Former Crown Center restaurant now in Brookside; organic coffee shop in midtown

After nearly three decades in the Crown Center Shops, Kabuki restaurant and sushi bar shut down in early 2014.

Now owner Ted Hamada has teamed up with longtime employee Salvador Cerritos to reopen Kabuki in a much smaller space and concentrate on sushi. Sushi rolls include California, Philadelphia, spicy Yellowtail and tuna. It also offers such items as tempura and chicken teriyaki.

Kabuki Sushi is on the first floor of the 333 Meyer West Condominiums, 333 W. Meyer Blvd. The building has been dubbed “the Blue Goose” for its blue metal siding.

Spin Neapolitan Pizza took the 3,800-square-foot former Kabuki spot on the first floor of the Crown Center Shops for a March 2015 opening.

New midtown coffee shop

Mother Earth Coffee, a locally owned, organic, direct-trade coffee brand, has softly opened at 3504 Gillham Road.

Mother Earth Coffee was founded in 2005 by Paris Brothers Specialty Foods Inc.

In late 2015, the coffee company opened two kiosks in Shawnee Mission Medical Center in cooperation with Shawnee Mission Health in Shawnee, as well as a full-service coffee shop in the hospital’s Prairie Star location in Lenexa.

The new Mother Earth Coffee shop will seat 45 to 50 people. It also has a fireplace, free Wi-Fi and a community room. The menu includes lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, fruit smoothies, caffeccinos (blended ice coffees), teas and chai, as well as fresh-baked pastries, cookies, brownies, house-made granola bars, croissant-style breakfast sandwiches, salads and sandwiches.

While a franchisee originally was set to open the location, it is now a corporate-owned shop. The franchisee may open at another location, said Scott Presnell, spokesman for the company. It plans to have two more area Mother Earth Coffee shops open by mid-2017.

The new 2,200-square-foot shop is on the first floor of the new International apartments at 301 E. Armour Blvd. The former Gillham Plaza office building has been renovated and now has 56 luxury apartments on the four upper floors. It will have offices on the first and second floor. It also will have 16,000 square feet of retail on the first floor, including the coffee shop. The building has been dubbed the “zebra building” for the vertical black and white stripes on the exterior.

Mother Earth Coffee plans to begin a community recycling program and donate day-old bakery items to local charities. Coffee grounds will be donated to area residents for their flower beds or community flower beds, and they can pick up burlap used to ship coffee beans to use as ground cover.

“The objective of that cafe is getting to zero waste,” Presnell said.

This story was originally published January 23, 2017 at 2:29 PM with the headline "Former Crown Center restaurant now in Brookside; organic coffee shop in midtown."