Laravel 5.5 WhereIn query with null

Please, next time put your code in between 6 backticks (3 backticks on 1 line, then your code underneath, followed by again 3 backticks on one line) to get the proper formatting.

To answer: If you need those parameters in the query you could set the parameters in the URI to be required.

If you do not need the parts of the query that dont have parameters set yet, you could split the query to attach the optional parts like this:

$query = $places = Place::where('name', 'like', '%' . $request->name . '%');
if(!empty($kitchen)) {
    $query = $query->whereHas('eatCategories', function($q) use($kitchen){ 
        $q->whereIn('eat_category_id', $kitchen); 
    });
}
if(!empty($service)) {
    $query = $query->whereHas('services', function($q) use($service){ 
        $q->whereIn('service_id', $service); 
    });
}
if(!empty($payment)) {
    $query = $query->whereHas('paymentMethods', function($q) use($payment){ 
        $q->whereIn('place_attribute_id', $payment); 
    });
}
return $query->get();