Jeffrey “Cheffrey” Workman has helmed the kitchens at some of our city’s most distinguished spots, like Corvino Supper Club, The Campground, Tailleur and, for the past year, Green Dirt on Oak. His dishes often look like works of art—a crumbly acorn squash tart popping with bits of green sage is reminiscent of a Pollock painting while a sweet potato dish with smoked figs is covered in a canopy of the yam’s leaves. Yet for all his plated mastery, it was his potato salad that first put him on my radar.
I ordered the Midwestern side dish at The Campground in 2024, and it came to my table presented like a deconstructed work of art. The potatoes were thinly sliced, au gratin-style, tossed with a punchy vinegary dressing and topped with sprigs of forest-green dill. It wasn’t pretentious, though; it felt like a reexamination and celebration of each of the salad’s ingredients. I was not surprised when Workman received a nomination in the Emerging Chef category from the James Beard Foundation later that year. I would later go on to rave about his duck dish at Tailleur. Now he’s cooking at a restaurant fueled by a sheep farm just an hour away in Weston, making Green Dirt on Oak feel like a particularly fitting home for his passion for local food culture.
Whole lamb, sheep’s milk, sheep’s cheese, sheep whey—these are the main ingredients being delivered from Green Dirt’s Weston farm to its Crossroads restaurant. Workman and his team build the brunch and dinner menus around them, turning sheep’s buttermilk into biscuits and gravy, whey into a martini brine and Green Dirt’s Prairie Tomme cheese into an aioli for fries and, of course, there’s roasted lamb.
Green Dirt’s cheeses have earned more than 90 awards from the American Cheese Society, making them exceptional ingredients for Workman to build around. But working so closely with a farm also means planning his menus a year in advance and working around its rhythms, from breeding and milking seasons to cheese and milk inventories. This direct relationship with the farm is an added layer to an already notoriously difficult job, but it couldn’t come at a better time for Workman.
Workman recently attended the James Beard Foundation’s Chef Bootcamp for Policy and Change along with 15 other notable chefs. The program teaches chefs how to engage in food policy and advocate for issues affecting farmers, food workers and the broader food system. Workman says discussing federal policy, the Farm Bill and programs like SNAP was “empowering” and made him realize why chefs are in a unique position to advocate for such issues. Using native pawpaws in the restaurant’s cheesecake and wild spicebush berries for the au poivre steak sauce, both from the small-scale Kearney-based Prairie Birthday Farms, isn’t just about supporting local farmers—it’s about showing diners the depth and diversity of the region’s foodways.
“Once you get into big-box providers, they become all the same, and it kind of kills the creativity in our industry as well, so I think it’s important to keep [the local systems] alive,” Workman says.
Workman grew up in a military family but has spent much of his life in Kansas and Missouri. Outside of Green Dirt on Oak, he also runs a food pop-up (@workmanskc on Instagram) dedicated to serving the good-ol’ classic Midwestern dishes he grew up with. In fact, Workman says it was the potato salad I had a couple years back that marked the beginning of his love for reimagined classics.
“It wasn’t until The Campground that I started to develop my own cooking style,” he says. “I found I was enjoying dishes that were inspired by classic Midwestern casseroles, Salisbury steak—very homey, comforting things. Once I started figuring that out, that’s what I leaned into with some of the techniques I’ve learned from fine dining.”
Think tuna noodle casserole, meatloaf and funeral potatoes—but confit tuna instead of canned and meatloaf sitting atop a creamed aioli. The integrity of comfort in these dishes is still there (there’s still plenty of sour cream and cornflakes in the potatoes), but quality ingredients and some refined techniques make them, well, just as good as, if not better than, your grandma’s.
“It’s fun to serve people meatloaf that’s made with intention and a lot of thought,” Workman says. “Food is getting more expensive, dining out is becoming more expensive, and the whole idea of Midwestern food is very humble ingredients. From a cost perspective, it makes a lot of sense, and you can deliver more value while still providing an experience. [My pop-up] experience is based on more nostalgia and comfort versus having uni flown in from Santa Barbara.”
Jeffrey “Cheffrey” Workman’s Perfect Day in KC
Morning Fuel: Sleeping is the priority, then it’s a late breakfast at Dagwood’s with my wife. I’m ordering the Country Benedict. Then we’ll head to Flex Fitness Gym up north.
Broth Run: We’ll stop at Pho Lan in the River Market. The beef stew is the way to go. Straight from the kitchen, it’s one of the best broths in the city.
Pasta la Vista: We’ve been going to Bacaro Primo lately. We always get at least one of the pastas, maybe a pizza. The chef, Sam Hall—I love that guy.
Dessert Duty: When Novel has the pistachio cream pie, we’re making a stop. But I’m also a sucker for High Hopes’ toasted rice flavor.
Nightcap: For cocktails, we’ll go to Varsity Club. They need to bring back the Vanilla Coke. Maybe Jade Jaguar for a margarita or paloma, or Barbacoa for Madeline Buechter’s salt-and-lime cocktail. I also love her carnitas-fat-washed shot.
