Jo Marie Scaglia opens third Mixx restaurant at Hawthorne Plaza

If you weren’t completely intimidated today by the construction taking place all over Hawthorne Plaza, at 119th Street and Roe, you might have stumbled into the debut of restaurateur Jo Marie Scaglia’s third Mixx location, at 11942 Roe in Overland Park.

It’s the first Kansas venue — and the biggest yet — for Scaglia, who opened her first fast-casual restaurant on the Country Club Plaza 10 years ago. If the address sounds vaguely familiar, it should: A fair number of restaurant concepts have come and gone in this space, including Canucks, Forks in the Air, 40 Sardines and the WestChase Grille.

Scaglia completely gutted the 4,300-square-foot space to create the first version of the Mixx to have its own bake shop (it will become the commissary bakery for the other two locations) and a separate area devoted to coffee, fresh juices, smoothies and, starting June 15, a menu of light breakfast items.

The most noticeable architectural feature of the restaurant, a 28-foot skylight, nearly didn’t see the light of day: “It had been covered up by a drop ceiling for years,” says Scaglia, who discovered the skylight  during a routine construction inspection. She insisted that her construction crew uncover it and incorporate the feature into the design of the dining room.

The skylight adds even more sunshine to the sleek, sunny space that, like the other two locations, serves patrons from a counter in front of an exhibition kitchen. The new Mixx also features a patio seating 150, daily specials, gluten-free pasta dishes and, soon, morning pastries from Le Monde Bakery in the Northland. 

As for the ongoing construction — which has caused havoc with parking — at Hawthorne Plaza, Scaglia seems unfazed. “It was supposed to be finished two months ago, but we’ve had an awful lot of rain.”