Winner of multiple culinary awards opening fine-dining KC restaurant with rooftop view

A Weston dairy farmer is opening a fine-dining restaurant in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District, serving breakfast, lunch, dinner and her award-winning cheeses.

Sarah Hoffmann, owner (or the “big cheese”) of Green Dirt Farm northwest of Kansas City, plans to open her Green Dirt on Oak in February at 1601 Oak St.

The new spot will feature a rooftop deck and event space (with “gorgeous” tile and terracotta-colored walls, Hoffmann said). Below, a production facility will package Hoffmann’s sheep’s milk cheeses: feta, tomme, washed rind and several others.

Her cheeses can be purchased in bulk at the restaurant’s pickup counter or online, at greendirtfarm.com, as well as at the dairy in Weston.

Green Dirt’s new spot is the old Vee Village Auto Service, a 13,650-square-foot building built in the 1920s.

Hoffmann had originally hoped to open the spot in 2021, but construction delays interfered.

Now, Hoffmann is looking forward to her early 2024 grand opening. Fingers crossed.

“For quite some time we’ve been wanting to come down to Kansas City and meet our customers where they are,” she said.

Hoffmann brought on chef Oskar Arevalo to craft a fine-dining menu, which will include offerings like duck with pomegranate, oyster mushroom and kohlrabi; lamb chops with black garlic and cauliflower; and citrus poached beets.

Cheese and charcuterie boards — the restaurant’s specialty — are available all day long. Green Dirt’s charcuterie boards will feature in-house sourdough, candied nuts and specialty mustards and spreads.

“We really want to showcase the boards,” Arevalo said. “We want it to feel really personal and community oriented.”

Before joining Green Dirt, Arevalo worked in southern France for almost a year. His previous culinary ventures took him to Texas, the West Coast, Australia and southeast Asia.

Hoffmann’s farm is renowned in the cheese-making world. In 2021, Food & Wine featured Green Dirt in its “The Best Cheese in America” list. This year, the American Cheese Society crowned Hoffman’s prairie tomme cheese the third best in show, out of 1,400 entries.

“We’re really making a name for ourselves as one of the best sheep’s milk cheese makers in the United States,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say that.”