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A coffee and cocktail-filled eight days in Omaha
I don’t know about all of you, but I have really, really been enjoying being out and about this past week. Maybe it’s the extra zing I felt after I got my Covid booster. Maybe it’s that there is just so much new and exciting stuff happening around Omaha. Maybe it’s being invited to soft…
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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…
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Omaha’s essential 38 restaurants are live on Eater.com
It would be accurate to say I’ve been thinking about Omaha’s 38 essential restaurants for a decade. I finally got the opportunity to make it real: My list is live right now on Eater.com. What an honor to have been asked. Many ask how one puts together such a list, and let me tell you,…
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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…
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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…
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There’s (another) momo in town you should try
I’ll keep this one brief and to the point: Omaha has a new spot for Nepalese dumplings, aka momos. We were surprised — and pleased! — to spot them on the appetizer menu at The Jaipur one recent evening, when we headed out west for dinner in Rockbrook Village. We like the Jaipur for several…
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The Chicago hotlist, July 2021
It was an absolute pleasure researching and picking out restaurants for our recent trip to Chicago, the first in at least a couple of years. The food scene in Chicago is no joke, as I’m sure many of you already know. During our last few trips, we focused mostly on dining in the West Loop…
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Is this the best kale salad in Omaha?
Way back in the olden days — 2012 to be exact — kale was the hottest vegetable in the city. Go to any mid-to-higher end restaurant, and there it was, below seared fish, crisped up as a chip in a bowl of vegetable chips, sautéed into some sort of old-school creamy side dish. It was…
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The newest take on a bierock? A savory hand pie “Funza”
I’ve been wanting to check out the new Carter & Rye brick and mortar location, off 35th and Center, since I’d heard it opened earlier this year. I’d had great experiences with their delicious hand pies, both at farmers markets and at a long-ago pop-up event at Rally Coffee. Kate Anderson’s fit-in-the-palm-of-your-hand pies, with their…
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Review: Revisiting the Speakeasy, a small town gem
I thought about a lot of restaurants during the past year. One, I can say, was especially inaccessible during 2020: the Speakeasy, a restaurant I first wrote about in 2017 that’s nestled in a town formerly known as Sacramento, about three hours from Omaha, right in the heart of south central Nebraska. I thought about…