Owner of Wichita’s Margarita’s Cantina decides where he’ll move the restaurant
Wichita’s Margarita’s Cantina had its last day at 3109 E. Douglas — the building it had occupied for 33 years — on New Year’s Eve.
But the owner has already found a new spot and plan to reopen the restaurant soon.
Jesse Lee has signed a lease on the building at 725 E. Douglas that Natasha Gandhi Rue’s Express Kitchen vacated in late October. The building, owned by Occidental Management, is part of the Union Station development.
He will take over the space on Feb. 1, Lee said, and although he doesn’t know exactly when he’ll be open, they’re hoping for mid-March.
In the meantime, he’ll work on transforming the historic building, which was once home to a baggage depot for the Rock Island railroad, into a Mexican cantina. He’ll be installing some of Margarita’s neon signs, including the neon birds and the big neon Margarita’s sign, and when he’s finished, Lee said, the new Margarita’s should be brighter and more colorful than the original, which was dark and cave-like.
“There’s tons of light,” he said. “ I think it will be a more fun and festive vibe.”
When it reopens, the new Margarita’s will have all the same menu items as the old one, but the restaurant will likely operate a bit differently. Rather than table service, Lee said that he’ll probably have customers order their food at the counter and wait for it to be delivered to their tables. He also will likely allow customers to customize their meals a bit more. (The restaurant’s famous chips and salsa will remain.)
“It’s going to be Margarita’s Cantina,” Lee said. “It’s still going to have all the same great food that it did before.”
Lee said that he likes the new building not only because of its proximity to Old Town but also because the space is much smaller. The old restaurant had 120 seats, while the new space will seat about 60.
He’s really excited about the roomy outdoor patio attached to the back of the Union Station building, Lee said, and he imagines his customers sitting outside in the spring and summer enjoying margaritas, chips and salsa and the restaurant’s famous Margarita dip.
Lee and friend Jon Wood bought Margarita’s in 2021 from founder Don Overstake, who opened the restaurant on July 22, 1992. But they learned late last year that the building would be sold at auction, which led them to reevaluate whether the space was still working for them.
In October, real estate developers Brian and Paul Suellentrop bought the building, but Margarita’s owners had decided by then that they weren’t staying. They announced that their final day in the original spot would be Dec. 31.
Lee will reopen Margarita’s as a solo project, he said. Wood is no longer involved.
The final days of business in the East Douglas building were emotional, he said.
“We saw a lot of customers that had a lot of great stories about how they met their husband there or their wife there,” he said. “New Year’s was popping. We had 300 or 400 people there.”
Lee said he’d update me when he got a clearer idea of when Margarita’s would reopen in the new space.
This story was originally published January 13, 2026 at 12:39 PM.
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