Flashback Friday: Old postcard sparks interest in ‘South Broadway’s Finest Restaurant’

Welcome to Flashback Friday, a feature that runs Fridays on Kansas.com and Dining with Denise. It’s designed to take diners back in time to revisit restaurants that they once loved but that now live only in their memories — and in The Eagle’s archives.

This week’s featured restaurant, Lydroy’s 81 Grill, called itself “South Broadway’s Finest Restaurant” in the 1950s

As a self-appointed expert on Wichita’s restaurant past, I often find myself searching eBay, estate sales and antique stores for local restaurant relics — postcards, matchbooks, menus, dishes, etc.

Sometimes, I find postcards featuring restaurants I’ve never heard of — at all — and that always piques my interest.

Recently, I stumbled across and purchased a colorful postcard advertising Lydroy’s 81 Grill, a restaurant that appears to have operated from around 1946 to 1962 at 1144 S. Broadway. The thing I found most exciting about this postcard: 1144 S. Broadway today is still recognizable from the sketch of the restaurant’s exterior featured on the postcard — and that’s unusual.

Lydroy’s 81 Grill touted itself on the back of the postcard as “South Broadway’s Finest Restaurant,” and after some research, I learned that its owners — Roy and Lydia Weigel — might have been the king and queen of South Broadway back in the day.

Their restaurant, which the couple obviously named by combining their first names, became the place where many clubs and philanthropy groups gathered for meetings throughout the 1950s, and it became particularly popular after the Weigels added their gorgeous “Sunflower Room” in 1950. (Another postcard floating around on the web shows the Sunflower Room filled with mid-century chairs and tables that are covered with checkered tablecloths and set with fanned napkins.)

The Sunflower Room appeared to have been booked constantly through the 1950s with meetings, elections and holiday parties. The Jayhawk Optimist Club, for example, made the restaurant its home base. So did the La Sertoma Club, a service club of which Lydia Weigel was a member. The restaurant also regularly hosted groups like the Christian Business and Professional Women’s Council; the South Central Chapter of the Kansas Credit Union League; and the Air Capital Chapter of the Refrigeration Service Engineers Society.

The postcard I bought shows that the main dining room had an interior that looked a lot like Old Mill Tasty Shop’s does today: back-to-back wooden booths, murals on the wall and a soda fountain fitted with stools. Outside was a big, vertical neon sign reading “Lydroy’s,” and “81 Grill” was spelled out in neon along an overhang at the front entrance. (You can still see today the spot where the sign was attached to the building.)

The restaurant served things like charbroiled steaks, jumbo shrimp cocktail, french-fried shrimp, chicken salad-stuffed tomatoes, and a grilled sardine plate with sliced tomatoes, potato salad, cole slaw and saltines. On the front of the menu were printed the words “Our latch-string is out,” an old saying meant to convey that people were invited to come inside.

Lydroy’s also was known for sponsoring female league bowlers, whose names and scores frequently appeared in the paper.

Around 1955, the Weigels — who also lived on South Broadway — added to their restaurant collection when they opened Lydroy’s Drive-In at 3721 S. Broadway. Customers could get food fast at the drive-in, which offered curbside and carryout service but also had a dining room.

On the menu at the drive-in were things like fried chicken, chicken gizzards and livers, “Bar-B-Q” sandwiches, homemade chili, corn dogs and burgers-by-the-bag.

As the years went on, the Weigels mostly made the paper for crimes committed against the drive-in: Someone bored a hole in the back of the drive-in in 1967 and stole some whiskey. In 1966, someone forced open a rear door and stole change from the restaurant’s vending machine. In 1965, a burglar entered through the air cooler on the roof and took change and cigarette lighters.

Roy Weigel died in September 1968 at age 72. The following August, a liquidation sale of all the equipment from the restaurant and the drive-in — including barbecue ovens, counters, ranges, booths and even the malt and popcorn machines — took place at the drive-in.

Lydia Weigel was 88 when she died in 1989.

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