Monthly steak nights at small-town restaurant a rare treat, thanks to former Wichita chef

For years, he charmed Wichita with his quirky sense of humor and his ability to slide seamlessly from food truck taco slinger to in-demand chef putting out eight-course dinners.

Now, four years after former Gaga’s Grub owner Dustin Presley closed his restaurant , packed up his food truck and headed back to Oklahoma amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he’s back in the area. And he has a new job where he’s helped start something pretty unique: a steak night worth traveling for.

For the past year, Presley has been running the kitchen at The Hub , a pizza place/brew pub/coffee shop that Blaine Stucky opened in December 2022 on the site of a former gas station at 100 S. Christian in Moundridge, a town of about 1,800 that sits 40 miles northwest of Wichita.

And back in May, Presley and Stucky started closing the restaurant’s normal operations on the third Monday night of each month and putting on reservation-only, $45-a-person steak nights .

The idea has been a hit, they say, and not only because it’s otherwise impossible to find a steak dinner in Moundridge. Steak night gets busier each month as word spreads about the meal — which features a 12-ounce ribeye, a salad, a loaded baked potato, a vegetable medley and a dessert.

The star of each plate is a locally-sourced ribeye so big that it fills most of the plate. Presley carefully cooks each steak in cast iron in the restaurant’s rotating brick pizza oven and also makes sure that the side dishes sing, using ingredients from the pizza line to dress up the salad and sauteing the veggies to crisp perfection.

Steak nights are the only nights at The Hub where people are waited on at their tables: When The Hub is operating as a pizza place or coffee shop, people order at the counter then pick up their food when it’s ready. But on steak nights, friendly members of the wait staff bring the dinners to the tables and demonstrate for customers The Hub’s unique self-serve tap wall, which allows them to place a card in a slot above the tap of choice then serve themselves however much they want. The setup allows customers to sample small sips of the various choices then pay for whatever they poured. Steak night customers get a 10% discount at the tap wall.

The idea for steak night has been in Stucky’s mind since before he opened the restaurant. He’d traveled to New York to learn how to use his pizza oven and learned that it also had the ability to turn out a great steak.

“We have people that come from out of town,” Stucky said of steak night. “They’re bringing groups of people, which is what we like. That was kind of the idea: to meet different groups from different places. That’s why we call it ‘The Hub.’”

So how did Presley end up cooking steaks in a pizza oven in Moundridge? The story involves personal upheaval, business burnout and a desire to “see the stars.”

‘Quintessential midlife crisis’

Presley’s early days as a cook included stints at Timberline Steakhouse & Grill , which was owned and operated by Freddy’s founders Bill Simon and Scott Redler from 1997 to 2011. He eventually landed in Perry, Oklahoma, but in the spring of 2016, he decided to join Wichita’s growing food truck scene.

He moved back to town, bringing his two food trucks with him, and briefly operated a Gaga’s Grub brick-and-mortar restaurant at 1227 S. Seneca.

But he really built his following with his taco truck, which he jokingly called “the “Ugliest Taco Truck in Wichita.” He became well known for his social media sign-off — “smooch, blessings, feed yo belly” — and business was good enough that, in the summer of 2018, he took over the former Byblos space at 3088 W. 13th St., using it as a home base for food truck prep. Eventually, he started offering private dinners he called “P.M. Sessions” in the space. People could reserve a spot at his big wooden table, and he’d serve them multi-course meals that showed off his whimsical approach to dishes other than tacos: things like steaks, seafood and homemade desserts.

Months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Presley took over the vacant laundromat space next door and opened a taco buffet restaurant, calling it Gaga’s Grub Taco Joint and Carry Out . But COVID was not friendly to restaurants — especially buffet restaurants. In August of 2020, Presley shut everything down and moved back to Oklahoma.

Back in Perry, he used his trucks to open a makeshift taco drive through, then he added a carryout restaurant in the former Elks Lodge there. But after a while, he said, “I basically had my quintessential midlife crisis.” He lost his mother in February 2021 then his father in June of that year. Then, he got divorced.

Presley decided to come back to Wichita and briefly resumed catering and putting on his P.M. Sessions in a vacant restaurant space in Carriage Parkway, at Central and Edgemoor. But in August of last year, he decided that he “just wanted to see the stars,” and on a whim, he moved to McPherson, which is 20 miles northwest of Moundridge.

When he learned about the job at The Hub, he decided it was perfect for him. As kitchen manager, he could still do what he loved, but he didn’t have to be in charge.

“This is definitely a step back,” he said. “I’m doing the same thing but different. It’s just kind of nice to not have to hustle and bustle like I did.”

A hub for steak lovers

After the Conoco that occupied the longtime gas station spot in Moundridge closed, Stucky — who owns an insurance business across the street — watched it sit vacant for months.

“I got to watch that building kind of fall apart,” he said. “No one was doing anything.”

In 2019, he bought the building and announced plans to turn the 7,500-square-foot space into something he thought Moundridge could use: a combination coffee shop, pizza restaurant and brewery that would provide more options for the residents of the small town, where dining choices are limited. Besides The Hub, Moundridge has one Mexican restaurant called El Paso Mexican Grill .

He used all but 1,500 square feet of the space for The Hub and the coffee shop that operates inside of it, called The Station Coffee & Bakery . (A spa takes up the remainder of the space.)

When crews got to work on the building, which for decades had been home to a procession of gas stations and convenience stores, they saved pieces left behind from years worth of former occupants so that Stucky could use them to decorate his new business. A set of gas station booths where older members of the community used to meet for coffee in the mornings were left exactly where they’d always been and now serve as seating for customers of The Hub. Old gas station signs discovered in storage areas now hang on the walls. Stucky even incorporated a salvaged clearance sign, which had served as a warning for drivers of tall trucks, and incorporated it into the design.

Customers who enter The Hub order food and drink at a counter then grab a table. The coffee shop opens at 7 a.m., and people can start ordering pizza at 11 a.m. The businesses stay open until 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, though the kitchen closes at 9 p.m.

The Station’s menu includes a big menu of espresso drinks, teas and smoothies as well as muffins, cinnamon rolls, coffee cake, cookies and a breakfast sandwich. There’s also an ice cream case, and people can get different flavors by the scoop or in a milkshake.

The Hub section of the menu includes a long list of pizzas, all made in the brick oven. People can either build their own pies or choose from a list of pre-imagined topping combinations, like a Chicken Alfredo pizza or one called Mushroom Mania. Salads and appetizers like stuffed mushrooms, chicken wings and hummus also are available.

The restaurant has a spacious patio and a large private meeting room that features what is likely the most massive television screen in Moundridge.

The Hub has become popular with the people of Moundridge, but Stucky said he’s been surprised by how many customers have driven from out of town to dine there. On weekend nights especially, he said, the license plates on cars parked outside are nearly all from other counties.

Stucky said he feels lucky to have found Presley to run his kitchen, and when the chef “does his work” on the steaks in particular, the results speak for themselves.

But Presley said he’s the lucky one. The job came along at just the right time.

“I literally can’t say enough about it — the wholesomeness of this job and the people I’ve worked with and the management team,” he said. “And the owner’s a cool, rad dude himself.”

Steak Night at The Hub

Where: The Hub , 100 S. Christian Ave., Moundridge

When: Third Monday of every month from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Reservations: They’re required at 620-345-2337

Next steak nights: Oct. 21, Nov. 18, Dec. 16

The Hub’s regular hours: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. Kitchen closes at 9 p.m.