Flashback Friday: Town & Country founder also owned Pancake House, Hanover House in 1960s
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 restaurants were the other ones opened by Town & Country’s founder during the 1960s and 1970s.
Modern-day Wichitans remember Town & Country, the family diner that survived at 4702 W. Kellogg from 1957 until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
But older Wichitans will remember that Town & Country’s co-founder, the late Jay Conover, had a veritable restaurant empire from the late 1950s through his death in 1980 that included several Pancake House restaurants as well as a Hanover House inside the fancy new Ramada Inn that opened on East Kellogg in 1963.
Conover, a lifelong restaurateur who started his career as a night manager at his aunt’s Wichita restaurant, called Market Lunch, opened Town & Country and then three years later partnered up with Roy Harris, a banker, accountant and food salesman, to add to his collection.
The two first cooperated to open a Pancake House at 2532 S. Seneca in 1960 and had been running it for three years when they got the opportunity to open a restaurant inside the administration building of the new Ramada Inn. (They came up with the name “Hanover” by combining their last names.)
Hanover House had a ground floor dining room/coffee shop that seated 100 people plus a 50-seat side dining room, “replete in a gold, chartreuse and green decor,” according to The Wichita Eagle. The partners were also in charge of a second-floor banquet facility with seating for 250.
“The Hanover House could be the pair’s most successful venture to date,” the Eagle said in a 1963 story. “Without benefit of ‘ballyhoo’ or promotion of any sort, the restaurant has been full during peak dining hours since the motor-hotel opened in late April.”
Hanover House, which was open 24 hours, had full menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The star of its morning menu was pancakes, and in the evenings, it served family-style specials. In 1964, a Southern fried chicken and pot roast meal with whipped potatoes, two vegetables, two salads, two fruits, fresh-made hot rolls plus beverage and cake cost $1.69.
In 1965, Hanover House started offering themed nights. Mondays, for example, were Chuck Wagon Night, when the menu included a meal of boiled ham hock and navy beans, salad, hot cornbread, coffee and dessert. Tuesdays were Bar-B-Q Night, Wednesdays New Englander Night, Thursdays Italian Night, Fridays Seafood Night and Saturdays Ramada Night, featuring a fried chicken dinner.
Harris and Conover went on to open several more Pancake House restaurants over the coming years — at 3000 E. Kellogg, 929 N. Broadway, Kellogg and Market, and 21st and Amidon. In 1967, the pair added Hanover Hen House at 2700 W. 13th St. Around that same time, they also sold a Hanover House in Topeka to new owners. That restaurant is still in operation.
Over the years, though, their restaurants started to close or change ownership. The Ramada Inn became a Quality Inn in 1985, and the last mention of the Hanover House operating inside the hotel was printed in the paper in 1974. When Jay Conover died of esophageal cancer in 1980 at age 61, the last two Pancake House restaurants open were at 5700 E. Central and 929 N. Broadway. His son, Larry, took over Town & Country.
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One more Hanover Pancake House would eventually open. In 1985, when Carriage Parkway was built at Central and Edgemoor, a Hanover Pancake House was one of the tenants. But it lasted for only two years.
The last remaining of the original Hanover Pancake Houses closed at Kellogg and Market in 1988 but by then had different owners.
The first of Jay Conover’s restaurant ventures, Town & Country, outlasted the rest. His son, Larry, started running it after his father died, and it maintained a loyal clientele. Larry died of throat cancer at age 67 in 2020, just before the pandemic set in.
Though another set of owners tried to reopen Town & Country in late 2020, the revival lasted less than a year.
Harris, who in 1970 bought the Lakeview Inn at Twin Lakes, died in 1998 at age 81.
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 4:05 AM.
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