Road Tips

Brewskys - Omaha/Lincoln, NE

Brewsky's is a small chain of pretty nice sports bars in Lincoln, NE.  I happened to meet a buddy at the Omaha location (of which I didn't know existed) for a few beers and some appetizers one evening. 

Brewsky's started in 1990 in Lincoln when two brothers, Jim and Jon Mumgaard, and a buddy, Brian Kitten, opened the first location in the downtown area near the University of Nebraska campus.  The concept of Brewsky's as a sports bar with good food caught on right away. 

In 1992, the owners hired a chef, Ed Janousek, to upgrade their already good food offerings.  Janousek, who was named a Nationally Certified Executive chef in 1997, oversees a wide and varied menu that includes both standard sports bar food as well as aged steaks, pork chops, gourment burgers and my favorite, an albacore tuna salad sandwich with melted cheese. 

In 1994, Brewsky's opened a second location on the north side of Lincoln.  They expanded to SE Lincoln in 1999, Omaha in 2001, and opened a fifth location in the Haymarket Square area of Lincoln in 2005.   

I've now been to three of the Brewsky's locations and each offer pretty much the same thing - a lot of televisions, good food, a great selection of beers and a very nice selection of single malt Scotch whisky.  Each Brewsky's has advanced satellite packages and offer nearly every sports channel available.  I understand the Brewsky's locations are packed for NFL games on Sunday. 

On a recent visit to the Brewsky's in Southeast Lincoln (see map), I had lunch there.  I didn't really know what I wanted that particular day.  I was sort of burned out on burgers, a reuben didn't sound all that good to me.  I was having a lot of problems trying to figure out what to have when the waitress came over and asked me if I was ready to order.  I sort of hemmed and hawed for a moment and I finally asked her, "What do you like?"

She said, "You like tuna?"  I said I did.  "Our tuna melt is pretty tough to beat."  I ordered the tuna melt with fries.

And she wasn't kidding.  The tuna melt was full of very good tuna salad.  It had an ample amount of American cheese melted on top.  And the slices of the whole wheat bread were thick and had a nice grilled taste.  It was simply one of the better tuna melts I've ever had.  And it's usually tough to find an outstanding tuna melt sandwich anywhere.

There's something about the sports bars in Omaha and Lincoln - they're all very good.  There's a lot of competition in the market and they all have to keep up with one another.  I think the food at Brewsky's is probably the best compared to the other sports bars in the area.  If you're a sports junkie and need some good food to go along with your sports, Brewsky's is the place. 

Backyard Burgers - Lincoln, NE

A shout out to my friend, Tim Lake, who recently moved to Alabama and suggested I try Backyard Burgers if I could find one in my travels. 

Actually, I wouldn't call Backyard Burgers a burger joint any more than I'd call it a fast food place.  Supposedly, all burgers are cooked to order after you order them at the counter, then they have a staff member bring the burger out to you in the dining area. 

Backyard Burgers started in 1987 in Cleveland, MS.  Local grocer Lattimore Michael (right) was making burgers on his grill at his store when he decided to open a drive-thru location because his burgers were so popular.  The original idea of Backyard Burgers was to be primarily a drive-thru concept, but as they've grown over the years they've added restaurants that offer inside seating.  There are now nearly 180 Backyard Burgers in 20 states - primarily in the southern part of the U.S.

I was in Lincoln, NE recently and found that there was a new Backyard Burgers restaurant there (see map).  It was lunchtime, I was hungry, so I went in.

Actually, the dining area of the Backyard Burgers in Lincoln is very nice.  It kind of has the feeling like you're actually eating inside an old outdoor brick grill. 

Backyard Burgers char-grill their burgers over an open flame.  The burgers are billed as 100% Black Angus burgers and are garnished with lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, ketchup, mustard and pickles.  You can add any type of four different cheeses to the burger as well.

They also have a number of "specialty" burgers - Mushroom Swiss, Bacon Cheddar, and something called the Miz Grazi.  It's a basic cheeseburger topped with a spicy pepper sauce that is supposed to open up your sinuses pretty quickly.  It sounded tempting.

