Flashback Friday: Poolside restaurant was known for flaming desserts, Friday-night parties
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 Wichita Royale, was one of several that operated poolside on the sixth floor of the 125 N. Market building in downtown Wichita.
There was a time in Wichita when people could dine poolside any time of the year, all while enjoying sweeping views of the city, dining on beef tenderloin sliced table side, and splurging on flaming cherries jubilee for dessert.
This was the time of The Wichita Royale, a 134-room hotel that occupied the sixth through ninth floors of the 19-story building first built at 125 N. Market in 1962. Originally known as the Wichita Plaza, the building has lived many lives — and has had several well-known tenants — during its 62 years of existence.
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Today, the building is home to companies like New York Life Insurance, Darrah Oil and building owner Larry Cook’s Larry Cook Heating and Cooling. But from September 1976 until 1994, one of its main tenants was The Wichita Royale, which took over the former Regal Inn space and added a restaurant, also called The Wichita Royale. The slogan of the new business: “Where success comes to stay.”
The Wichita Royale restaurant was on the sixth floor of the building, and the floors of hotel rooms above it had interior windows that looked down onto an Olympic-sized swimming pool that was surrounded by tables and chairs. The sixth floor offered breakfast, lunch and dinner and was patronized not only by hotel guests but also by many Wichita residents.
During the daytime hours, people would gather poolside for breakfast and lunch, sitting in white wicker chairs and surrounded by plant life. In the mornings, the atrium coffee shop offered a menu of French toast, pancakes, steak and eggs, and omelets. The restaurant also drew lunch crowds, who would dine on Hot Shrimp Delight, made with broiled shrimp and Parmesan cheese, or the ABC Supreme, a sandwich made with avocado, bacon and cream cheese on wheat berry bread. A lunch special called “One By Land, Two by Sea” was made up of a trio of chicken salad, tuna salad and shrimp salad.
Dinner was served in the Wichita Royale’s private club and dining area. It was near the west end of the pool, which in the evenings twinkled with the reflection of the lights streaming out of the hotel rooms above. Though evening diners also could sit by the pool, most of the tables were inside the restaurant, which had soft light and live music.
In the early 1980s, the dinner menu was made up of dishes like veal Marsala, medallions of tenderloin, shrimp scampi, New York strip, and a Catch of the Day. Parties of two could share the rack of lamb or chateaubriand.
During its early years, Fridays at the restaurant were known for a seafood buffet stocked with clams, stuffed shrimp, seafood Newburg and baked flounder. A weekly Sunday brunch featured roast baron of beef, country fried chicken, and herring in wine sauce. Wichita also celebrated holidays at The Wichita Royale, which offered a feast on Thanksgiving Day, a brunch on Mother’s Day, and a big party on New Year’s Eve.
In 1988, the Wichita Royale started putting on Friday-night happy hours that featured beers and mixed drinks for $1 by the pool. Soon, crowds of 400 to 500 people were gathering every Friday night from 5 to 9 p.m., many of them members of the downtown business crowd, still dressed in their “blue blazers, red ties and brown loafers; their trim skirts, black rayon blouses and pearls,” according to a story in The Wichita Eagle.
The Wichita Royale lasted until 1994, when it affiliated with Howard Johnson Franchise Systems. The hotel got a major makeover and reopened as The Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel in January of 1995.
The new owners moved the hotel’s dining to the 18th floor of the building and added a formal restaurant called Cattle Baron and an informal restaurant called Baron Grill. At the time, the hotel owners said they planned to make the sixth floor pool part of its health facility.
But in 1997, the hotel — which had since been renamed Guild Plaza — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Revenue had been falling, and by the time it closed, the hotel was running at just 30% occupancy.
The hotel closed in 1999.
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