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I’m not ready to return to restaurants
I miss eating out. Restaurants have shaped the last decade of my life. Food continues to be a central focus of my work. Dinner at an Omaha restaurant is my job, my pleasure, a huge chunk of my identity, as big a part of my daily ritual as brushing my teeth, getting dressed and reading…
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Bread in the time of Corona: a tale in three loaves
I’ll take a wild guess that your Instagram feed started getting cluttered with pictures of people’s beautiful loaves of home-baked bread around the same time mine did. It felt like about a month ago, everyone I knew (and a lot of people I don’t know) morphed overnight from regular people I liked to people I…
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Takeout chronicles: Block 16
Editor’s note: Welcome to our new series. We can’t dine out right now, but we can order in. I’ll share my chronicles of getting to-go meals, curbside takeout or delivery from various Omaha restaurants a few times a week. How to order Call 402-342-1220, or message the restaurant on Facebook to place an order for…
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Block 16’s Burger Fight III is about more than who won the contest
How many talented chefs can Block 16 get in one room? Last Sunday, it was three (not counting the restaurant’s owners and many guests) in Le Bouillon’s Paul Kulik; Dario Schicke, of Dario’s Brasserie and Avoli Osteria; and Nick Strawhecker of Dante and Forno, who competed against one another at the restaurant’s third Burger Fight,…
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Mercury adds new food and Forno revamps its happy hour
Last weekend Matthew and I stopped by one of our favorite spots, Mercury, to find they’d updated their food menu with some real gems. The highlight of what we tried is the new Dr. Pepper barbecue chicken sandwich: tender, sweet meat stacked deep on an absolutely delicious cornbread and honey biscuit bun. A pile of…
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Who knew Omahans loved shrimp this much?
I’d heard about the annual Shucks Fish House “Shrimp Fest” for years, but somehow never managed to check it out. It turns out I might be the only person in Omaha who wasn’t there. Owner Greg Lindberg said during the four-day event, Shucks sold about 47,000 shrimp to close to 3,000 diners. That’s a lotta…
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The new midtown food hall has a name, the end of the road for Ahmad’s (for now) and downtown has a new Green Room
→ There’s a new cocktail spot on 16th Street. The Green Room, at 306 S. 16th St., specializes in “upscale cocktails at dive bar prices.” It’s on the first floor of the Farnam 1600 building on the southeast corner. → The Switch, the new food hall coming to the Blackstone District, announced its official name…
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Instagram: Jan. 14
Today on the blog: @block16.jessnpaul made my dream burger. Read more at the link in my profile on my new website!
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When Block 16 makes your dream burger
This week has been pretty cool. My new website launched Thursday – you’re here, so you know – and on Friday my friends Paul and Jessica Urban made me the lunch special of my dreams. Seriously. The backstory: I asked the Urbans to come up with something spectacular, as they do daily, to help me announce…
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TBH, these are my favorites of 2019
I’m doing the annual year-end wrap up a bit differently this year. Instead of focusing on just what I wrote about in 2019 I’m instead focusing on the entire city. (Side note: Click here to see a couple hundred stories I wrote before I left the Omaha World-Herald in 2019.) I came up with fun…