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 installment looks at the many restaurants that have operated inside the Dempsey’s Burger Pub building in Clifton Square, including Burton Pell’s Soupcon, the first tenant 50 years ago.
The building at the back of Clifton Square that for the past 10 years has been home to the popular Dempsey’s Burger Pub also has housed a long string of interesting eateries, dating back to the mid-1970s and serving everything from catfish to Chinese food.
And until Dempsey’s managed to survive a whole decade, Wichita wondered if the two-story space — which was the only new building in Clifton Square, 3700 E. Douglas, when it went up in 1974 — was too hidden to house a successful restaurant.
Ground was broken for the building on July 18, 1974. Its first tenant was to be Soupcon — which is pronounced “Soops On” — a French restaurant owned by well-known Wichita art patron Burton Pell.