Closed forever: Message scrawled on door confirms restaurant’s status
Nearly two years after it opened, Wichita’s The Mango Tree Indian Kitchen + Tap House at 111 E. 47th St. South is closed.
And a scrawled-in-marker message on one of the restaurant’s doors saying it’s closed forever leaves little doubt about its potential for return.
On Aug. 12, co-owner Rakesh Kaushal left me a voice message saying that the restaurant was going to close at the end of the month and that he needed to cancel his services. Clearly, he intended to contact our advertising department instead: When I finally got in contact with him, he asked me not to share the news yet. He said he was out of the country and would contact me when he returned.
I didn’t hear from him, and he hasn’t returned calls and messages since then. But the restaurant, which operated out of a former Burger King restaurant near 47th and Broadway, is clearly closed. There’s a realtor’s sign posted in front of the building, the signs are all gone, and the doors all say that the restaurant is permanently closed.
Kaushal and his partners, all based in Idaho, opened the restaurant in fall 2023. They said at the time that it would be a replica of a couple of restaurants they were already operating in the northwestern United States. During the time it was open, I heard generally positive reviews of the restaurant, which specialized in curry bowls and stuffed naan bread.
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The building the restaurant occupied was originally built as a Burger King. Its last tenant before The Mango Tree was barbecue restaurant/sports bar The Angry Elephant Burgers, Brew & Cue, which lasted only a few months in the space and was closed by January 2023.
Wichita’s InSite Real Estate Group now has the building listed for sale or lease.
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 12:38 PM.
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