Two new restaurant concepts coming to Towne West Square

Two new restaurants are coming to Towne West Square, and ever since Billy and Lyndsey Petrihos shared the news to social media, they’ve been surprised to see people’s reactions to their choice of where to put the businesses.

“People are just so negative,” Billy Petrihos said. “In contrary to popular belief, there’s a lot of people here.”

The two restaurants will be Doughmaha, a dessert and street food concept, and Olympia Greek Eats, which will feature a variety of Greek foods.

Billy Petrihos is of Greek descent. He and his wife opened their first Doughmaha in Omaha. The restaurant is named for dessert dough and Omaha.

Lyndsey Petrihos is from Wichita.

“She wanted to move back to help her grandma,” Billy Petrihos said.

He said Towne West is special to his wife.

“She has such awesome memories coming here with her dad. This is Wichita’s original. . . . Everybody that grew up here came here.”

The restaurants will be in the food court. They’ll each have their own areas, but customers can order from one counter.

The Petrihoses are opening in two phases.

Doughmaha opens on Friday, Olympia opens in January.

Doughmaha will sell edible cookie dough, ice cream, specialty desserts and drinks such as shakes.

It also will have what Billy Petrihos called street foods, such as gyros, pizza and walking tacos. That’s where you take a bag of chips, and “anything that would go on a taco goes in the bag,” he said.

In Omaha, where Petrihos said he and his wife conducted a proof of concept at another mall, “They were selling like hotcakes.”

There also will be cotton candy burritos, which are two scoops of ice cream topped with various sprinkles and marshmallows and wrapped in fresh cotton candy.

“We cut it in half, and it just melts in your mouth,” Petrihos said. “They’re amazing to watch them being made.”

Olympia will serve traditional Greek food such as moussaka, pastitsio, gyros, Greek potatoes and salad.

The Petrihoses want to open more of the restaurants around Wichita by the spring or summer, and they’d like to reopen in Omaha as well.

Eventually, they plan to franchise the businesses.

“And honestly, there’s no better place to start a franchise than in Wichita,” Billy Petrihos said.

He said Towne West is especially ideal to start the businesses.

“I came here a lot checking it out.”

There may not be elbow-to-elbow crowds, but he said, “This mall’s busy.”

He called mall manager Charley Cooper amazing.

“She’s getting stores in here. There’s traffic here. The theater is busy.”

Unlike some of the people who have been ugly about his choice to locate at Towne West, Petrihos said the other tenants and customers at the mall are wonderful.

“The people are just so nice. . . . Everybody talks to you. . . . I’m so excited to be here.”

This story was originally published November 22, 2022 at 11:55 AM.