escalating property values. Several of the center’s 1,600 league bowlers who were interviewed at the time said they were devastated about the closing. But the Lews were not. They finally got to retire, Henry told a Wichita Eagle reporter.
“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” he was quoted as saying. “As far as the money is concerned, I don’t care. But I’ll miss them (the customers).”
Later that year, the Crestview Bowling Center was repurposed into a strip mall, and it still operates as one today. Known as Crestview Village, the strip mall’s tenants now include LA Cajun Seafood & Chicken, Top Nails nail salon, MobileComm and Deshi Curry.
If you gaze long enough at the strip center’s east-facing side, though, you can almost see the outline of the once-beloved bowling center. And a few lucky Wichitans — who bowled at Crestview in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s or tagged along with their bowling parents — can still hear the bowling pins falling and smell the rice frying.
More Flashback Friday profiles
Flashback Friday: Beloved family restaurant chain started as a tiny burger spot in 1946
Flashback Friday: 1960s Wichita fell in love with this restaurant’s German dishes, vibe
Flashback Friday: Gen X grew up at ShowBiz Pizza, home of so-so food, amazing robot bear
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 5:01 AM.
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