When longtime restaurateur Lory Wooley opened Bella Vita Bistro , the reliable Northern Italian restaurant at 120 N. West St., back in 2010 , she lured the best chef she knew from Florida to run the kitchen: her son-in-law, Adrian Prud Homme DeLodder.
Since then, “Chef Adrian” has become well-known in Wichita: in his early years as a chef who would occasionally stop at tables to serenade customers with his beautiful singing voice and in his later years as an involved member of the local chef community who always participated in (and frequently won) charity cook offs.
But now — 14 years later — Prud Homme DeLodder is ready to move on. He and his wife Crystal, who is Wooley’s daughter and a front-of-house mainstay at Bella Vita, are leaving Kansas, bound for Tennessee. The chef’s last day in the kitchen will be Tuesday, Aug. 27.
Wooley said that Prud Homme DeLodder — who in 2019 was named the Kansas Restaurant and Hospitality Association’s Chef of the Year — is ready to do something different with his life, and the couple and their sons are relocating to Tennessee to be closer to his family.