Barn’rds Roast Beef Restaurant

Good, just not great.
Certainly better quality than the chains, and an OK value for the money, but the fries were just average and it’s just not that great to warrant 5 stars.
Service was quick and friendly, and would certainly choose Barn’rds over the chain, but just wouldn’t go out of the way.

I just moved here from San Diego last week and luckily I stumbled upon this little gem right away.
I ordered a simple, small roast beef and a soup just to try the place out. Both were fresher than I’d ever imagine from a drive through and the quality was top notch.
Very impressive! For a fast food restaurant to turn out a tasty, quality, home made product means they truly care about their food and it’s evident with every bite!
Thanks for serving great food!

Roast beef was soggy, if I had no teeth it would have gone down exactly the same way, and the salad had a lot of wilted lettuce. Will not be back ever.

Barn’rds, which has been around longer than I’ve been alive (I can only assume), is the most «Wichita» place you can go to for home-​style sandwiches, soups, and other delicacies. Their iconic sign hasn’t changed in the past 30 or so years, and you’ll always see the owner’s red convertible parked in its usual spot. On game days you’ll see the place bustling with Wichita State fans.
My husband will praise their roast beef high and low — it’s just absolutely satisfying. Fries are a must have here… I’m not sure how they cook them, but I’ve never had anything like them. Grab a cookie if you’re feeling daring — those are also to die for.
Although I no longer live in my ever-​so-​loving hometown, I always make an effort to stop in with my husband when we are in town — and the owners remember us! Now that’s the icing on the cake — or cookie, rather.
Make an effort to visit this Mom n’ Pop establishment — a true ICT gem.

A little pricey but the fries are always hot. The bacon is usually tough and not good. I order the club.

Delightful roast beef sandwiches. Great service, clean restaurant. One of my favorites since I was a kid.

In my opinion the 3 best items on the menu are:
1) Pasta salad
2) Barn Stormer sandwich
3) Chicken noodle soup
I’d eat here more often if they’d lower their prices because they really do have the best fast-​food roast beef sandwiches in town.

The Des Moines Iowa location closed years ago so while traveling through Wichita, KS we had to stop. Just as good as we remembered.

Can I sing the praises of Barn’rds to the rooftops? I have been eating there for years and have yet to get tired of it. Their french fries are my absolute favorite in all of Wichita (possibly of all time). Their roast beef sandwich on whole wheat is better than anything Arby’s would even think about serving. The cookies are delicious (gotta get those samples), the shakes are great, and I’ve never had a bad experience with any of their sandwiches. It’s locally owned and kind of cool that I’ve had the same people serving me food for the last twenty years of my life. I cannot recommend this place as a Wichita stop enough.

I Wichita tradition
Great food — especially The Barn Stormer
A little pricey for what you get — but great quality
would be nice to see a west location

The best roast beef sandwiches. A local, honest, and good-​hearted fast food restaurant. The personality inside is charming and everyone working there is so nice. The prices are appropriate. Their french fries are exquisite and make sure to get some of their large homemade cookies inside. Every time I visit Wichita I crave Barn’rds now.

When I was a kid my father used to take me & my mother here on a good sunday to eat. The place has been in the same spot for many years and always has a nice staff and good service.
They have delicious ham & cheese sandwiches and the bread is very soft and a bit buttery. Also their soups are nice & hearty just like homemade.

Family owned fast food at its finest! I have never spent more than a few minutes in the drive-​thru and I am always pleased with their food. They are all very friendly and are the epitome of customer service! I almost always get the French Dip with a side of Pasta Salad and you gotta leave room for one of their homemade cookies. Their chili is filled with big steak chunks and you can’t go wrong with any of their soups.
Inside is either dated or nostalgic depending on how you look at it… I say nostalgic. I brings back memories of my youth as I have been going here for decades and was always where I wanted soup from when I had a cold.
They are pricey for fast food… but you are paying for something better than fast food. You are paying for fast food that is homemade by a family establishment. I put Barn’rds in my top 10 destinations for lunch… heck top 5! Go once and you will see why, you’ll be a regular just like me.

Wow. Just wow. I have never before eaten a roast beef sandwich that had no flavor. The cheese was old but that’s the only part of the sandwich that had any taste. Way too expensive for the small portions, poor quality, and unremarkable service A «must miss» experience for sure

This is the kind of place that really makes me want to write scathing reviews… not because it’s so bad, but because so many people seem to think it is just so good. Note that the vast majority of the less-​than-​five star reviews are from out-​of-​towners or non-​lifelong Wichitans. Wichita, this is how we’ve gotten the reputation of being a backwater – the old fashioned way, by earning it through mistaking pedestrian, mundane fare for something special. Watching a place like this thrive while somewhere like Caffe Posto dies… oof, you’re hurting me, ICT.
So Barn’rds has a dumb, tacky name, a dumb, tacky building, and food that I could only wish was much more dumb and tacky – because then it might have some flavor or character! As it is now, I ate there once (twice, now, I went back to be sure) and learned all I needed to know – that I can get about the same thing from the QuikTrip sandwich cooler. (Probably just about as healthy, too, honestly.) Maybe I’ll see you at QuikTrip, and if so you can give me heck about my Barn’rds review. :)

I would have given it 2−½ if I could. Small and tired, but friendly. The food was just ok. I had the Supreme. It was a medium size roast beef with goopy stuff on it. My husband had the Dipper. Mediocre. His comment was that Jason’s Deli does it better. If I had to choose between Barn’rds and McDonalds, Barn’rds would win, but I bet Wichita has better eatins than this.