They also have grilled chicken selections, BLT's, hot dogs, salads, and other foods.  Check out the menu here.

However, just like any first visit to a burger joint, I went with the basic cheeseburger - only I did have them put pepper-jack cheese on it.  I usually don't order french fries, but their waffle fries looked pretty good.  So I got an order of those, as well.

As I said, you order at the counter, they give you a number, you sit down and they bring your food to you.  It wasn't much more than 4 minutes after I ordered and an employee brought out my burger and fries in a little basket.    

The burger was - well, it was a little dry and overcooked for my tastes.  Actually, it sort of reminded me of the Bubba Burger patties that I got recently.  The Backyard Burgers patty had kind of a weird shape to them - same as the Bubba Burgers.   I had a little trouble tasting the meat with all the toppings on the burger.  I should have just ordered a plain cheeseburger and gone from there. 

The waffle fries were good, though.  Big and fluffy, they definitely tasted like potatoes and not the oil that they're cooked in. 

Along about 3:30 p.m. later in the day, though, I began to feel a little sick to my stomach.  I don't know if it was the Backyard Burger or the fact that I've been on the road so much lately and my body was telling me to quick eating crap.  A couple bottles of water settled my stomach down.

I may try Backyard Burgers again if I run across one.  They're OK, but the one I had in Lincoln didn't have me yearning for another one. 

(Update - I had another Backyard Burger at a Louisville location.  Once again, it was just OK.  They really put too much smoke in the burger during the cooking process.)

Strategic Air and Space Museum - Ashland, NE

I like to go to Omaha on days when the sky is clear and the air is crisp.  Mainly because I like to see the various military planes that populate the sky. That's because just south of Omaha is Offutt Air Force base, which was the home of the Strategic Air Command when it was in existence.

Halfway between Omaha and Lincoln just off of Interstate 80 at the Ashland/South Bend exit (Exit 426, Nebraska State Highway 66 - see map) is the Strategic Air and Space Museum, a wonderful place to visit if you're in to planes, aerospace and military history.  I've been to the place about 7 or 8 times. 

As you pull up to this enormous facility, you'll see an Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile rocket out front, along with a Blue Scout rocket NASA uses for small payloads, and a Jupiter rocket, similar to the one used to send Explorer 1 into space to help discover the Van Allen Radiation belts. 

As you walk in the door, in the main lobby atrium they have an SR-71 Blackbird, a high-speed, high altitude surveillance plane used by the U.S. in the Cold War, suspended from the ceiling.  It's quite a stunning visual as you first come in.

There are three main areas of the museum.  On the main level, you can look into the Dunham Restoration hanger.  They happened to be working on a Boeing B-29 "Superfortress" when I was in there last.  It was pretty amazing to see.

Go down the escalators and hang a left at the bottom and you go into a huge hanger where you could easily have a football field inside.   This houses a number of planes including the largest military bomber ever made, the B-36.  It literally dwarfs the B-52 that sits next to it. 

That's right - the B-36 and the B-52 are sitting side by side.  That's how big this place is. 

The Boeing B-52.  These are big suckers.  But actually, when you get up close to them, they're not as big as you think.

There's also a B-47, the predecessor to the B-52; and a Convair/General Dynamics B-58 bomber in there, as well (shown above).  That's a pretty funky looking airplane.  It was the first supersonic bomber to be built in the U.S.

One of the more cool things in this hanger is a Russian MIG-21 from the North Vietnamese Air Force that was flown to the south by a pilot who wanted to defect.  It still has the North Vietnam star on the side of the plane.

There's also a B-25, an F-111, and an F-101 in the hanger along with many other planes.  That's right.  All in one hanger.  I'm tellin' ya - it's a big joint!

There's a center area under the main lobby between the two main hangers that has changing exhibits.  What they had in there for my last visit was "The Lost Spacecraft" - an exhibit and showing of Liberty Bell 7, the Mercury program space capsule that was lost in the Atlantic on July 21, 1961 after Virgil (Gus) Grissom's 15 minute flight sub-orbital flight, and was raised 38 years later by a team of salvage workers funded and backed by the Discovery Channel. 

Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom

Being somewhat of a "space geek" growing up, I really wanted to see this exhibit.  To get to the capsule I had to go down and through a series of displays.  There was a lot of memorabilia throughout the entrance area leading up to the Liberty Bell 7 display.

Finally, the entrance opened up into a room that showed the space capsule (which was restored as best as it could be by a team of historians and engineers at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS).  There were a number of items salvaged from the capsule including survival gear, knick-knacks and mementos Grissom took on the flight; and, surprisingly, hypodermic needles for medical injections in case something went wrong during the flight.  I've seen smaller injectors for putting marinade into beef or pork.

I lingered a little longer and looked around the capsule a couple times.  Wow.  Considering how small the capsule was, it's amazing to think how a man could fit inside that thing.   

Past the Freedom 7 exhibit and into the second large hanger (although smaller than the first one), they have a B-1A bomber on display - only one of 4 that were produced before they went with the B-1B bomber. 

Around the B1-A bomber was a display called "Power by Design", which displayed a number of sports cars to show the correlation of power and speed in design.  I'm guessing the sports cars belonged to Chip Davis, the creative force behind Mannheim Steamroller.  Davis has lent some of his sports cars to the museum in the past, and the 15 or so cars on display were similar to the ones that I'd seen in there in the past.  Since the display started at the end of October and would go through to the end of March, I figured that Davis probably found some place to garage his cars for the winter. 

There's also a British Hawker Vulcan on display in this room, as well as a C-119 "Flying Boxcar".  There's also a couple of transports helicopters suspended from the ceiling.  Plus they had replicas of a couple of the Apollo command modules on display.   

Some days there are former pilots from Offutt Air Force Base at the museum who will answer questions about various planes and procedures.  I talked to a guy one time about three years ago who used to be a pilot for the "Looking Glass" aircraft - a Boeing C-135 that was used as the flying command post for communications and forward control in the case of a nuclear attack. 

I remember seeing a C-135 with only an American flag on its tail doing a "touch and go" at the Des Moines airport a number of years ago.  I had always wondered if that was the "Looking Glass" and I asked him if it were possible that I did see one do a touch and go.

He told me, "Yeah, we used to do 'touch and go's' all the time to break up the boredom."  He said there were 3 "Looking Glass" planes and when one would finish an 8 hour shift, before it would land another "Looking Glass" plane would be taking off to take its place in the sky.  The missions ended in 1990. 

At the museum, there's also a gift shop that's kind of cool, a snack bar and some other periodic displays on hand.  I hardly ever get out of there in less than 90 minutes, and like I say, I've been there 7 or 8 times.  It never bores me. 

Even if you're not into planes, the Strategic Air and Space Museum is quite a place to visit.  The size of the place, alone, is worth the price of admission ($7.00).  But the historical value of the place is priceless.  It's definitely worth the visit.

Lazlo's Brewery and Grill - Lincoln, NE

Lazlo's Brewery and Grill in Lincoln, NE has been a pleasant surprise twice for me.  I first went to Lazlo's downtown Lincoln location in the historic Haymarket area (see map) about six years ago upon the recommendation of a buddy who had eaten there a couple times before.  The food was good as their meat entrees were cooked over wood fires, and the beer was actually pretty good, as well.  The beer is brewed by the Empyrean Brewing Company which is located just behind Lazlo's. 

The second surprise was when one of my more favorite restaurants in Lincoln - Stackwoods - turned into Lazlo's second location on Lincoln's south side (see map).   Stackwoods also cooked their food in a wood fired oven and grills their meats over a wood fired pit, only Lazlo's used hickory wood and Stackwoods used apple wood. 

Stackwoods filed for bankruptcy protection about three years ago and Lazlo's came in and bought the property.   It's right next to the Hampton Inn Heritage Park in Lincoln, a very easy walk from the room to the restaurant.

