Flashback Friday: Before Old Town was Old Town, this downtown cafe was a pretty big deal

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.

This week’s featured restaurant, Rock Island Cafe, was a pioneering restaurant in the heart of Wichita, the Old Town district.

Before it was Tanya’s Soup Kitchen, before it was Natasha Gandhi-Rue’s The Kitchen — and way after it served as a baggage depot for the Rock Island railroad — the little building that sits at 725 E. Douglas was home to a pioneering Wichita restaurant.

Rock Island Cafe was not only one of the earliest restaurants to find success in Wichita’s then-burgeoning Old Town district, but in the mid- to late-1980s, it was the place to go for lunch.

The restaurant was opened in March of 1985 by Janet Cohlmia and her husband’s cousin, Chris Cohlmia (now Farha). Chris already had a successful restaurant — the Cork & Canape, which then operated at 2333 E. Central — but she was ready for a new challenge.

Janet found the depot building, which had most recently been home to a brokerage company. At the time, Old Town was just starting to become Old Town, and the district that Wichitans now flock to for dining and nightlife was home to very few restaurants. Old Mill Tasty Shop was operating down the street, and the diner at 909 E. Douglas that now holds The Beacon had been chugging away for years. But early Old Town eateries like Pasta Mill, Spaghetti Warehouse, Larkspur, River City Brewing Company and Heroes were still years away from opening.

When Janet showed the old, free-standing train depot to Chris, she asked her if she could envision a New York-style eatery that would cater to downtown office workers.

Chris told The Eagle in 1989 that she wasn’t sure she could see what Janet was seeing. But she was game to give it a try. She sold Cork & Canape, and the pair started working on their new restaurant, which would serve homemade muffins for breakfast and specialty sandwiches and salads for lunch.

Rock Island Cafe was an instant hit: Though the Cohlmia cousins quietly opened with no advertising, the line stretched out the door on the first day.

Diners were excited about the restaurant’s sandwiches, which had railroad-themed names like “Streamliner” — made with turkey, avocado spread, alfalfa sprouts and lettuce on honey-wheat bread, and the Conductor’s Concoction made with ham, turkey, smoked Gouda, mayo, sliced tomato and lettuce on an onion bun. The owners also lured diners with a sandwich topping that was a rarity in Wichita in 1985.

“As a matter of fact, we’re selling a lot of sandwiches with brie cheese,” Chris Cohlmia was quoted as saying in an advertorial that ran in The Wichita Eagle a month after the cafe opened. “People are really enjoying that because very few restaurants offer it.”

Other items on the menu included a pita bread sandwich stuffed with chicken salad; decadent homemade muffins , including a cinnamon sugar muffin filled with cream cheese; plus cheesecakes, cookies, sundaes and pies.

Chris remembers that the restaurant got lots of customers from nearby businesses like Sullivan, Higdon & Sink and The Wichita Eagle, and it catered lots of downtown businesses meetings.

“Groups of lady friends would gather in the corner booth each Friday and stay for two hours,” she said. “It was a loyal clientele.”

In 1989, The Eagle published a story about the successful restaurant, reporting that, only four years after opening, it was earning revenues of $250,000 a year. It also attracted a high-profile visitor in the late 1980s — fitness guru Richard Simmons, who Janet remembers wore his signature tank top, short shorts and headband and ordered a big sandwich and cheesecake.

The Eagle also reported that when Gary Streepy’s Pasta Mill opened in 1988 at 808 E. Douglas , where Emerson Biggin’s is now, Rock Island Cafe took a bit of a hit. But after a couple of months, it returned to normal — and Pasta Mill kept its crowds, too.

“Proving, Streepy said, that there’s room for plenty of restaurants in the area of Wichita he wants to be known as ‘Old Town,’” the article read.

In 1993, Janet and Chris decided to sell Rock Island Cafe. They wanted to spend more time with their growing families, they said.

Sabrina Parker, who also owned Merle’s Place and Walt’s Bar & Grill at Central and I-235, was the buyer. Eventually, she cut back the restaurant’s hours, eliminating breakfast service in 1996. Later that year, it appears, the restaurant closed.

But the building wasn’t vacant for long. Tanya Tandoc leased it in 1997 and turned it into the equally successful Tanya’s Soup Kitchen. It operated in the space until 2004, when the restaurant lost its lease because landlord Cox Communications wanted the building for a customer service center. After Cox left that space, The Kitchen made the building a restaurant again in 2016, and it’s been operating there ever since.

Old Town, of course, grew, and today, it’s home to more than 30 restaurants. Rock Island Cafe was just a memory until 2012, when — 20 years after it closed — former manager Kristen Teague revived it at 3236 N. Rock Road, offering the original menu, including the Conductor’s Concoction.

The reincarnation lasted less than two years. El Agave Mexican restaurant has occupied the Rock Road space since 2014.

Janet Cohlmia and Chris Farha both still live in Wichita. After leaving the restaurant, Janet started a smoothie and sandwich bar at the Wichita Racquet Club and today has a company with her husband and son that sells dairy-free protein milk.

Chris had a long career in the food industry and retired after working for years as a food service director for Wichita Catholic secondary schools. She now works for her son’s property management company, directs the choir at St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral, and spends time with her grandchildren.

Wichita pizza chain closes downtown restaurant, moves it to address that’s ‘a better fit’

Wichita keeps asking when the new west-side Deano’s will ever open. Now there’s an answer.

Wichita’s second Mokas will open next week on the city’s east side