Wichita’s longest-running Cajun restaurant is closing, but not before one more Mardi Gras
Da Cajun Shak is about to celebrate its final Mardi Gras.
Patty Granger, a native of Louisiana who has been sharing her family’s Cajun recipes with Wichita since 2005, said on Monday that she’s decided to retire and will close her 19-year-old restaurant Da Cajun Shak on March 30.
But first, she said, she has one more Fat Tuesday in her. She’ll decorate the restaurant at 6249 E. 21st St. for Mardi Gras, she said, and on Feb. 13, she’ll do as she’s always done and serve traditional King Cake to her customers along with Cajun favorites.
“It’s such a bittersweet thing about closing, but there was nobody I wanted to sell it to,” Granger said. “This was our baby. I know what people would do with it, and I don’t want that. I want it to be what we built.”
Patty, 75, has been running the restaurant with help from family members for the past three years, but it’s been difficult, she said. She lost her two main partners in the business — son Tim and husband, Chris — less than three months apart in late 2020 and early 2021.
Tim, whose idea it was to open the restaurant back in 2005, was just 47 when he died unexpectedly of a heart attack on Halloween 2020. The following January, family patriarch Chris — always the public face of the restaurant — died of complications from heart surgery. At the time, family members said they believed grief over Tim’s death contributed to his decline.
“It’s been a challenge, for sure,” Patty said.
The Granger family moved from Louisiana to Wichita in the early 1990s when Chris got a job heading the cafeteria at Newman University, then known as Kansas Newman. Patty worked as the head of the cafeteria at Kapaun Mt. Carmel High School.
Five years later, the couple left their jobs to become managing partners in Sonic restaurants around town. But Chris really wanted to start his own business.
In 2005, Tim Granger approached his father with a plan to open a Cajun restaurant that would specialize in the family recipes Patty had grown up learning from her Grandmother Lena. Tim opened the first Da Cajun Shak at 31st and Oliver in 2005, and it was patronized by nearby Boeing workers. But not long after, the machinists went on strike, and business dried up. The family decided to move Da Cajun Shak to 21st and Woodlawn, and Chris and Patty sold their Sonic restaurants so that they could help. Patty has always been the restaurant’s main cook.
Da Cajun Shak is known for its specialties like fried gator bites, fried catfish, authentic gumbo with a roux base and bread pudding. During its long run, most of its customers were repeat visitors, and people would often travel to Wichita from out of town to get a taste of authentic Cajun fare.
Patty said longtime customers have already been asking her for some of her recipes, and she’s happy to share — though the recipient must figure out how to translate a recipe that serves a whole restaurant to a recipe more reasonable for a home cook.
She’s looking forward to retirement and to spending more time with family in Louisiana and her grandchildren and great grandchildren in Wichita.
In the meantime, she said, she hopes her longtime customers will come see her once last time.
“Please come see us,” she said. “It’s my last Mardi Gras that we’re going to have, and we hope to be able to keep up and have all the food everybody’s going to want.”
