Kolika Kirk’s Pistachio Bakehouse is making a name for itself before it opens

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When Kolika Elle Kirk was in grade school, a teacher was forever warning her, she says, “not to be so bossy.” The teacher’s words offended Kirk’s father, who was raising the future pastry chef as a single parent.

“He got up right in her face,” says Kirk, who will tell you that she’s a bit on the Type A side. The 27-year-old baker knows precisely what she wants and is determined to get it.

And what she wants in the coming year is her own business, to be called Pistachio Bakehouse. But you don’t have to wait until she finds the right brick-and-mortar location (she’s scouting Brookside and the area around her home in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas) to try her goods.

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To get publicity for her food and her name (which, at age 13, she legally changed, having chosen the Hawaiian word kolika, meaning “from the ocean”), she’s launching a series of pop-up bake shops. The first of these two-day events is Sunday, December 20, and Monday, December 21 — both from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. — at the Rosedale Development Association at 1403 Southwest Boulevard (next to the historic Vox Theater).

On both days, Kirk will sell an array of sweets and savory items: fudge brownies, strawberry-pretzel brownies, cookies, muffins and two kinds of bagels (salt-and-pepper and pistachio).

She won’t have the dessert she’s most closely identified with so far: pistachio panna cotta. “I can’t sell refrigerated items,” says Kirk, who developed the delicacy while working as executive pastry chef for the Trezo Mare restaurant in Briarcliff (where you can still order it).

Kirk’s culinary resume also includes stints at the River Club and Affare, before she decided to launch her own business with investor Chad McCann. “By starting out with pop-up events,” she says, “I’ll have time to find the perfect location for a permanent shop. I don’t want to fail by picking the wrong location.”

The January Pistachio Bakehouse pop-up will be at the LaBruzzo’s Sweet Oven bakery at 520 Walnut, in the River Market,