On a recent afternoon, Rulber De la Torre stood behind the counter at his new restaurant, gently mashing avocado into a volcanic rock molcajete.
He sprinkled in mango, pineapple, jalapeño and a scoop of his bright cherry tomato salsa, then held up a chip piled high with guacamole.
Since his new restaurant opened its doors, that’s been the first thing many customers see when they walk in.
Whether it’s scooping guacamole or grilling meats on a mesquite-style grill, De la Torre thinks of food as his craft. Some people have painting or music; he has this.
“When I make new menu items, I make them with lots of passion,” he said.
The new venture, Rulber’s Restaurant Mas Cantina, opened its doors in Prairie Village at the end of July.
Rulber’s opened at 5358 W. 95th St.
- The restaurant moved into a space at the Meadowbrook shopping center, just off 95th Street and Nall Avenue in Prairie Village.
- Breakfast eatery Another Broken Egg previously occupied that space, before it closed in the fall of 2025.
- Rulber’s is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Rulber’s serves Mexican dishes with “authentic and fresh” flavors
Three stars of the show at Rulber’s, according to De la Torre: housemade corn and flour tortillas, freshly-made guacamole (made in a front-facing prep area at the restaurant’s entrance) and somewhat Italian-inspired cherry tomato salsa.
Other standout dishes on the menu so far include chile-style pork ribs, ribeye tacos, housemade pozole and tortilla soup, a salmon salad that De la Torre calls a “hidden gem” of the menu, and the “billionaire” burrito — a large burrito with ribeye steak, grilled shrimp, crab, onions, peppers and topped with a creamy chipotle sauce.
“That’s one of my signature items,” he said. “It’s got the steak, it’s got the grilled shrimp, and it’s got the crab meat. It’s just delicious.”
Aside from the new signature dishes, tacos and enchiladas remain De la Torre’s personal favorites on the menu — in part, he said, because of how versatile they are.
“The unique thing about tacos, you can make it 1,000 different ways,” he said. “Same thing with quesadillas, it’s an unlimited variety.”
This is not the owner’s first restaurant
Though Rulber’s is De la Torre’s first restaurant to bear his own name, De la Torre is no novice when it comes to the restaurant world.
De la Torre was born in Michoacán, Mexico, a state he describes as one of Mexico’s great food regions.
“I grew up eating enchiladas, tacos every day, and every family has their own way of making food,” he said.
He grew up on a ranch, and at 15 years old, he moved to Kansas in hopes of finding the type of outdoor work he’d grown accustomed to. Instead, he landed a job as a dishwasher at a Kansas City restaurant in 1989.
The journey to where he is now unfolded rather quickly after that. At 16, he’d gone from washing dishes to cooking, and by his early 20s, he’d already earned the title of kitchen manager.
By then, though, he was already thinking bigger.
“My goal was to have a restaurant,” he said. “I noticed from my past that businesses can make you money sometimes while you’re sleeping.”
That restaurant became Mexican eatery Mi Ranchito, which originally opened at 964 S. Harrison St. in Olathe. Today, Mi Ranchito has five locations in Johnson County, along with two more further west in Kansas.
As inspiration continued to strike with new dishes over the years, De la Torre said, the menu at Mi Ranchito has become increasingly lengthy — even as specials rotate in and out. Thus, the idea for Rulber’s was born; a way to showcase even more of the dishes he’s created.
“I cook at home every day, and I come up with lots of new recipes and ways to make food,” he said. “I started putting a lot of recipes together, and I said, ‘I could probably open a different restaurant.’”
Creating recipes is something De la Torre said he often does while singing and dancing in the kitchen, celebrating when things go right and not fretting when it’s necessary to go back to the drawing board. That’s the type of attitude and passion he encourages for his team at the restaurant, too.
And it’s something he said he hopes customers can see in what ends up on their plates, the same way that he could see it when his own family cooked growing up.
“I grew up in a family where we might have two items for lunch or (dinner), but those two items that were served on the table — they were not just meals,” he said. “They had my mom’s heart in it.”
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