From Pappio Bar to Winchester Bar and Grill
Nestled between 72nd Street and the Big Papio Creek, Winchester’s Bar and Grill is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. While the bar is well known for its burgers and volleyball, the story of the building it calls home pre-dates the notable neighbor to the south, Fun-Plex, by decades. The Pappio Bar appears to have…
Merle Fimple’s Pine Board Lounge, Office Bar and Office West Lounge
West Omaha has its fair share of classic watering holes. One of them is the Office West Lounge, whose history dates back much further than I anticipated. Before it was Office West, it was The Office Bar downtown. The bar was opened by Merle Fimple in 1950. Merle’s days in the bar business go back…
Carl Buda, Golden Buda Lounge and the Underwood Bar
The Underwood Bar in Dundee is among the oldest continually operating businesses in the neighborhood. The strip mall in which it is located was built in 1952 and originally housed Walter Griffith’s Photographers Associated before becoming a long-running bar a decade later. The location began its long life as a neighborhood bar in 1963, when…
Cham Pang Lanes at the Brickline
I can’t say that I was disappointed when a part of the Conagra campus was demolished to make way for the Brickline at the Mercantile. If you haven’t been downtown in a while, the Brickline opened in 2023. Along with 379 apartments, it has 35,000 square feet of ground level retail across between The Old…
Denny Braun’s Manhattan’s Coffee, Deli & Grill
In the early 1980s, downtown Omaha offered fast food and full-service restaurants, but what was missing were options that fell somewhere in between. Designed to appeal to the many people who worked nearby, Denny Braun opened Manhattan’s. Denny, the vice president of corporate relocation for Byron Reed, already had restaurant experience—he had opened Nooner’s one…
Meadowlark Lounge on Leavenworth
The reinvention of old bars continues along Leavenworth. In recent years, the old Bud Olson’s Bar reopened as Secret Park and Marylebone as True American. This time it’s the transformation of the former VFW Post 247 at 3302 Leavenworth Street. In its space, The Meadowlark Lounge opened in the brick, one-story building that had long…
Anna’s Place in Hotel Indigo
While doing research for an upcoming exploration of Hotel Indigo, I took the opportunity to check out its speakeasy: Anna’s Place. Named in honor of Omaha’s “Queen of the Underworld”, the hidden cocktail lounge opened in 2022. The entrance is tucked away just past the front desk near the lobby. If the lights are red,…
Cumbia Tapas Bar
Located just north of the Orpheum Theater is Cumbia, a Latin-inspired restaurant and bar founded by natives of Colombia. Named after a dance that originated on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, Cumbia began as a courtship ritual among enslaved Africans. Blended with Indigenous and European influences—including instruments like violins and guitars—it evolved into a musical genre and…
From the Dundee Bakery to the Dundee Dell
What may be Omaha’s oldest restaurant likely isn’t the one you’re thinking of. My research suggests it began as the Dundee Bakery as far back as 1910. That was the year German native Rudolf Scheffler settled in Nebraska and opened the business in the independent village of Dundee. A baker by trade, Rudolf first operated…
Big Grove Brewery at the Catalyst
More than a year after it was announced, Big Grove Brewery has opened in the Catalyst building in the Edge District. The Catalyst sits on the former site of Omaha Steel west of Saddle Creek and south of Farnam. I had a chance to check out the Catalyst last month during Open Omaha. The building…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Omaha Exploration 