Small-town Kansas restaurant destroyed by fire 16 months ago reopens this week
A restaurant that was a small-town Kansas staple until a fire destroyed it 16 months ago is about to make its comeback.
Coneburg Grill and Pub, which opened in Peabody in 1978, will open the doors to its reconstructed space on Thursday. It was destroyed by a Dec. 8, 2024, fire — started by the gas stove — that demolished the kitchen, caused the roof to cave in and spared almost nothing beyond the restaurant’s four walls.
Ever since, owner Lindsey Marshall has been working to rebuild the Coneburg, which operated out of a red metal building in the shadow of the water tower in Peabody, a town of about 900 that sits 43 miles northeast of Wichita.
Now, she’s nervously awaiting reopening day at the business, which she’s owned since 2011.
“It’s scary, but it’s definitely super-duper exciting,” Marshall said. “The anticipation is a whole different level of anxiety than I remember ever experiencing before.”
The restaurant’s longtime regulars already have seen inside the rebuilt Coneburg: Since the middle of February, Marshall has been opening for Friday-night dinners and Sunday-morning brunches and welcoming anyone who doesn’t mind dining alongside ladders and tools and drying paint.
But on Thursday, the entire building will reopen and will begin to keep some regular, though temporary, hours: 2 to 10 p.m. Thursdays; 2 p.m. to midnight Fridays; noon to midnight Saturdays; and 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays.
After the staff gets used to working in the new space, Marshall said, she plans to resume her pre-fire schedule, which includes Tuesday and Wednesday hours. That likely won’t happen until June, she said.
People who haven’t seen inside the restaurant since before the fire likely won’t recognize it, she said. The new Coneburg has a different layout, a new color palette and, instead of a dropped ceiling, it has one that’s extra high and makes the place feel open and airy, Marshall said.
“A lot of our regulars have said they were kind of timid about coming back in because they loved the old place so much,” Marshall said. “But once they came back in, it took them about 10 minutes to say, ‘Oh, yeah. She’s still here.’”
Marshall was able to salvage some of the whimsical signs that decorated the pre-fire Coneburg and has spent the past 16 months gathering quirky items from yard sales that will make the bar feel like home again. She’s also been able to bring back much of the restaurant’s previous staff, though some moved on with life during the downtime. Marshall is still trying to find a few more new employees.
The menu will be similar to what it was before the fire, offering things like Reuben sandwiches, chicken fried steak and burgers. She cut a few items, Marshall said, but she also added some new ones, including flatbreads.
The pork tenderloin sandwich — a longtime customer favorite — will make occasional appearances at first but will eventually be added back to the menu, she said.
Though insurance covered much of the loss, Marshall said, she also received donations from a couple of big fundraisers.
Marshall also helped pay bills during the downtime with a food truck called “Coneburg Curbside,” which she’d open in front of the Coneburg site and serve some of the bar’s favorites. The truck, which launched a little more than a year ago and would open occasionally, has been down since February. Once the truck gets some repairs, Marshall said, she’ll likely use it to serve food at area festivals.
Marshall said she’s endured a long period of grieving about the loss of the original Coneburg and still wishes she could just have it back.
But support from customers and community members helped get her through, she said.
“We have support from all over.,” she said. “It would blow your mind. I wish that I could name every single person that has stopped me in the grocery store, at the gas station or at the shopping mall — just with their well-wishes, their donations, their time, just their love in general. It has been fantastic.”
The Coneburg will open at 2 p.m. on Thursday. Marshall says she suspects the demand for a seat will be high, so she recommends that people make reservations by calling 620-983-2010.
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