Flashback Friday: Wichita has somehow survived a decade without this legendary restaurant

Welcome to Flashback Friday, a feature that will run 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, Doc’s Steak House, would have turned 72 this year if it had survived.

In a few months, Wichita will reach a milestone it might have once thought would be impossible to reach:

It will have lived without Doc’s Steak House for a full decade.

The once-famous restaurant, beloved for its garlic salad, closed for good in late October of 2014 after 62 years in business. Ever since, the building at 1515 N. Broadway has sat vacant. Bits of the signage are still visible, though only a few letters remain on a marquee that once read “Home of the World Famous Garlic Salad.”

Doc’s was founded in 1952 by Dwight “Doc” Hustead, and when it first opened, it was in the up-and-coming area of town. The North Broadway area at the time was also home to iconic supper clubs like Abe’s, Ken’s Club and Savute’s — the latter of which is still open at 3303 N. Broadway and turns 80 this year.

Though there’s still some debate about which of these restaurants first started serving garlic salad, it was undoubtedly the star of a Doc’s Steak House menu that, in the restaurant’s heyday included items like pan-fried chicken livers and gizzards, jumbo frog legs, french fried clam strips, channel catfish, pork chops, spaghetti and meatballs, and lasagna. In 1977, when famous Wichita food writer Kathleen Kelly reviewed Doc’s, she described the specialty steak, which cost $4.90, as a one-inch thick cut of prime rib cooked rare only.

The garlic salad she described as a “blend of chopped vegetables in a creamy dressing redolent with garlic served atop a modicum of shredded lettuce.” Customers could get the pungent mixture as a side dish for their steak or order it on its own.

Doc’s started small: Kelley described the original building as a “dwelling with a small cooking and dining area.” In 1963, Hustead sold the restaurant to his neighbor, Louis Scott, and Scott’s business partner Mike Belluomo.

In 1970, the new owners spent $25,000 on a Doc’s facelift, adding the stone facade and arched parking lot entry still visible today. The new look was such a hit that in 1971, the restaurant won a citation from Project Beauty for property beautification.

The new owners also updated the 200-seat interior of the restaurant, adding the kind of dark-stained oak paneling stylish in the early 1970s and updating the booths, tables, chairs and carpet.

Doc's facelift 1970 08 Feb 1970, Sun The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kansas) Newspapers.com

Doc’s Steakhouse grabbed headlines in the 1970s for another incident as juicy as its steaks. In 1974, the owners sued KAKE-TV for $250,000 for airing a story where a news crew followed a health inspector into Doc’s kitchen. The inspector found 37 violations, and the embarrassed owners insisted that they’d been tricked by the station, which had said it was producing a documentary about a health inspector at work. The case went to trial in 1977, but Doc’s lost.

Over the years, restaurant ownership passed down through the Scott family. Louis Scott sold it to his son, Stuart, who sold it to his nephew, Brian, in 2011. Though Brian Scott, who had grown up working at the restaurant, had dreams of modernizing and revitalizing Doc’s, he faced too much competition and couldn’t break even when costs rose, he told the Eagle in 2014 when he announced that he was closing the place.

By that time, most of the other once-famous supper clubs in the area also were already gone. Ken’s Klub had closed decades earlier in 1971, and Abe’s shut its doors in early 2000.

New owners bought the Doc’s building in 2016, saying they planned to open a Mexican restaurant there — but they never did.

A couple of years before Doc’s closed, then Wichita Eagle food writer Joe Stumpe tried to talk Brian Scott out of the restaurant’s garlic salad recipe. But Scott wouldn’t budge.

Stumpe did track down the original Ken’s Klub garlic salad recipe, provided by founder Ken Hill’s daughter. You can find it below:

Ken’s Garlic Salad

The key to this is using real mayonnaise and extracting as much moisture as possible from the lettuce. The dressing should not be added to the vegetables until just prior to serving.

1 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise

1-2 teaspoons McCormick garlic salt

2 tablespoons tomato juice

1 head lettuce

1 cup grated carrots and radishes

Garnish: Sprig parsley, radish roses, paprika

Crackers (Club or Ritz are recommended)

Mix mayonnaise, garlic salt and tomato juice. Refrigerate.

Remove outer leaves and core from head of lettuce (outer leaves can be washed, drained and used to line salad plate or bowl).

Chop remaining lettuce into dime-size pieces to fill 6 cups. Line a colander with paper towels, place lettuce in colander and top with more paper towels. Press down on lettuce to extract moisture. Remove lettuce from colander and place in plastic bag lined with more paper towels. Refrigerate several hours. Grate carrots and radishes and pat dry. Refrigerate.

Just before serving, toss chopped vegetables with dressing. Mound salad in bowl or plate and garnish with parsley, radish rose, and paprika. Serve with crackers.

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