Get a peek into the new brunch restaurant opening today in northeast Wichita
Just after the New Year, Jacob O’Connor and Jon Peterson stood in front of an empty, 3,500-square-foot shell at the end of a new strip center at 4862 E. 35th St. North and talked about the brunch restaurant they wanted to bring to Wichita.
Today, they’ll open it. Another Broken Egg Cafe is a new upscale brunch restaurant that serves Louisiana-inspired breakfast and lunch dishes and has a large bar.
O’Connor and Peterson, who met growing up in St. Louis then both attended Wichita State University, have spent the last several weeks putting finishing touches on their restaurant, which will feature dishes such as chicken and waffles, cinnamon roll french toast, shrimp and grits, and crab cake Benedict. It also will offer standard brunch favorites like biscuits and gravy.
Another Broken Egg restaurants also are known for their large bar menus, which feature standard brunch cocktails like Bloody Marys and mimosas as well as a tequila sunrise, a brunch blueberry margarita, a “Traditional Day Starter” with vodka and orange juice, and more. There’s also a menu of “spiked coffees.”
O’Connor and Peterson took me on a preview tour of the restaurant last week. Training crews sent by the corporate office were all over the dining room, and new employees were rolling silverware and carrying dishes out of the kitchen.
The dining room has tall ceilings with exposed, copper-colored duct work and lots of Edison light chandeliers and light fixtures. The walls are covered with sayings like, “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy brunch, and that’s basically the same thing.” It also has lots of framed photos of sites from Wichita, both past and present. There’s even a photo collage on one wall featuring scenes like The Keeper of the Plains, the “Wichita” Union Station train depot sign, and the old county courthouse.
The restaurant has seating inside at a mix of tables and booths for 106 diners with room for another 45 on a large front patio that’s surrounded by plant life, filled with light blue tables and chairs, and connected to the bar by a pass-through window. The patio, which is dog friendly, gets lots of shade in the morning hours when the restaurant is busiest, the owners said.
O’Connor and Peterson, who both graduated last year from Wichita State University’s W. Frank Barton School of Business, even have a photo of the business school hanging up in the restaurant. They give the school and its staff credit for helping them chase their entrepreneurial dreams, they said.
“We’ve learned so much,” O’Connor said last week. “If you would have asked me 12 months after I graduated what I would be doing, none of this would have been in the picture. We’ve gotten to be so immersed, to learn so much, meet so many people. It has been such an exciting and fulfilling learning process.”
The restaurant is the latest addition at District 96 development at K-96 and Oliver, which sits in the shadow of the Koch Industries building. Over the past couple of years, the development has added a big new restaurant — which started off as Rail Hoppers then became The Kitchen — and a new Scooter’s coffee kiosk.
A new pickleball complex called Taps N Paddles also will open soon at District 96.
The partners say they hope to attract Wichitans who like to brunch, entrepreneurs like themselves who’d want to do some “ideating’ over brunch, even pickleballers from next door.
They’ve signed a deal saying they could open as many as three Another Broken Egg restaurants in the Wichita market but say they’ll wait to see how this one is received before they make any moves.
Another Broken Egg’s hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Not sure what to order on opening day? Peterson recommends the Lobster & Brie Omelette, cream-cheese filled and topped with brie and champagne butter sauce-sauteed lobster meat.
O’Connor says he loves the Bacquezo Omelette, also cream-cheese filled and made with bacon, sauteed chorizo, Jack cheese and green onions.
