Chef who created some of Wichita’s favorite dishes now fighting for his life, needs help
Wichita would never have known the edible joy that was Red Bean’s Bayou Grill’s tomato bisque soup or Red Mesa’s cilantro pesto enchilada if it weren’t for Rick Jeffrey.
Now, the well-known chef who created flavors Wichita still craves a decade later is in a fight for his life — and his friends are trying to help.
Jeffrey, 61, is in the hospital waiting for a liver transplant, which doctors say is his only hope for survival. For the past three years, he’s been fighting Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and has racked up overwhelming medical bills.
His friend and longtime collaborator Richard Waite — the co-founder of Red Beans and Red Mesa — says he wants to spread the word about a GoFundMe campaign started by Jeffrey’s daughter, Chelsea Foster. She has a goal of raising $45,000 and so far has brought in $16,150 from friends and longtime fans of Jeffrey’s culinary work.
“It’s really a bad deal,” Waite said of Jeffrey’s illness. “It’s bad luck of the draw.”
Jeffrey, an Iowa native, first became known in Wichita as a recipe developer for Carlos O’Kelly’s, where he worked for 22 years. Then, in 1998, he left that job to help Waite open the first Red Bean’s, at 7088 E. Kellogg. The duo went on to open several more Red Bean’s restaurants as well as Mexican favorite Red Mesa, which was at 756 N. Tyler from 2000 until 2006.
Wichita loved the food at both restaurants, so much so that even after the last Red Bean’s closed in 2014, the demand for its tomato bisque, pork loin Thibideaux, New Orleans butter cream pasta and firecracker chicken and shrimp remained so strong that people still crowd in year after year for Fat Tuesday Red Bean’s memorial dinners, which feature a buffet of the restaurant’s favorites.
“He basically created all of them,” Waite said of the popular menu items. “He did all the recipe development, and I helped around the edges.”
Jeffrey pursued other projects after leaving Red Bean’s — which Waite eventually sold to Blue Moon Caterers owner Bill Rowe in 2008. During the interim, Jeffrey worked as food service director for Cabela’s, based in Colorado, then returned to Wichita and took a job as the director of operations for Timberline Steakhouse & Grill, an early restaurant by the eventual founders of Freddy’s Frozen Custard.
In 2020, Jeffrey started a new business that got Red Bean’s favorite recipes back in circulation. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he launched Red Beans To Go, preparing take-and-bake versions of Red Bean’s favorites like crawfish etouffee and Cajun chicken cordon blue, and sold them at The Coop, a coffee shop and co-op restaurant space in Derby.
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Rowe, who in 2020 still owned the rights to the Red Bean’s brand, gave Jeffrey his blessing on the new venture, which was instantly popular.
But eventually, Jeffrey became too ill to run the business.
“The financial burden of this entire process is overwhelming,” Jeffrey’s daughter wrote in the GoFundMe description. “Because of how sick Rick is, he had to shut down Red Beans To Go, which gave him so much joy.”
Jeffrey now requires round-the-clock care and has been in the hospital for weeks, his daughter said.
She asked that anyone who knew Jeffery or enjoyed his cooking consider donating something to help the family deal with the bills, which she said were significant, even after insurance.
She wants her father to be able to continue doing what he loves, which includes being “pop pop” to his grandsons.
“Rick has rarely complained or given up any hope that we will get a liver,” she wrote. “He’s his same happy, optimistic and goofy self. His biggest goal in this is to be here with his family and especially take his grandsons to fish and teach them how to cook.”
The GoFundMe campaign can be found at www.gofundme.com/f/donate-for-ricks-lifesaving-liver-transplant
Waite and Rowe are also talking about putting on a fundraiser for Jeffrey that will feature his famous recipes. They haven’t worked out the details yet, Waite said, but they’ll announce it when they have.
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