After roughly two years in business, an upscale seafood eatery has pulled up its anchor in Leawood.
On Saturday, seafood restaurant Aqua Penny’s, which is owned by the same husband-and-wife team behind popular Thai eatery Bamboo Penny’s, had its last day of business at the Park Place shopping center.
Aqua Penny’s was at 11652 Ash St.
- The restaurant occupied a space on the south side of Park Place, just off 115th Street and Nall Avenue.
- There, it operated near Italian eatery Plate and the Aloft hotel.
- Before Aqua Penny’s opened at the shopping center, the space was occupied by the Gordon Biersch brewery.
Aqua Penny’s opened in April 2024
The restaurant served upscale seafood dishes like seafood towers, oyster tartare and shrimp cocktail.
Doug Mufuka, who owns Aqua Penny’s with his wife, Penny Mufuka, said the decision to close came down to the restaurant’s ambition outpacing its revenue.
“It’s a difficult decision to make, but we decided that we just couldn’t sustain it,” he said. “The revenue wasn’t enough to keep it going. It’s been two years, and it’s just been a bit of a struggle.”
The owners still have another restaurant nearby
Despite Aqua Penny’s closing, the Mufukas still run Bamboo Penny’s at Park Place, just a few doors down from where Aqua Penny’s was. That restaurant opened in the summer of 2021.
They also operate two other Thai restaurants in Johnson County, KC Thai in Overland Park and Penny’s in Prairie Village.
With such a close proximity to their other already-successful restaurant, the couple hoped to offer something completely different at Aqua Penny’s, but that proved more challenging than expected.
“It has Bamboo Penny’s next door, and people are like, ‘Well, we can just go to Bamboo Penny’s,’” Doug Mufuka said. “We were trying to offer something different, and I think it took us a little too long to get the right menu.”
Penny Mufuka, a native of Thailand, worked on refining the menu to better reflect her own culinary voice. By the time that it became clear Aqua Penny’s would be closing, Doug Mufuka said, some of the menu’s dishes had begun to land after all with customers.
Some of those popular dishes, like lobster rangoon and lobster pad thai, will instead make appearances on the menus at Bamboo Penny’s down the street or at Penny’s in Prairie Village.
In that small way, Aqua Penny’s will live on, the couple says.
“(Penny) wants each restaurant to have something unique about it,” he said. “The idea being that we can grow the menu just a little bit by getting the best items from the Aqua Penny’s experience and absorbing those.”
More expansion coming soon?
Customers outside of Johnson County may also soon expect to see Bamboo Penny’s closer to home.
Though details have yet to be finalized, Doug Mufuka said the restaurant’s next expansion will likely happen on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro area — likely in the Northland or Lee’s Summit.
The Mufukas won’t be turning their attention away from Park Place, though.
Not only do they still have a restaurant there, but they live right down the street. Noting other recent restaurant closures at the shopping center, Mufuka said he hopes to see both his own restaurant and the others there continue to thrive.
“It’s not a zero-sum game, it’s more like ‘rising tides lift all boats,’” he said. “The more restaurants that are there and that are doing well, the more foot traffic we get, and that’s always good.”
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