Flashback Friday: 1960s Wichita loved the charcoal burgers and the western theme at Lazy R
Welcome to Flashback Friday, a weekly feature that will appear every Friday on Kansas.com and Dining with Denise. It’s designed to take diners back in time to revisit restaurants they once loved but now live only in their memories — and in The Eagle’s archives.
This week’s featured restaurant, Lazy R, first opened on East Central in 1963.
The first Lazy R restaurant opened at 5405 E. Central in 1963, selling quarter-pound charcoal hamburgers, franks and hamburger steaks.
The most expensive item on the menu at the western-themed restaurant was the club steak, which came with fries, a salad and toast and cost $2.
Over the next 25 years, Lazy R — which was founded by partners George Stevens Jr. and Harvey Rosen — became one of Wichita’s most popular places to dine out. Between 1963 and 1989, when the last of the original Lazy R restaurants closed, the local chain had opened locations across the city at addresses including 608 N. Broadway, 2544 S. Seneca and 7805 W. Kellogg. Lazy R also had restaurants in Manhattan and Topeka at one point.
Customers would place orders at the counter then wait for their names to be called. Kids loved Lazy R, which appealed to their inner cowpokes. The restaurant had a mascot called Sheriff Regrub, which was “burger” spelled backwards, and kids liked to order The Yearling, a special burger for diners under 12 that came with a sucker stabbed into it.
But the food also was popular with adults. In 1977, The Wichita Beacon’s food reviewer Kathleen Kelly said that “the hamburgers are so good at the Lazy-R Charco restaurants that I don’t believe I’ve ever dined there with anyone who has ordered the ‘real’ steak.” (By then, the sirloin meal had gone up to $4.25) Lazy R also was famous for two desserts: apple dumplings and banana fritters served with hot cinnamon sauce.
An interesting side story: In August of 1972, the West Kellogg restaurant caught on fire, and customers who were evacuated took their burgers and steaks with them, eating in the parking lot as they watched the building burn.
Lazy R was briefly resurrected in 1994, when Stevens’ daughter, Brandi, opened a more modern Lazy R at 7088 E. Kellogg. It included a full-service bar, a soda fountain and a menu that offered several of the old favorites but many more contemporary dishes. It didn’t last long, though, and in 1998, a new restaurant moved into the space: Wichita’s first Red Bean’s Bayou Grill.
Lazy R menu, circa 1963
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