I was in Lincoln recently and met a client for dinner at the Lazlo's on the south side.   Lazlo's has kind of a "northwoods" motif to the place, heavy on the wood throughout the building. 

I started out with the Luna Sea pale ale, a good hoppy beer that has a good bite and smooth aftertaste.  It's my favorite of the beers they serve. 

We ordered food - I had the slow wood smoked prime rib, my client had the wood grilled rib-eye.  We both opted for the mashed potatoes and salad.  They make all their salad dressings in house and their blue cheese dressing is very good. 

I grabbed one of their Burning Skye Scotch Ales with my dinner, but I wasn't all that impressed with it.  It almost tasted flat.  Our waiter suggested I try the Third Stone brown ale.  It was smooth, but once again it didn't have the full body that I was looking for.  It did complement my prime rib, however.  I went back to the Luna Sea for my last beer of the night.

I've yet to have a bad meal at Lazlo's.  Heck, I didn't have a bad meal when it was Stackwoods.  And this meal was no exception.  My prime rib wasn't as rare as I'd like it to be, but the taste of prime rib cooked slow over hickory is tough to beat.

Overall, the food is pretty good, the beer is just as good.  I can't say that Lazlo's is the best I've had, but their food and beer are consistent.  Consistently good. 

Valentino's

One of the better pizzas found in the Midwest is Valentino's based out of Lincoln, NE.  They have a number of dine-in and carry-out locations all around Lincoln, Omaha and across the state of Nebraska.  There are also one or two locations each in South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Kansas.

Valentino's (or affectionately known as "Val's" to the locals) started back in the early 50's by Val and Zena Weiler.  The Weiler's owned Campus Fruit Market, a small grocery store at 35th and Holdrege (see map) across from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln East Campus.  Knowing that growing supermarkets would enventually stamp out their "mom and pop" operation, the Weilers decided to start selling pizzas made from an old family recipe from Zena's side.  They soon had people lined up to get their pizzas, even drawing crowds of people who would stand on the sidewalk and watch their pizza makers make the pizzas in a big window. 

The Weiler's sold Valentino's in 1968 and the new owner's decided to try for a second location in south Lincoln at 70th and Van Dorn (see map).  Those two locations are still in existence today. 

I was first exposed to Val's when my cousin, Sarah, was going to school at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in the mid to late 70's.  She would even bring home some half-baked pizzas to me when she would come back for visits.  I still love her for it to this day. 

The Val's pizzas are not too doughy, but they aren't thick, either.  The toppings are fresh and the sauce is light with a little bit of zip.  Their sausage is the big chunks that I like so well. 

Val's also makes pastas that are edible, but not much better than most fast food pasta places.  One thing they do make that I crave from time to time is a cold Spinach noodle pasta salad with chunks of ham, parmesan and olive oil.  I've tried to duplicate it at home, but there's something they're sticking in there that I can't figure out what it is. 

Debates rage among Nebraska natives about Valentino's Pizza and whether the original location at 35th and Holdrege makes a better tasting pizza than the other Valentino's locations.   Personally, I think they do.  There were rumors for years that the owners of Valentino's, and who have franchised out the restaurant to others across Nebraska and the Midwest, have held back some part of the original recipe so their pizzas at the 35th and Holdrege location will taste the best of all of them. 

There was a newspaper article in the Lincoln Journal-Star a few years ago that basically debunked those rumors.  The newspaper article said the reason the pizzas tasted different at the original location was to do with the old ovens they were using in the place - the same ones they've been using since the 60's.  I have to agree with that.  I know that the older the oven and the more they're used they develop an aroma that permeates the pizzas that are made in there.  Considering hundreds of thousands of pizzas have been made in those ovens over the years, it's no wonder they taste as good as they do.

Some of the Val's have buffets (including the original).  I still go in and ask for my own pizza to be made, but go through the salad bar just to get the Spinach noodle pasta salad. 

Val's isn't the best pizza I've ever tried, but it is certainly far from the worst.  It's worth a stop if you ever get to Lincoln.