Building Community with Food at Adri's Family Restaurant

Aug 9

Adri and Chris first visited Formoso, Kansas in 2018 on a road trip, and this is when the seed hit the soil! At the time they were residing just outside of Denver in South Aurora. Adri a city lifer, having never lived anywhere outside a 10-mile radius of where she was born, and myself a former east-coaster. We met in her family’s restaurant, and sparks soon followed. To make a short story longer, Courtland, Formoso, Mankato, and Lovewell became our get-away/slowdown spots and the seed started to take root.

A few trips later we left North Central Kansas in the rearview and both found ourselves sad about returning to the hustle and bustle of the city. Well, a seven-hour drive with sadness as a co-pilot makes you evaluate things and eventually, when these words came out of her mouth “we love it there, we should live there,” I think she wanted me to say more, but all I could say was “okay, let’s do it.”

We were tired of just being productive members of society, and decided that we’d rather be productive members of a community. But let’s be honest, a city girl that’s never lived outside a 10-mile radius of one spot, and a southern city boy who’s roots are the DMV (DC/MD/VA) aren’t exactly the people who just become farmers...

Well, we reached out and asked some of the people we’d met what we felt was the most important question we could ask if this was the journey we were going to take: “What does Courtland need that we could build a life on?” The answers really surprised us. We kept hearing, “Do you know anything about restaurants?” There was a recurring theme that the food scene in Courtland was ready for change, some new love, some new passion.

Adri has been a lifer in the hospitality world. Her Dad, a first-generation Italian immigrant opened his first restaurant the year she was born. Fast forward to the present, she has a degree in Hospitality and is an Advanced Sommelier. Chris at the time was making a living traveling with rock bands for a non-profit that helped cancer patients find live-saving donors through music, but before running away with the circus was the Food and Beverage Director for an East Coast resort, and prior to that ran his family’s restaurant on the James River in Virginia.

In November of 2019 we pulled the trigger and purchased Pinky’s; the American Dream was calling. It was time to build a foundation for our kids and ourselves, in Courtland. Now we’re doing what we love and bringing some new love and passion to the Courtland food scene, all the while becoming productive members of a community, and building something we and our kids can be proud of.

In late 2021 and early 2022 we felt like something wasn’t quite right. When Adri and I purchased Pinky’s we had our own visions, dreams, and goals of what it could be and we felt that we couldn’t truly realize those while continuing to operate as Pinky’s, as we hadn’t truly felt that it was our own. This is when Adri’s was born. We closed the doors on January 30th, remodeled the place, and reopened in early February as Adri’s Family Restaurant. And now the next chapter begins...

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