Flashback Friday: 1960s Wichita fell in love with this restaurant’s German dishes, vibe

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.

T his week’s featured restaurant, Rhinelander, was a popular stop for schnitzel, polka music and German culture from the early 1960s through the early 1980s.

In the early 1960s, a little German restaurant opened in a brick building on South Broadway.

Called Rhinelander, the restaurant was special not only because it served authentic German dishes like wiener schnitzel, sauerbraten, bratwurst and rippchen (spareribs) with sauerkraut. For many years, it also was a gathering spot for people who came to Kansas from Germany or who had ancestors who did. During the early years, the restaurant invited German-speaking locals to visit on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights to talk and sing in their native language. Rhinelander also was a frequent meeting place for Wichita’s German-American club.

The restaurant, at 4423 S. Broadway, appears to have opened in late 1963. The new owners, who aren’t named in Wichita Eagle archives, leased a brick building that previously had been home to a business called The Southern Club — a short-lived establishment that was the site of frequent liquor raids.

The Rhinelander was included for years in the local newspaper advertising feature, “Your Guide to Good Dining” and was listed alongside famous 1960s establishments like Ken’s Klub, Albert’s , Shakey’s Pizza Parlor, Innes Tea Room, Doc’s Steak House and Angelo’s . Its earliest named owners in local newspaper archives were Horst Hall and his wife, who were pictured in a 1966 advertisement standing in front of a “Willkommen” sign and extolling the effectiveness of the paper’s dining guide.

“In fact, we have had to increase our shipments of special German bread by more than 60%,” the owners were quoted as saying.

Photos of the restaurant from that same year, taken by building owner Walter Morris & Son Commercial Real Estate and now owned by Wichita State University’s Special Collections, show that the interior of Rhinelander was filled with tables covered in white tablecloths and formally set with flatware and napkins. The dining room also featured German-style wooden chairs, and framed pictures of the Bavarian Alps hung on the brick walls.

An old photo of the exterior of Rhinelander is recognizable as the modern-day BC’s Bar & Grill , which has operated at the address for more than 25 years. Comparing photos taken nearly 60 years apart, it’s easy to identify the same windows, the same roof line and the same jutting entryway on the building’s northeast side. Back then, though, the restaurant featured a big “Rhinelander” sign posted on the front of the building as well as the words “German Foods” painted on the brick.

By 1970, the restaurant was owned by Richard Baldwin and his German-born wife, Elli — a native of Rudesheim in the Rhine River valley. She loved to share her culture and would invite classes of schoolchildren studying German into the restaurant for authentic dinners. One Christmas, she put on a series of German-style holiday parties in the restaurant and invited “isolated poor elderly” people to help them “stave off the anguish they feel while watching the outside world’s holiday festivities swirl past them,” according to an article published in a 1970s edition of The Wichita Eagle. She served homemade German Christmas stollen and German apple cake and invited a local high school class to sing German Christmas carols.

German Class 1971

Article from Jul 22, 1971 The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kansas)

In 1972, the Baldwin’s changed the name of the restaurant to Schloss Rhinestein, which translates to Rhinestein Castle. The business kept that name until 1979 but continued to serve German fare, put on German-themed parties and invite polka musicians to perform for diners.

Sometime in 1979, the restaurant’s name was changed back to Rhinelander. That same year, an ad appeared in the paper offering a Rhinelander “Recession Special” — a rahmschnitzel (German schnitzel with mushroom sauce) for $2.95.

As the 1980s dawned, Rhinelander kept its German dishes but added things like steak, seafood and country ribs to the menu. The last ad for the restaurant appeared in 1983, and after that, the brick building became home to a rotating series of restaurants and clubs with names like Born Again Family Restaurant, Golden Chance Steak Saloon, Just Good Cookin, Penny’s Club, Shenanigans, Roberta’s Club and Joni’s Club.

After Rhinelander disappeared, Wichita didn’t have many other German restaurants for some time. There was Mr. Dunderbak’s in Towne East Square in the 1970s and 1980s, and Wichita has had a to-go bierock shop — M&M Bierock at 2065 E. Central — since the 1970s. But there hasn’t been much else despite years of public yearning from hungry schnitzel fans.

In the early 2000s, Imbiss Grille operated in Old Town Square, lasting from 2003 until late 2011. And in 2018 , German-born Manu English and her husband, Austin, opened Prost at 2721 E. Central and have been keeping Wichita filled with bierocks, brats and schnitzel ever since.

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