Wichita German restaurant Prost leaving shipping container mall for larger downtown spot
.jpg "Austin and Manu English opened their German restaurant Prost in a shipping container mall in 2018.")
When Wichita shipping container mall Revolutsia was new back in 2018, its flagship tenant was Prost — a two-story German restaurant owned by German transplant Manu English and her husband, Austin.
The business met Wichita’s long-voiced desire for a German restaurant, and each fall, people would slide into their ledershosen and head to Revolutsia’s courtyard for a big, old-fashioned Oktoberfest party.
Now, the Englishes are preparing for the next phase of their restaurant, which is moving to a new home in downtown Wichita. Prost will be taking over the building at 134 N. St. Francis that’s directly north of Bite Me BBQ and previously served as a warehouse space for Grant Rine’s Architectural Salvage, which closed in 2023.
The building is owned by Hutton Development, but the Englishes are buying it. The restaurant will use both stories of the building, which has original wood floors, exposed brick walls and a space for an outdoor beer garden directly to the north.
Austin English said he hopes to have the move completed sometime in June.
Although Revolutsia was a good home for Prost — and a great place to incubate a new business, English said — he and his wife are ready for Prost’s next chapter.
“We’re excited to be downtown,” he said. “We’re definitely excited to see more customers experience more of what it’s like at a German guesthouse.”
Prost won’t close in Revolutsia until about two weeks before it reopens in the new space, English said. At the moment, the focus is on the massive renovation of the historic brick building, which went up in the early 1900s and has been home to several different businesses over the years.
Austin English said that Prost will be able to spread out in the new space. The main floor, which shares a wall with Bite Me BBQ, will have two entrances: one facing St. Francis and a second north-facing door that customers will be able to access through the beer garden.
People who enter from St. Francis will find themselves inside Ze German Markt, which is a German retail market that the Englishes opened on the upper level of Revolutsia in 2019. They’re also bringing that business with them and incorporating it into the lower level of the new space.
Beyond the market will be restaurant seating as well as a bar that will be set up in a salvaged antique bar that the Englishes purchased from Rine. In the back of the main level, customers will see a 10-foot-tall by 8-foot-wide stained glass piece that originated in Germany and that the owners also purchased from Rine. It features an angel, which Austin English has dubbed “the beer angel,” and it will be a design centerpiece for the lower level, which will also contain the stein wall that’s been a popular feature at the Revolutsia restaurant.
The upstairs section of the building will be transformed into Prost’s beer hall, or “bier halle” in German. It will be filled with the authentic German benches that are now upstairs at Prost and will be decorated with the flags that hang on the current location’s walls. It also will be fitted with a salvaged antique bar purchased from Rine.
The big beer garden will have eight-foot-wide tables made from wire spools and will be the place where Prost’s owners put on the Oktoberfest parties that have become popular at Revolutsia. Oktoberfest also will be able to spill into the building, which will have at least twice the square footage of the Revolutsia space.
Austin English said that demolition has started in the building and that the owners have uncovered many unusual treasures left by previous tenants, which included the McCoy Candy Company in the 1910s; the Will K. Jones Merchandise Co. in the late 1920s; the Roland-Speh Leather Co. starting in the 1950s; and a fencing club in the 1980s.
In the basement, for example, they found an old corncob pipe adhered to a support beam with a handwritten “don’t touch” sign next to it. Austin English said that he and his wife are trying to incorporate lots of the building’s old touches into the design. (But not the pipe. They’re not touching it.)
“We’re going to keep a lot of the old architecture,” he said. “The exposed brick, we’re keeping. We’re keeping a lot of the old and mixing it with a lot of the new.”
Austin English said that he hopes Prost will keep operating in its new space — which is just across the street from Nortons Brewing Company — for years to come. His and Manu’s son, A.J., who now works as Prost’s kitchen manager, and A.J.’s wife, Lauren, who is the restaurant’s general manager, have expressed interest in taking it over one day.
Austin English and his wife Manu, who grew up in Germany, got their culinary start in Wichita with a food truck called Let’m Eat Brats, which first opened in 2013. The couple gained a following and decided to open their stationary restaurant in the new shipping container mall five years later.
In addition to authentic German beers, Prost also serves German specialties like bratwurst, schnitzel and bierocks.
Stay tuned for more updates as Prost’s moving date gets closer.
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