By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Press restaurant at the Hadley Center, 230 E. Eighth, Hays, is now opening for weekend hours with a new evening menu with amped up sandwiches and fine dining entrées.
Philip Kuhn, owner of the The Press, started the business in 2016 as a sandwich shop to cater to the lunch crowd in and around the Hadley Center. Everything is cooked fresh in-house.
The Press offers a lunch menu 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and brunch 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays.
As the business started to grow, Kuhn and his staff, which represents about 70 years of cooking and restaurant experience, decided they had more to offer the community.
“As we were thinking about this, we thought, there are a lot of other times and a lot of other things that we would like people to experience,” Kuhn said of The Press.
The Press is now opening 5 to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays with a new dinner menu.
One of Kuhn’s favorites is the Oscar burger, which is a burger with lump crab meat with a béarnaise sauce and shaved asparagus on a brioche bun.
“I had it once, and I had dreams about for about two weeks,” he said.
Another inventive sandwich is called The Southern Gentleman, which is a braised short rib sandwich on a hoagie with monterey jack cheese, fresh arugula and pickled red onions.
“Everything in this restaurant has a very bold and distinct flavor profile, and that is the way we created it,” he said. “We wanted people to experience that and start training people to understand what they are eating. That’s thyme or that’s rosemary or there is a hint of capers in this remoulade sauce. To try to introduce some new ideas to people.”
Some of the new entrées include duck confit, duck slow cooked in garlic, shallots and herbs de Provence; merchant de vin, a fillet with demi-merlot sauce; chicken marsala; chicken sautéed in mushroom sauce; chicken madeira, chicken breast sautéed in a madeira wine and mushroom sauce; and chicken kiev; chicken with herb compounded butter.
Kuhn said the demi-merlot is one of his favorite sauces, adding, “I could drench it on everything.”
From the hoof, The Press offers prime rib and center-cut sirloin. From the sea, the restaurants serves crab cakes and salmon with beurre blanc sauce.
“I would much rather give people an experience,” he said of his menu.
Kuhn said he The Press will continue to change its menu and try new things. The Press is already on its fourth lunch menu.
Keeping with the newspaper theme, The Press menus are printed at a newspaper in Spearville, and you can take your menu home with you. There is even a word search and fun food trivia on the back of the menu.
The name The Press originally came from the idea of a sandwich shop with sandwiches grilled on a panini press. That theme broadened to include wax paper for the sandwich baskets that looked like newsprint and famous posters of newspaper pages to decorate the walls.
Kuhn said he wanted to create a place that brought people together.
“We want people to be happy. We want people to enjoy themselves. It is not like anywhere else,” he said. “I think my favorite part of it — I’ve analyzed it and looked over it the last year — is when people come in here and they have conversations. You don’t see a lot of people pulling out their cellphones or getting on the internet. We don’t have TVs, so they aren’t watching sports games. I think it is a true interaction between one person and another. I think that is really neat.”
Kuhn has an extensive background as a chef and a restaurant manager. He started cooking when he was 9 and eventually attended culinary school in Denver. He managed the Airport Steakhouse in Hutchinson before moving on to work at hotels and convention centers. He also was the food and beverage director for the casino in Dodge City. In Hays, Kuhn is also the instructor for the NCK Tech culinary school. Although Kuhn sometimes hires NCK Tech culinary graduates to work at The Press, the two are not affiliated.
Reservations are encouraged for evening service at The Press, but not required. Reservations can be made by calling The Press at 785-301-2309 or online at hayspress.com.
Kuhn’s business also caters. More information on catering is also available online.