Is the beloved Mama Love’s Kitchen returning to Wichita? Yes and no

When Mama Love’s Kitchen opened in Old Town in 1998, The Wichita Eagle reported that the soul food restaurant’s walls chronicled “four generations of one of Wichita’s best-known black families.”

Now, someone from the family’s younger generation — Adrian Love, grandson of Mama Love’s founder Ahnawake Love — is opening Love & Co. Kitchen & Cocktails in the former Donut Whole space on East Douglas just east of Hydraulic.

“All my life, I always told my grandma I wanted to reopen Mama Love’s,” he said. “She always told me I could, but I want to do another version of it. . . . It’ll still be Mama Love’s, but it’ll just be a different version of Mama Love’s.”

Love said the original “was . . . like Sunday dinner every day.”

At the new restaurant, he said, “We’ll have the full Mama Love’s feel on Sundays.”

That’s when Love will serve the “Sunday dinner-type food that everybody loved.”

Also on weekends, he plans what he called brunch parties.

“That’ll be one of our big things.”

In other cities where he’s lived and visited, he said weekend “day parties are huge.”

“We’re going to bring that energy.”

Love said the menu won’t be huge, though.

“You won’t have to think too long.”

There will be dishes such as chicken and waffles, including a vegan option, and diverse charcuterie boards.

Love said there will be a variety of meat-free options since so many Love family members are vegetarians.

He also plans to offer “a lot of grandma’s different things recreated into sliders.”

“We’re going to infuse all that flavor and style into sliders.”

Love also will offer coffee, a wide selection of international tea and possibly some of the former Donut Whole doughnuts during the day.

“We have all the recipes.”

However, Love said he’ll only make the doughnuts if he gets the blessing of original Donut Whole co-owner Michael Carmody, which he’s working on now.

Love plans evening blues, jazz and funk, too, in what he called “a really upscale situation” with craft cocktails.

He said he’s “putting a nice team together, but it’s definitely a family affair in many ways.”

Crucially, the two cooks who ran Mama Love’s — his sister, Kiavoni Judie, and his aunt, Kim Love — also are part of the new business. Judie is the executive chef and Kim Love is a consultant.

“We have two of the three,” Adrian Love said. “My grandmother’s no longer with us.”

He’ll handle the business side of the restaurant, and Judie will oversee the food, which will include the famous cinnamon rolls Mama Love’s used to serve. They’re his aunt’s specialty.

“She’s going to be making sure her cinnamon rolls are correct.”

Other Loves will be popping in and out of the business as well, such as musician Rudy Love Jr., Adrian Love’s cousin.

“I’ll definitely have him here playing,” he said.

He said the new restaurant will have some of his late mother Shirley Love’s influence, too, such as “the quick meals that she made for us because there was so many of us.”

“My mom was big on sandwiches.”

Love said his restaurant will have them as well.

Shirley Love used to sing with her brother, the late Rudy Love Sr.

“I’m bringing a lot of Shirley Love, too,” Adrian Love said. “She always had a big thing for community and bringing people together.”

He said his grandmother’s restaurant had music along with food, too, when it was in Old Town where Egg Cetera is today.

“Oh, my goodness. They had lines down Old Town.”

At about 12, Love started bussing tables there.

“I was just a kid doing what I was told.”

Though he’d always wanted to reopen the restaurant, Love said he wasn’t planning to do it right now. Then the Donut Whole space became available when the business closed in September.

“It’s such an amazing location. For me, the location really made me do it.”

He used to go to the Donut Whole when he was younger, and Love said he likes that it’s across from Tanya’s Soup Kitchen.

“When I got here, I just got a really good feeling.”

That kind of feeling was what building owner Rhandalee Hinman was looking for, too.

She’d instructed broker Michael Moeder of Moeder & Associates to find someone local to take the Donut Whole spot.

Hinman “was trying to be very picky on who they put in,” Moeder said. “That was her main concern: She wanted to keep the space local.”

Hinman said she “just felt like it was the sense of the neighborhood, of the Douglas Design District” to stay local.

Then Adrian Love came along.

“I was thrilled,” Hinman said. “I went to school with many of the Loves.”

She said she was a big fan of Rudy Love Sr. and “also was quite the patron of Mama Love’s.”

Once, Hinman and her husband, Raleigh Hinman, were eating there when he ordered catfish.

She said Mama Love saw the size of the piece of catfish he was served and declared it wasn’t big enough for him, so she brought out “the largest piece of catfish we had ever seen.”

Adrian Love said he’s remodeling the restaurant space now and will have more information about the menu closer to the opening in a couple of months.

In addition to offering food and music, he said he’s going to sell his Love & Co. candle line at the space as well.

There will be valet service, and Love said he hopes guests will dress smart in business casual clothing to come to Love & Co. Kitchen & Cocktails.

Mostly, he said, he hopes he can bring back the warm feeling his grandmother, mother and family created.

“We all loved the restaurant so much. It left a big impact on I think all of us, and for me, I just wanted Wichita to have that again.”

This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 4:04 AM.