vegetarian Omaha? or even just GOOD Omaha?

I'll be in Omaha for a week on business - where on earth should I eat? So far I've only found one vegetarian place listed, and I don't want to spend the entire week eating out of Whole Foods. I would love suggestions for vegetarian or vegetarian-friendly places - pizza, italian, indian, japanese . . .

or even just GOOD Omaha?

i'm offended on behalf of omaha-ans.

omaha, due to old money, has a tremendous dining scene that's completely ignored by the rest of the midwest. i've had much better meals in Omaha than say, Cleveland.

Flatiron Cafe
1722 Saint Marys Ave
Omaha, NE 68102-2517 View Map
(402) 344-3040
great service, continental menu with flair, great room, bring expense account.

Jam's Bar & Grill
http://www.jamseats.com
7814 Dodge St
Omaha, NE 68114
(402) 399-8300
much more sophisticated than just a bar & grill. great bartender, solid nouveau american fair coupled with (obviously) great beef. extremely friendly (and regular) diners.

Wheatfields
http://www.wheatfieldscatering.com/
1224 South 103rd Street
Omaha, NE 68114
decent breakfast, decent bread, not a bad pancake

Ignore all mentions of La Casa Pizzaria
neapolitan pizza my butt.. horrible pie.

yes, i've completely ignored your veggie request. no idea how to deal with that. good luck. if you eat fish, supposedly Joe Tess @ 5424 S. 24th St, Omaha, has a great fish fry.

i have pictures of above 3 somewhere around here...

Beth E, you have committed serious serious (serious, I tell you!) negative attitude against both Omaha, and this board. On the latter point, a search would have revealed

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.ph ... ight=omaha

On the former point, there's a whole bunch of us, such as Tony C, who find Omaha an excellent place to find a bite to eat.

For example, google both "French Cafe" and "Cafe de Paris". This is good food ANYplace.

And I'm sure you'll be able to find veggie grub too.

Geo

I imagine the vegetarian place you've found is McFoster's (?) Natural Kind Cafe, or something like that. Don't know if it's any good. I also recommend TonyC's Jam's.

whoa, whoa, whoa! No slight against Omaha intended! I simply meant that, barring vegetarian suggestions (which you must admit, seem to be kind of difficult even for native Nebraskans to come up with), I would welcome suggestions for places that were simply of proven good quality and not completely beef-centric so I wouldn't be shooting in the dark or wasting limited time and budget. so - forgiven and forgotten, I hope? Let me add that I am VERY much looking forward to visiting, especially on the company dime. If I didn't believe there was good Omaha out there, I would never have asked. One of most vegetarian friendly non-urban places I have visited is, in fact, Kansas, so I was hoping that a little digging might turn up some other heartland gems.

I would very much like to sample the local scene and not rely on Whole Foods and Wild Oats just because I'm certain I can eat there. McFosters is the only thing that has turned up on any search engine for vegetarian Omaha. I did do a search on LTH for Omaha, and it turned up a very helpful primer on pizza from a couple of years ago. As for the Bohemian suggestion, although I'm sure it's very good, "heavy" "rich" and "duck soup" pretty much rule out the place for me.

Thank you, TonyC, for the Wheatfields suggestion; that was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to turn up. If anything similar occurs to you I would love to know.

More specific to your vegetarian requests...I've not lived in Omaha for about 12 years now, and my restaurant info from growing up there is a bit spotty, but here are a couple thoughts.

A friend of mine whose taste I trust has spoken very highly of Ahmad's for Persian food. This was a few years ago, so who knows if it is still around or still good. He's a vegetarian, but I can't recall for sure if he frequented this place before or after he went veggie, or both. Worth a look, anyway.

Another place that I would recommend, based on a good sandwich and absolutely tremendous bowl of soup is Lithuanian Bakery and Kafe...I'm stretching a little here, because I don't know how veggie-friendly the place would be, but I think the bread is likely to be good in any event. And it's been a long time since I was there. But it was a darn good bowl of soup (was soup the new black 8 years ago?).

Finally, there's a dim sum place way south, probably not convenient to where you'll be, Back to Guangzhou. I was there within the past year, and I enjoyed the place and thought the food was good, not great, but I'd be interested in a more informed opinion, because I have almost no dim sum experience, and a number of things seemed well-prepared but not to my taste. And the presentation was fantastic. I recall the menu being a bit deeper than the one online, with some really interesting choices. This seems like a place with the potential to be a real gem. TonyC, maybe you can hit this place on one of your trips. They really seem to care about doing a lot of things right. And certainly, it's veggie friendly. And if you can use a coupon if you're planning to spend enough. And it's open late (for a restaurant in an Omaha strip mall). So you've got that going for you.

Ahmad's Persian Cuisine
1006 Howard Street
402-341-9616

Lithuanian Bakery & Kafe
7427 Pacific Street
402-391-3503

Back to Guangzhou
9821 Giles Road
402-933-8999

I wouldn't be so set on vegetarian, but good food in general:

Big Fred's Pizza
Valentino's Pizza
Runza
French Cafe
M's Pub
Vivace

I'm in the process of planning my return to Omaha just to eat at the top three restaurants listed above.

Any updated info on Omaha? Going there with my work team in a couple weeks and I've been tasked with finding a restaurant for our dinner on a Tuesday night. Only 5 of us and a few are a bit adventurous, but nothing too crazy. We are staying at 10th and Dodge, so something downtown would be preferable. TIA

Generally, when we are in Omaha on business, we eat at HyVee Supermarket as there are six to eight different food stations and a great seating area. You can generally eat there well under $10 pp.

The Bohemian Cafe is about one mile south of downtown and serves really good Eastern European food. I really enjoy their schitzels, their take-off on sauerbraten, and their liver dumpling soup.

Bohemian Cafe
1406 S. 13th St.
http://bohemiancafe.net/

Many of my friends recommend this old-time Omaha steakhouses:

Gorat's Steakhouse
4917 Center Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68106
http://www.goratsomaha.com/

I haven't been to Omaha in a long time but Marrakech Gourmet is high on my list for my next trip.

jlawrence01 wrote:Many of my friends recommend this old-time Omaha steakhouses:

Gorat's Steakhouse
4917 Center Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68106
http://www.goratsomaha.com/

I'm pretty sure I ate here years ago, as I was told it's Warren Buffet's favorite steakhouse. Looks like the prices have risen just a bit.

Thanks for the other recs.

I second Joe's recommendation of the Bohemian Cafe. Always a crowd pleaser: the food ain't light and healthy, but it's real and it's Czech.

Geo

I had a very good cocktail and burger at Blatt's Beer and Table Downtown. Surely a tourist trap (if one exists in Omaha), but the burger sure was damn tasty.

I can only vouch for the downtown location. There also appears to be one on the west side of town.

Blatt's Beer & Table
610 N. 12th St.
Omaha, NE 68102
www.blattbeer.com

Just popped in to say that Omaha is the pits. Not only can they mess up relative no brainers like sandwiches (M's Pub in the Old Market had the gall to stick deli meat in a $12 turkey club) and pizza (as far as I can tell terrible to totally mediocre across the board) and salad (which often might as well be whipped cream on iceberg lettuce), but a place my (distant) fam picked up food from sold cannoli stuffed with what tasted like instant pudding in lieu of cheese. This is a town where, at the aforementioned Gorat's, I was once served deep fried parsley. As a friend warned me when I checked in to see if things had gotten better, he's never even had a particularly good steak in Omaha.

Come on, Omaha. You're all so nice, but I wish your food was better.