Yum! Wichita’s best fast food roast beef sandwich!
I have been eating here for years and have not yet run into anything on the menu that I haven’t liked.
Of course they are best known for their roast beef sandwiches so if you’re new to the place you’re pretty much obligated to try that first.
The cookies are also amazing!

Do a blank search for places in Wichita. Barn’rds is the #9 highest-​ranked place in the city. You would think that a place held in such high esteem would be pretty awesome, right? I drive down Woodlawn Blvd, and have seen the big barn many times. Judging from its exterior, my brain was telling me that there couldn’t be food contained within that is held in such high regard amongst Wichitans, but I’m not one to judge a book by its cover, so I grabbed a large roast beef sandwich and those apparently legendary fries.
Maybe I was just in a bad mood when I took that first bite, but I was disappointed when I took that first bite. That disappointment grew into anger as I ate. This is amongst the best-​Yelped places in the city? The bun was ever an so slightly toasted food service affair, the beef dry, not particularly flavorful, and slightly tough from the connective tissue that persisted through the meat. The fries were what you used to find at Arby’s, or still can find at Burger King. By the time I finished the sandwich, I was livid — I felt hurt, cheated, and unsatisfied. I was going to rip them a new beefhole when I got home, I pledged to myself, but in doing my research before I write my reviews, I read the website.
The first thing I noticed was the term «fast food» liberally peppered throughout their writeups. Aspiring to be a fast food restaurant isn’t a goal many restaurateurs maintain. The term has a definite positive connotation today — we think of McDonald’s, we think of Spangles, we think of cheap food that’s laden with grease and is slowly killing us with every unsatisfied bite shoved down our gullet. Of course, to break down the phrase to its core, it’s simply representing a type of food that can be prepared quickly, and it’s true — my order took no time whatsoever to appear in my hands. The Hertel’s have been doing this since 1983, when the word didn’t have nearly as many negative implications.
Yes, this is a family restaurant that has been working from this sole establishment for the past 27 years. I have a deep respect for anybody who goes to the effort of opening their own restaurant and avoids the temptation of an established franchise. Hell, I even maintain a three-​star minimum for these types of places, barring any significant error during my dining experience.
In addition to «fast food,» I also see «healthy» on the website quite a bit, including a front page article featuring praise from the Wichita Dietetic Association for their «reasonable portion sizes and fresh, wholesome ingredients.» Healthy foods often have their own stigmas attached, choosing to forego flavor for the sake of calories. It’s possible to make things healthy and still flavorful, but the requisite necessity for proper layering of flavors and moderate use of spices makes it a challenge for restaurants. Barn’rds offers side options of pasta salad or Baked Lays instead of fries, and they feature such options as an albacore tuna or chicken salad that’s not loaded with mayo, as well as a variety of fat-​free dressings.
The story goes on to talk about how the beef is roasted daily for 3 ½ hours, the soups, salads and nearly everything else is made fresh daily. True, the soups are featured prominently on the menu, and the tuna salad caught my eye when I was ordering, but this isn’t Barn’rds Tuna Salad and Soup restaurant — I came for the roast beef and fries. Hell, even though I complained about the connective tissue in the roast beef earlier, the sheer fact that it existed tells me that this sliced meat actually came from a cow in fewer steps than many places would take. I can believe it is freshly baked. The buns, on the other hand, also carry that «freshly baked» attribute, but I think it’s one of the looser definitions — Subway has freshly-​baked bread, but the difference between it and bakery bread is monumental.
In the end — despite how much I don’t agree with it — I can’t really fault Barn’rds for doing something they’ve purposely chosen to do — make a fast food restaurant that has many items made from scratch and features plenty of healthy options. I CAN fault them, however, for making a disappointing, dry, and fairly flavorless roast beef sandwich with fast food fries.

Went there for the first time a few days ago. Not to bad.
The supreme sandwich which had pastrami, roast beef, lettuce and a sauce I wasn’t familiar with but was pretty good. The french fries were your normal run of the mill. The service was fast and friendly.
The atmosphere was casual. It was lunch time but it wasn’t crazy busy. Clean dining area.
I think I’ll go back.

Wonderful! Delicious! Splendiferous! I visited Barn’rds the other day, after having not eaten there in at least a year, and it was perfect! Just as excellent as I remembered it from years past.
I don’t eat fast food, but I don’t consider this to be fast food, although it’s food… and it’s pretty fast. It’s a family owned, non chain restaurant, with a homey atmosphere and very friendly service, both at the drive thru and indoors (if I remember correctly). I used to eat here frequently in high school, and often before that as well. I absolutely love love love their bbq beef sandwich, which I used to think was a tad small, but after having it the other day, was just perfect for a quick bite, filling and sooo flavorful! I’m glad I decided to make the trip out there, as it’s not exactly in my neighborhood, but not very far away either.
Aside from the bbq beef, I’ve also had the roast beef, chicken salad, tuna salad, and pasta salad. I also seem to remember some fantastic cookies for dessert, but it’s been a while since I indulged.
Most of all, I was happy to see that this place hasn’t changed in so long, and that it still has the same fabulous food and great service. It’s a bit pricier than some other places, but not by much, and well worth it for the fantastic fare.
I can’t wait to go back, and soon!