Name: Public at the Brickyard
Address: 129 N Rock Island Rd, Wichita, 67202, US
Price range: $$$

The Restaurant

Public at the Brickyard occupies a restored brick warehouse at 129 North Rock Island Road in Wichita's Old Town district, adjacent to The Brickyard, the city's largest outdoor music venue, and a five-minute walk from any downtown Wichita business hotel, and has held the seat as the city's reference Kansas-sourced gastropub since opening in 2012. The dining room runs about ninety covers across two levels, a main parlor with original brick walls and exposed timber, a working brass-rail front-bar that anchors the room, and an upper mezzanine with banquettes against the wall, and the outdoor patio along the Rock Island address adds about sixty covers in summer with views over the Old Town brick streets. The conversion brought a deliberate Kansas-prairie-industrial palette, original brick, exposed steel, working pendant lighting, and a careful low-light scheme that reads as a working gastropub rather than a chain restaurant.

Chef Travis Russell runs the Kansas-sourced gastropub format the way the format ought to be run: a working Kansas-grown programme as the standing centre (the Prairie Sliders, house-ground beef-and-bison patties on a brioche bun, are the working Old Town signature), a careful local-brewery beer-and-cocktail card that pulls from working Wichita and Kansas City breweries, and a seasonal multi-cuisine menu that rotates with the working Kansas growing calendar. Other plates run through brisket tacos with house-made tortillas, working wood-fired pizzas from the open hearth, a Creekstone filet on weekend nights, Atlantic salmon and a working house-made fresh pasta programme. The room is well-known for live music on weekend evenings and the outdoor-bar experience along the working Brickyard patio.

Service is the older school of Kansas gastropub hospitality, career bartenders, a working front-of-house team that knows the brewery card by tap-handle, and a pace that treats a ninety-minute dinner-and-drinks evening as the format rather than the exception. The cocktail card runs to about thirty working signature builds with deliberate Kansas-distillery and Midwestern-craft-spirits depth. The Old Town brick-warehouse address on the working Rock Island walking grid is loud enough on weekend nights that the live-music programme can carry across the patio. For a Wichita evening that needs to register as a real Kansas-sourced gastropub rather than a chain operation, Public at the Brickyard is the standing Old-Town answer.

Primary Occasion

Why This Is Wichita’s Team Dinner Pick

Public at the Brickyard is the Wichita team-dinner room because the format does the work that a chain gastropub cannot. The ninety-cover dining room across two levels, main parlor, upper mezzanine, outdoor Brickyard patio, gives any working team a long-table format without having to pre-book a private dining room. The Kansas-sourced gastropub card, the Prairie Sliders, the brisket tacos, the wood-fired pizzas, the working fresh-pasta programme, lets a team order across the table without negotiating a fixed dinner. The local-brewery beer-and-cocktail card lets each team member order at their own price point. The Old Town brick-warehouse address adjacent to the city's largest outdoor music venue gives the team a working pre-and-post programme. For a Wichita team that wants a real Kansas-sourced gastropub rather than a chain dining room, Public at the Brickyard is the standing answer.