Last year, Stephanie Cashion and her family opened the Glass Cat Cafe — a Bonner Springs restaurant that “took off like wildfire,” as she puts it.
It was at the popular breakfast eatery that Cashion met Bryan Albers — who once owned his own Bonner Springs establishment, Bottle12 Wine Bar. The two began brainstorming ways to combine their backgrounds in food and wine to create something new.
What eventually emerged was the idea for Gilda’s — a new tapas restaurant and bar serving tapas and craft cocktails coming to downtown Shawnee.
Gilda’s will operate at 5815 Nieman Road
- The restaurant is moving into a space on the northeast corner of Nieman Road and Johnson Drive. The space previously occupied a funeral services office called Church Funeral Associates, which closed sometime in 2021.
- Gilda’s will neighbor a number of other drink stops in downtown Shawnee, including Wild Child and Drastic Measures.
- Albers and Cashion have not yet finalized the restaurant’s hours.
Gilda’s will serve Spanish-inspired small plates
The idea for the Gilda’s menu was born out of Cashion’s love for Spain and its cuisine — not just the food itself, she said, but the way that people eat it. After her first visit to Spain years ago, Cashion said she grew to love the social nature that comes with Spain’s food culture.
“I love Spanish food, but more than my love of Spanish food is the Spanish style of eating,” which is way more communal,” she said. “(Spaniards) are some of the healthiest people in the world, due to their walking routes and the ingredients that they have. I think that we could definitely provide more of that as an option in Kansas City.”
The Gilda’s menu, Cashion said, will feature healthy, flavorful small plates (some with traditional Spanish influence and others with more of an Americanized twist). The restaurant’s name itself comes from a type of tapa — a dish served with olives, peppers and anchovies.
“(The menu) will have a lot of Spanish flavor, but a lot of Midwestern ingredients,” Cashion said.
As for the space itself, renovations will pave the way for a long marble bar inside and a patio outside for live music on the weekends. Cashion describes the vision for the space as “drama, drama, drama.”
“Where else besides the culinary world can you create art that encompasses every sensory experience?” Cashion said. “This is just going to be realized as my little dream world.”
The duo plans to open Gilda’s by the summer
Albers said drawing people downtown — whether they’re paying a visit to Gilda’s or one of its neighbors — is something he’s looking forward to about the Gilda’s opening.
“I’ve always thought that the more choices that people have, the more likely people are to come to that area,” he said. “All of the concepts down there are kind of complementary. They’re not really competition, because everybody’s doing something a little bit different.”
The space Albers purchased in downtown Shawnee struck Cashion as a perfect fit for Gilda’s. After all, Cashion said, the growing entertainment district is already home to a number of other establishments —such as Drastic Measures, Wild Child and District Pour House — that customers can grab drinks from before or after they stop by Gilda’s.
“I think that the entertainment district, as it stands now, is evolving,” Cashion said. “People can circulate and go to all the different places that are popping up there. I think that’s the flow of that area at this point, which is really exciting to me.”
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