Ask a Midwesterner: Is Omaha Really America's Steak Capital?
With Sarah Baker Hansen
When I say “Omaha,” chances are, you think steak—but why?
It’s true that Omaha’s Union Stockyards, which closed in 1999, were the largest in the country for decades. But Kansas City had massive stockyards, too, and most of the country still calls its signature cut a New York strip. Chicago was America’s meatpacking capital, with its own sprawling stockyard complex, and that city’s most iconic piece of meat is a hot dog.
Is it the decades of marketing from Omaha Steaks, a mail-order pioneer? The influence of Warren Buffett, who’s famously a fan of Gorat’s, and the high rollers who come to Nebraska for his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting?
Or is it that there’s actually something special about Nebraska beef… or at least, the Nebraska steakhouse experience?
No one’s more qualified to answer those questions than Sarah Baker Hansen, Omaha’s preeminent food writer. A former critic for the Omaha World-Herald, Sarah has written some of the definitive pieces about the city’s steakhouse scene, and she’s now eating ribeyes (cooked to a rosy medium) all over Nebraska for a yearlong Flatwater Free Press series titled “Steak Town USA.”
First of all, I’m loving Steak Town USA. How’d you put that Nebraska steakhouse map together? It looks like you found every steakhouse in the state.
I had the idea with Ben Vankat from Hanscom Park Studio, who does design and graphics for Flatwater Free Press: What if we made a map of every steakhouse in Nebraska? And we thought, It must exist already. We went out and started looking around on the internet, and it turned out that it didn’t.
The state of Nebraska actually maintains a list of every business that has a license to serve food. It’s a massive spreadsheet that’s available for public download. We started with that—going restaurant by restaurant.
We knew our process wasn’t foolproof, and that we were going to miss some. So, we shared the map when we announced Steak Town USA, when we had about 60 steakhouses. We asked, Do you know of a steakhouse that isn’t on our map? Let us know. From there, we crowdsourced it. The last time I checked, we were up to about 90.
Okay, but how do you define a “steakhouse”? Lots of restaurants serve steak.
That was a tricky question. There’s no hard-and-fast definition. Some places have extensive steak menus but maybe don’t have the vibe, quote-unquote, of a steakhouse. There are a few on the map that people could debate.
Overall, we looked at the amount of steak a place serves. If they have six or seven different cuts, if they have prime rib on Friday or Saturday night, if they have the look of a steakhouse on the inside and outside… I think there needs to be some red decor, maybe some wood involved, and a good whiskey list, probably.
Does every single place on the map fit that? No. But do a lot of them? For sure.
Many of people’s favorite steakhouses have closed. When readers wrote in to tell us what we’d missed, we had to tell some of them, “That’s actually a Mexican restaurant now.” So, we’re glad to have this document of Midwestern food history and Nebraska food lore.
Driving around the Midwest, I’ve started to feel like the classic wood-paneled steakhouse is an endangered species. Some of the institutions have closed, and others have renovated and taken on this generic Home Goods look…
The way I’ve referred to it is that there are a lot of steakhouses that have gone through a remodel recently, except the remodel is as though it took place in 1998.
Right? It’s a look that’s dated, but not in a cool way.
Right. I think a good example of a steakhouse in Omaha that’s done it right is the original Johnny’s Café in South Omaha, which was adjacent to the Omaha stockyards back in the day.
They got a grant to refresh and preserve their space. They updated it in some ways, they gave it a fresh coat of paint, but they didn’t take away the parts of it that make it so unique as a Nebraska steakhouse. And I think that’s really cool.
On to the question at hand: Is Omaha actually a better place to eat steak than anywhere else in the country?
I’ve been thinking about it since you first reached out, and I have a two-part answer.
Number one, I don’t think that the actual steak is much different than the steak you get in New York, Chicago, or any other city where you could go to a steakhouse.
But I do think there’s something singular about the lore of a steakhouse in Omaha. And I think part of that has been built on the shoulders of Warren Buffett, who is such an international figure, and who famously loves Omaha steak and steakhouses.
Over the years I’ve been writing about food, I’ve seen it—when people come to Omaha from all over the world for the Berkshire Hathaway meeting, the steakhouses are just absolutely slammed. You can’t get into them. All of the Berkshire shareholders want to have this experience that they’ve heard Warren talk about. And that gets held up as, If you go to Omaha, you have to go to a steakhouse.
And so I think Omaha is unique as a place where people really want to come and eat steak. And I think there are a lot of really great steakhouses here where you can have a fantastic meal, with the service and cocktails and shrimp cocktail and everything else that goes along with it.
That makes sense—so, it’s a great steak town in part because people want it to be a great steak town, and they’re keeping the institutions alive.
And two, the city’s reputation for great steak is connected to the history of the stockyards in Omaha, even if they weren’t totally unique.
There are a lot of Nebraskans who moved to Omaha, or whose families moved to Omaha, from smaller towns. Their grandfathers—my husband Matthew’s grandfather, for example—would do business at the stockyards, and it was a big deal to get all dressed up and go to dinner at Johnny’s after your day of cattle business was done.
