Levant Bakery & Cafe opened quietly at 6518 Martway St. in Mission more than a week ago, and its baked goods were gone before the end of the day when the Star visited. Owner Abeer Jari is now gearing up for a more official launch this weekend, bringing Middle Eastern pastries, breads and coffee to a Johnson County shopping center that is quickly becoming a hub for Arabic and Yemeni flavors.
From Kansas City to the Suburbs
Jari has lived in the Kansas City area for 20 years, working in restaurants around the metro before striking out on her own, according to the Kansas City Star. She moved her operations from the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, to Johnson County for Levant Bakery & Cafe, and she has told the Star she is pleased with the Mission neighborhood, saying residents have shown her extreme friendliness since she arrived.
Jari owns and operates the bakery, which serves Middle Eastern cuisine and other items alongside pastries that draw on the Levant region and beyond. The menu blends traditional recipes with American twists, the Star reports, reflecting a baking style Jari first developed as a girl in Saudi Arabia, where she taught herself to bake by following recipes out of cookbooks. She has said she admired Martha Stewart and has always loved baking, calling the new bakery a return to that early dream.
What's on the Menu
Among the offerings are date shrak, a fruit-filled version of Levantine flatbread, and four-cheese spinach buns, per the same account. The bakery also serves samples of Moroccan msammen bread with honey, and Jari favors items made with olive oil throughout her menu. On the drinks side, Levant Bakery & Cafe pours premium coffee finished with housemade syrups and Middle Eastern flavors, including turmeric and caramelized banana.
That coffee program has a local supply chain of its own: the bakery gets its Yemeni coffee from Moka & Co., a cafe that opened a short distance away at 5922 Barkley St. in Mission. The relationship runs both directions — the Kansas City Star has reported that Moka & Co. sells a handful of sandwiches made by its neighbor, Levant Bakery. The Barkley Street shop marked the first Kansas City-area location for its franchise and stood out for having a drive-thru, something the Star noted other Yemeni and Arabic cafes in the metro lacked, requiring customers to walk in for their drinks.
Part of a Bigger Wave
Moka & Co.'s arrival was itself part of a broader surge: the Star's report counted it as the fifth coffee shop offering Yemeni-style coffee to open in the metro within a few months. That local growth tracks with a national trend, as the Associated Press reported that cafes run by the six largest Yemeni coffee chains grew 50% in number last year, a statistic cited in the same Star coverage.
Jari has said she wants Levant Bakery to lean into enduring favorites rather than chase passing trends, according to an earlier Johnson County Post report on the bakery's plans. That report, published in the spring, described a bakery co-owned by Jari and her sister, Areej Jari, with a goal of opening by mid-July, though the exact date had not yet been set at the time. It also detailed plans for mifa bread, a traditional Saudi Arabian flatbread, and noted Jari had kept her sourdough starter alive for more than seven years, using it in many of the bakery's breads and pastries. The Post additionally reported plans for a free monthly catering special offered to local schools in the surrounding area.
A Second Act After Shawarmar
Before Levant Bakery, Jari operated Shawarmar, a Mediterranean restaurant that once had multiple locations, according to the Star. She kept one Shawarmar location running in midtown after the Linwood Boulevard location closed. Shawarmar first opened at 23 E. Linwood Blvd. near a Costco and Home Depot in late January 2018, a venture Jari launched with her husband, Ibraheem Kaseb, specializing in Mediterranean bowls — falafel, shawarma, kabab and shawarma potato — along with wraps. At the time, Jari said she wanted to offer something Mediterranean that wasn't from a box, something fast, healthy and reasonably priced.
Now, with Levant Bakery & Cafe already selling out once and a bigger launch weekend ahead, Jari is betting that the same instincts that built Shawarmar can carry a bakery built around family recipes, a long-nurtured sourdough starter and a corner of Mission that has quickly filled with the smell of fresh coffee and flatbread.
