New wine bar and kitchen in downtown Lawrence will source local, serve up unusual pours

Downtown Lawrence will welcome a new wine bar and kitchen opening next week with natural selections and a distinctly townie mindset.

Meadowlark Wine Bar & Kitchen will open on Mass Street Friday, Oct. 9 with a menu of shareable plates, curated cocktails and a wine list with traditional and natural selections. The new spot is a labor of love from Lawrence couple Jake and Elizabeth Moffitt.

Jake and Elizabeth, who met as undergrads at KU, have gone from Lawrence to the Douglas firs of Washington back to Lawrence. With a total of nine years living in town, the Moffitts said they know the value of the local food scene and are keen not to be absentee owners.

“I think what’s so cool about Lawrence and Mass Street, in the restaurants, you have local people doing cool things with food and beverages,” Jake said. “… This is obviously our baby, but you know, we’re highly involved and we want to be a part of this community. We’re not just some people dumping money into it.”

As such, the Moffitts intend to build a spot that’s not just for visitors.

“We want it to be for the community and a fun place to go, meaning townies, other hospitality folks,” Elizabeth said.

“Obviously, … if they’re coming for a football game, come enjoy it too. But we don’t want it to just be targeted to people coming in from out of town.”

Jake, who has long worked in the restaurant industry and is an old hand in the kitchen, said he’s “trying to be as Kansas as possible.” He’s sourcing produce and meat from Kansas and Missouri whenever he can. Currently, beers from local breweries, including Free State and Fields & Ivy, will be on offer. Even the bourbon option, Boot Hill, is distilled from grains grown in Kansas.

Though the Moffitts don’t want to pigeonhole Meadowlark into being exclusively a natural wine bar, they do aim to expand palates with natural vinos that don’t always make it to the Sunflower State.

Natural wineries generally won’t introduce many additives, like sulfur, during fermentation, while taking away as little as possible from the fruit’s natural flavors. Many of the suppliers that the Moffits are working with also prioritize organic and biodiverse farming practices.

Elizabeth’s background isn’t in the food industry, so she was intrigued to learn more about natural wines through Jake’s kitchen gig in Washington.

“It just really opened my eyes and his eyes to the possibility of wine and just how much more fun it can be,” Elizabeth said. “I kind of associated wine before that with either being really too dry or really too sweet, or just being heavy. But a lot of the wines that we were exposed to and got to learn about, they’re just so fun, so juicy, tell a different story.”

For Jake, natural wines’ ability to communicate terroir makes them storytellers for the tongue.

“It really expresses where it came from, which is important to me,” he said. “You get, for example, a bottle of Josh (a conventional wine) — it’s gonna taste the same no matter when you have it.” 

However, natural wine will taste different depending on the weather that season, the grapes, the native yeast and other factors.

Elizabeth gravitates toward pét-nats, or a naturally sparkling wine. She recommended a fruity and bubbly glass pour from Austria that will be on the Meadowlark menu, amusingly called “Pretty Nuts.”

In the meantime, Jake is cooking up a menu of small plates designed to pair with the wines. His vision is folks will get to sample more dishes and the offerings won’t get stale.

“It’s very seasonal, very local, so it’s going to change … (or) I’ll get bored,” he said.

Meadowlark will be open at 1011 Massachusetts St. on Oct. 9. The Moffitts imagine that they will expand drink options and opening hours as staff get their feet under them. For now, hours will be 5 to 10 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays.

People can make reservations through their website, meadowlarkwinebar.com.

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

Latest Lawrence news:

MORE …