This profile is in active compilation — some details are awaiting a cited source.

Green Dirt on Oak is the Kansas City restaurant, urban cheese kitchen, and market arm of Green Dirt Farm — the Animal Welfare Approved sheep dairy and creamery founded near Weston, Missouri, in 2002 by Sarah Hoffmann. Opened in the East Crossroads in April 2024, the three-story farm-to-table concept makes and serves the farm’s award-winning sheep’s-milk cheeses steps from where they are eaten.

[!warning] Seed-data corrections The seed brief listed 3320 Oak St and phone (816) 399-7939, founded 2025. Web research corrects all three: the address is 1601 Oak St, KC MO 64108, the founding/opening is April 2024, and the location’s published phone is (816) 386-2156. The seed’s tie to Green Dirt Farm and founder Sarah Hoffmann is confirmed.

Description

Green Dirt on Oak is a farm-to-table restaurant and urban cheese kitchen at 1601 Oak Street in Kansas City’s East Crossroads, just south of downtown. It is the city home of Green Dirt Farm, the Weston, Missouri, sheep dairy whose Animal Welfare Approved flock supplies the milk for the cheeses made and aged on-site. The three-story building pairs a ground-floor daytime café and market — coffee, brunch, and a retail case of to-go cheese and charcuterie — with an upstairs dinner dining room and a rooftop patio used for cocktails, “Cheese Hour,” and events.123

The kitchen leans hard into local and whole-animal sourcing: proteins come almost exclusively from Green Dirt Farm and partner farms (such as Mac’s and Buttonwood), produce is sourced locally, and non-local pantry items are held to a Good Food Award standard. Menus are seasonal and rotate around the farm’s sheep’s-milk cheeses alongside dishes such as lamb tartare, a Green Dirt lamb burger, heritage pork, house-made breads and pasties, and a sheep-dairy cheesecake.12

Ownership and history

Green Dirt on Oak is the urban outpost of Green Dirt Farm, LLC, an independent, locally owned business founded in 2002 by Sarah Hoffmann. A former physician, Hoffmann left medicine to start a small pastured farm near Weston, Missouri, buying her first dozen dairy ewes that year and teaching herself the craft of cheesemaking, inspired in part by an aunt who ran a gourmet cheese shop.456 The roughly 150-acre operation became a Certified Animal Welfare Approved sheep dairy; it sold its first cheese in 2008, won a blue ribbon at the American Cheese Society competition in 2009, and over the following years scaled production while opening a café and shop in Weston in 2016.43 The farm has earned 80–90+ national and international awards, including honors from the American Cheese Society and World Cheese Awards, and its Prairie Tomme has been named among the world’s top cheeses by Culture magazine.36

Hoffmann located the Crossroads space in 2021 and began construction in January 2022; Green Dirt on Oak opened on April 3, 2024. Hoffmann described bringing the cheese to the urban community as “the culmination of a very big dream,” noting the city kitchen lets the business expand production and lower wholesale costs.13 The opening team included Director of Restaurants Oskar Arévalo and Executive Chef Austin Suedmeyer.1 Ownership and identity remain rooted in the family-led Weston farm; this is not a chain or out-of-market operator.43

See also

Sources

Footnotes

  1. The Pitch — “Money grows on cheese: Green Dirt on Oak serves up the shortest path from farm-to-table” — https://www.thepitchkc.com/money-grows-on-cheese-green-dirt-on-oak-serves-up-the-shortest-path-from-farm-to-table/ — accessed 2026-05-31 (opened April 3, 2024; three-story concept; located space 2021, construction Jan 2022; sourcing; menu; Arévalo, Suedmeyer; 1601 Oak St). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Green Dirt on Oak — official location site — https://oak.greendirtfarm.com/ — accessed 2026-05-31 (address 1601 Oak St; phone (816) 386-2156; concept, hours, market). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. KCUR — “Kansas City’s cheesemakers Green Dirt Farm opening new space in the Crossroads” (2024-02-22) — https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2024-02-22/green-dirt-farms-cheese-crossroads-kansas-city-weston-restaurant — accessed 2026-05-31 (Crossroads opening ~March 2024, 20+ year history, 2008 first cheese sales, 2009 ACS blue ribbon, 80+ awards, Hoffmann quotes, Prairie Tomme). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Green Dirt Farm — “Our Story” — https://www.greendirtfarm.com/our-story/ — accessed 2026-05-31 (founder Sarah Hoffmann, 2002 founding, Weston MO, Animal Welfare Approved, cheesemaking origin). ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. The Cheese Professor — “How a Missouri Farmer Became a Maker of Sheep’s Milk Cheese” — https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/missouri-sheeps-milk-cheese-creamery — accessed 2026-05-31 (Hoffmann background, transition from medicine to farming). ↩

  6. Culture: the word on cheese — “The Good Shepherdess: The Women of Missouri’s Green Dirt Farm” — https://culturecheesemag.com/stories/good-shepherdess-green-dirt-farm-missouri/ — accessed 2026-05-31 (founder story, women-led farm, cheese acclaim). ↩ ↩2

See also

Categories
  • Locally owned
  • American
  • Crossroads