Neighborhood: West Omaha

Anything west of 90th that’s considered Omaha

  • Review: At Hacienda Real, home cooked Mexican and Tex-Mex hits the spot

    Review: At Hacienda Real, home cooked Mexican and Tex-Mex hits the spot

    Sometimes when I’m deciding whether or not to review a place, I turn to Google, simply to learn a little bit more. When I googled “Hacienda Real,” the Lincoln-based, locally owned chain of Mexican restaurants that opened its third location in Omaha in August, this line popped up inside the box devoted to recent Google…

  • Review: At the tiny Khao Niao, Thai and Vietnamese classics are made with care

    Review: At the tiny Khao Niao, Thai and Vietnamese classics are made with care

    Whenever a friend says something along the lines of “have you tried the Thai place on 155th and Ruggles?” a little light flips on in my head.  After two recent visits to that west Omaha hole-in-the-wall — which turns out to be called Khao Niao Thai-Lao Restaurant — I’m glad I have such friends.  This…

  • Review: West Omaha’s popular Crumbl Cookies are worth the hype

    Review: West Omaha’s popular Crumbl Cookies are worth the hype

    Sometimes a restaurant opening creates such an intense amount of buzz, it becomes unavoidable. In those rare cases, I simply have to check out whatever it is people are finding so irresistible. That’s what happened after I started hearing murmurs about a cookie place called Crumbl, which opened nine weeks ago in West Omaha.  As…

  • Berkshire Hathaway is back. Here’s where to eat.

    Berkshire Hathaway is back. Here’s where to eat.

    It’s been a minute since the Berkshire Hathaway crowd made its way to Omaha, but thousands of shareholders are coming back this week. (I’ve already seen a few strolling around downtown, in fact.) A lot has changed since the last time I put together one of these lists — in fact, I didn’t even have…

  • Omaha’s best steaks (and one in Lincoln) to eat during BRK weekend

    Omaha’s best steaks (and one in Lincoln) to eat during BRK weekend

    This year marks the return of the in-person Berkshire Hathaway weekend and it also marks the 100-year anniversary of Johnny’s Cafe, the city’s most iconic steakhouse, at 4702 S. 27th St. It was a pleasure to write the definitive story on the Kawa family, who has owned and run Johnny’s for a century, earlier this…

  • The 2022 heart-shaped pizza list

    The 2022 heart-shaped pizza list

    I wasn’t planning to make a heart shaped pizza list this year — a lot of other local outlets do their own version now — but then, while scrolling Instagram, as one does, I changed my mind. There’s three reasons, really: Wednesday is National Pizza Day, next week is Valentine’s Day, and I saw a…

  • On the Edge of Essential: Six more spots worth checking out

    On the Edge of Essential: Six more spots worth checking out

    There’s been no shortage of suggestions as to the spots I may have left off my list of 38 Essential Omaha restaurants. To that end, I decided to share six that made my first working list, but didn’t make the final cut. But that doesn’t mean I like them any less — or that they’re…

  • Review: West Omaha’s Kinaara is serving some of the most singular Indian food in town

    Review: West Omaha’s Kinaara is serving some of the most singular Indian food in town

    It is a rare experience these days to be truly surprised by a dish, at least for this writer. But Kinaara’s fish Pollichathu? I was, as the kids say, shook. I found several hits and only a few complaints during a recent visit to the tiny but extremely busy Kinaara, which opened just before the…

  • It’s Negroni week!

    It’s Negroni week!

    I couldn’t have been more excited to be asked to judge the return round of Mercury’s Negroni Throwdown, this year the kickoff event to national Negroni week. Mercury is Omaha’s home for the Campari-themed event, and owner Clark Ross told me they’ll be running specials all week. The format of the Throwdown is simple: the…

  • My top five pizza spots in Omaha (that got eliminated from the pizza bracket way too soon.)

    My top five pizza spots in Omaha (that got eliminated from the pizza bracket way too soon.)

    Many, many people have strong, bold opinions about the first ever Omaha Pizza Bracket, which racked up more than 110,000 votes over the course of March Madness and closed earlier this week with its first ever winner, Mangia Italiana. In the hopes to continue the conversation — to debrief after the bracket, as one friend…