I think the lore starts there, and then goes through all these generations of Nebraskans who have memories of their parents or grandparents telling stories about how that was such a special thing.
There is a lot of romance in that. So, if my grandpa didn’t do business in the Omaha stockyards, what are the classic steakhouses I need to know? I’ve been to Johnny’s Cafe a couple of times, and I’ve been charmed by the retro carpeting, the T-bone-shaped supports, and that backlit grazing scene on the wall. Based on your list, I still have a lot of ground to cover.
A lot of them are gone, honestly. The classics do include Johnny’s, which turned 100 in 2022. If you don’t have time for a full meal there, go to the bar and order whatever your favorite classic cocktail is and an order of onion rings, which are really good.
There’s this subset of Italian steakhouses opened by Italian immigrants. Probably the last one of those is Cascio’s Steakhouse. It has that classic steakhouse vibe, but you’ll get a mashed potato and a side of pasta with your steak.
Like, spaghetti and red sauce?
Most of the time, it’s mostaccioli and red sauce.
That’s worth a trip.
Then there’s The Drover. It wasn’t considered one of the original steakhouses for many years, because it wasn’t what it is now until the late 1970s, but it has become a classic.
Many people consider the bone-in ribeye the cut to get when you’re in Omaha. Every steakhouse has it. I don’t know exactly how it became an Omaha thing, but The Drover was the first place where I remember it being a house specialty—the bone-in ribeye with the secret, sort of, as we’ve discussed,1 whiskey marinade.
There’s Brother Sebastian’s. It opened in the ’70s as a theme restaurant. The theme is monastery.
They play Gregorian chants in the parking lot, right?
Yeah, and everyone inside is wearing a robe. Every room has a fireplace. They’re still sticking to the theme.
Finally, there’s Jerico’s, which is the first place I wrote about for the Steak Town USA series.
My birthday is on Christmas, and when I was growing up, I would get to choose where to go for dinner on Christmas Eve, between Jerico’s and a Chinese restaurant called Imperial Palace. My sister really liked Imperial Palace, and I really liked Jerico’s. And I have all these vivid memories of going there as a kid.
What sets Jerico’s apart for you?
At the time, it felt so fancy. I love steak, so it was a real treat to get my own. They also make cream pies every day. They do banana cream, coconut cream, and chocolate cream pie. And to this day, the same man that made those pies when I was a kid still makes them.
What about Gorat’s, Buffett’s favorite?
Gorat’s has been through a lot of owners over the years, and it’s been updated in the way we discussed earlier. I have not been in years. I’m obviously going to go this year, for the series, but I have not been in a long time.
Are there new steakhouses in Omaha carrying on the tradition?
There’s The Committee Chophouse, which opened a few years ago inside the former Blackstone Hotel, which is now a Kimpton. They’re doing traditional cuts and old-school side dishes, but in a new, modern way.
So, you know, they have a side of creamed spinach, but it’s incredible. They have a bone-in ribeye. They do baked Alaska and chateaubriand. It’s pretty great.
Then we also have the 801 Chophouse, we have Sullivan’s, we have Spencer’s. Spencer’s is interesting—I’m excited to go there this year. The same chef has been running the kitchen for 15 years. He’s locally known and respected. There’s Mahogany Prime, which is based in Tulsa but has a location here.
That would be the next tier of newer steakhouses that adhere to some of the same rules, where you see the same dishes, but modernized. Most things are served à la carte, like side dishes, and they’re more expensive.
Are Omaha steakhouses, old and new, actually serving Nebraska beef?
Nebraska beef has always been a thing.
Before I was a food writer, or when I was just starting to write about food, we went to New York and ate at a steakhouse in Manhattan, and they listed Nebraska beef like it was a big deal. I still see it when we’re traveling and going to steakhouses in different cities.
And so it makes sense to me that Nebraska steakhouses would want to connect with and promote local producers. Certified Piedmontese is one of those. They actually have their own steakhouse on the edge of Lincoln, called Casa Bovina.
Morgan Ranch is the other producer that we’ve started to see around. You can find it at steakhouses, but you can also find it at fine-dining restaurants like The Boiler Room or V. Mertz.
So, final question: If I only had time to for one Omaha steakhouse, which one would it be?
I think it’s a matter of personal preference. But since I started the series, a lot of people have asked me a similar question. I’ll give you one old-school and one new-school. If you want more of a classic, I would say The Drover. If you want the newer version, I would say The Committee Chophouse.
I’m glad to hear that there’s a new steakhouse in Omaha worth recommending.
Yeah. I think one of the things that’s really challenging for the older steakhouses is that people’s tastes have changed. To be able to embrace those classic dishes and do them in a way that’s appealing to a younger diner is how the Omaha steakhouse tradition will—hopefully—live on.
For more on Nebraska steak, follow Steak Town USA, a new series from the Flatwater Free Press.
On a recent visit, a regular sitting at the bar—who claimed to know the owners and to have attended the restaurant’s grand opening—told me that it’s “just whiskey and soy sauce.” The bartender backed him up on all counts.