Former KC food hall chef opening new restaurant as ‘old-school hangout’
Chef Brett DeHart’s lengthy resume includes stints at many loved local restaurants — Nara, Bristol, Jun’s Japanese, etc.
His most recent role was as a partner at Latin-inspired concept Fénix inside downtown Overland Park food court Strang Hall.
But after ending his five-year partnership with Strang, he decided he wanted to open something closer to his home on the fringes of the metro.
So DeHart snatched up an old gas station with a garage bay in Louisburg, Kansas, and envisioned a nostalgic restaurant and gathering space.
He’s calling the upcoming spot The Go To in hopes the neighborhood will think of it as such.
“I’m kind of aiming for that old-school hangout,” he said. “You can walk right up, look in the kitchen and see us slinging food in there.”
At the spot at 1 S. Broadway St., DeHart plans scratch-made pizza with fermented dough and burgers ground in-house. His fries will be cooked in beef tallow, an alternative to seed oil, and he plans to source as many of his ingredients locally as he can, utilizing the nearby farm community.
The retro restaurant will feature a walk-up window and spacious patio. Eventually, he hopes to turn the green space behind it into an event space and host music acts.
Yes, the concept is a far-cry from sushi and tacos, but DeHart has a layered culinary journey that includes a run at a pizza restaurant in Salt Lake City. Plus, he wanted to pick a food genre that would please the neighborhood.
“Louisburg doesn’t have much,” DeHart said, then rattled off a few fast-food burger joints. “All that is pre-made, processed type of food.”
Right now, DeHart is in the process of converting the building into downtown Louisburg’s hottest new spot.
He’ll repaint the building, turn the garage into a kitchen and crown the building with a pizza-shaped windmill.
His goal is to open The Go To to the public in June.
Ideally, the spot will attract folks from the entire Kansas City metro. As the metro pushes farther south, he thinks south of Johnson County could use new culinary spots.
“I really get joy out of feeding people,” he said. “I like how excited this community is, and people from Kansas City, too, obviously this is gonna be a destination traveling spot.”
Somewhere down the road, he dreams of opening multiple locations.
DeHart is one of several chefs and entrepreneurs in the last few years to look to the outskirts of the metro for a place to build a following.
Last year, blacksmith-themed cocktail bar The Forge opened in Gardner, followed by all-natural brewery with eats Force of Nature Brewing in De Soto.
Kansas City’s Burnt End BBQ also abandoned its Overland Park spot last summer to open a new location in a former De Soto Burger King.
As for Strang Hall, it recently closed its locations on the Country Club Plaza and in the Lightwell building, citing a lower level in foot traffic.
Its Overland Park spot remains open, as does Fénix.