Doo-Dah Diner’s new owners have added first new menu item since taking over
It’s been nearly a year since brothers Jeff and Jay Miller bought Doo-Dah Diner from its founders, Patrick and Timirie Shibley.
And during that time, the Miller brothers said, they’ve been careful to keep their promise not to change much of anything about the way the Shibleys ran the diner at 206 E. Kellogg which they opened in September 2012.
The Millers kept the same employees. They kept the same dishes. They added a few items to the permanent menu but only ones that the Shibleys had either served in the past or offered as occasional specials — things like chicken and noodles, a yogurt parfait and a Reuben sandwich.
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There is one exception, though: Back in October, the Millers, who are also Wichita’s Five Guys franchisees, began offering a sweet-roll-of-the-month that customers could order either baked or fried. (The fried roll is dipped in the restaurant’s French toast batter then deep fried and comes out tasting like a cinnamon roll/ funnel cake mashup.)
The idea came about, the Millers said, because Jeff Miller has always wanted to own a restaurant that served a bacon cinnamon roll.
“A long time ago, I thought, ‘This is the best flavor combination you could ever have,’” he said. “And it’s been rolling around in my head. I was just fixated on it.”
That bacon cinnamon roll, topped with a maple glaze, was the first offering back in October, when the program launched. Each month since, the Millers have brainstormed a new flavor and turned to Doo-Dah baker Rebekah Love to execute it. May’s offering, available through Sunday, is orange dreamsicle roll. June’s will be chocolate raspberry. July’s flavor will be something strawberry — probably strawberry cheesecake. In August, Jay Miller will get to offer his favorite — a peach cobbler-inspired roll.
The most popular flavor so far has been the lemon blueberry roll with a lemon curd cream cheese frosting, which the diner served in April. It was such a big hit that it outsold the banana bread French toast, a longtime Doo-Dah favorite.
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“We had a lot of guests lobby real hard for the lemon blueberry to go full-time on the menu,” Jeff Miller said.
Other flavors they’ve offered: cranberry orange in November; traditional cinnamon roll with cream cheese frosting in December; turtle in January; red velvet in February; and bananas foster in March, the Millers plan to continue the sweet roll program indefinitely.
“We’re really, really proud of these,” Jeff Miller said. “They have been super, unbelievably popular.”
Celebrities keep coming
The brothers say that they couldn’t be happier about how their first year owning the diner went.
“It’s been fantastic,” Jeff Miller said. “We are gifted with the best crew in the business. We kept everyone, and we want to keep everyone for as long as they want to be here.”
That includes Laura Shoemake, who was among the diner’s original employees, and her daughter Autumn Norris who now runs the kitchen.
“She’s fantastic,” Jay Miller said of Norris. “She helps in so many ways, and she knows the history. She knows all the stuff, all the little things.”
The only real changes the Millers made, they said, were adding hours to keep the diner open seven days a week and installing an electronic ticketing system so that waiters and waitresses can take orders at the tables with hand-held screens.
The Millers said they have ideas for a few recipes they want to try in the future that weren’t originated by Patrick Shibley, but they want to keep the overall feel of the diner the same. The Shibleys family photos still decorate the walls.
“”It really was important, especially for the first year, for us to really toe the line and make sure that people understood that we weren’t going to come in here and start changing what they loved, because we loved it,too.”
One of the highlights of the first year, they said: Learning that celebrity interest in the diner would continue. When the Shibleys owned Doo-Dah Diner, they served famous customers from Harrison Ford to Henry Winkler to ESPN sports analyst Fran Fraschilla, who has become a Doo-Dah regular and vocal champion over the years.
The Millers so far have served two celebrities. One was former pro-golfer Tom Watson, whose wife has connections to Wichita. He was in the diner in December, and Jeff Miller recognized him.
In August, Wichita native and Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh was in town to announce his VetsAid concert, which happened at Intrust Bank Arena on Nov. 15. While in town, he stopped in the diner on a busy Saturday, waiting in line for a table like everyone else. He posed for photos with the Doo-Dah staff before he left, Jeff Miller said.
A few days later, the Millers said, Walsh’s assistant called back and asked if the diner would be willing to put on a “family meal” for Walsh and the show’s other performers the day before the November concert.
They agreed, and on Nov. 14 of last year, the diner was filled with a crowd of about 80 people that included Walsh and other performers set to appear on stage, such as Susan Tedeschi.
“We had a ball,” Jeff Miller said. “It was way cool.”
An update on Patrick
The Shibleys sold the diner last year, in response to Patrick’s battle with stage four metastatic prostate cancer —a rarer, more aggressive form that had spread to his bones and lymph nodes. Though hormone therapy was keeping the cancer at bay, its side effects were keeping Patrick out of the kitchen.
A year later, Patrick is enjoying his retirement. He’s doing well, health-wise, and he and Timirie are at the moment in Roatan, one of their favorite vacation destinations, “babysitting” a resort for its owners.
He is feeling pretty good, Timirie said, and his cancer is still holding at an “inactive stage.” His biggest concern is the cardiac risk caused by the medications keeping his cancer at bay.
“We have absolutely cherished being on this side of the business as much as we cherish the memories we hold from it,” Timirie said. “We miss a few people. We don’t miss the work at all.”
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