Nebraska Steakhouses | SteakMap

The Best Steakhouses in Nebraska

Nebraska has 19 steakhouses across 9 towns, with Omaha holding 11 and the rest strung out along the Platte through Kearney, North Platte and Ogallala. For a state of two million people that is a dense roster, and there is a reason for it that most of the country has forgotten.

Omaha was once the largest livestock market on earth. Not Chicago. Omaha.

The Nebraska Ten

1. Gorat’s (Omaha) — founded in 1944 by Louis and Nettie Gorat and known worldwide as Warren Buffett’s steakhouse. He has eaten here three or four times a month for decades and hosts Berkshire Hathaway’s largest investors here every year. His order is a matter of public record: T-bone, rare, a double order of hash browns and a Cherry Coke.
2. Johnny’s Cafe (Omaha) — open since 1922, built at the edge of the stockyards as a cafe for cowboys and cattle shippers. Beef is still hand-cut and aged on the premises. The most historically important room in the state.
3. The Drover (Omaha) — famous for a whiskey-marinated steak that has no business working as well as it does, in a dark room that has not changed in decades.
4. Mahogany Prime (Omaha) — the polished modern option, and the same group that runs the Tulsa room in Oklahoma.
5. Cascio’s Steakhouse (Omaha) — Italian-American and family-run since the 1940s, steak alongside the red sauce.
6. The Committee Chophouse (Omaha) — in the Kimpton Cottonwood, and the most contemporary cooking on this list.
7. Kahill’s Chophouse (South Sioux City) — up on the Missouri at the Iowa line, and the northeast corner’s best.
8. North 40 Chophouse (North Platte) — in the town that holds Bailey Yard, the largest railroad classification yard in the world. Cattle and trains, same as it ever was.
9. Front Street Steakhouse (Ogallala) — in the old end-of-trail cowtown on the Platte, with the Crystal Palace Saloon attached.
10. Hungry Horse Saloon (Ericson) — population under 100, out in the Sandhills. Exactly the kind of room this directory exists to find.

In 1955, Omaha took the title from Chicago

This directory has followed the American beef trade across five states. Nebraska is the chapter nobody remembers.

Omaha pitched for a stockyard in 1883 and spent seventy years climbing. In 1955 it passed Chicago to become the largest livestock market in the world — nearly 43,000 cattle through the yards in a single day — and it held that title until 1971, the same year Chicago finally closed the Union Stock Yards for good.

It was not a side industry. By 1957 the livestock trade employed half of Omaha’s workforce. The Livestock Exchange Building still stands over the old yards.

So the full chain now reads: cattle land at Jamestown in 1611, the first colonial meat auction is held in Brighton in 1742, Chicago industrializes it in 1865, Omaha takes the crown in 1955, and the last terminal market in America is still trading on Monday mornings in Oklahoma City.

Johnny’s Cafe opened at the edge of those yards in 1922 and is still there, still aging its own beef. It fed the men who made Omaha the biggest cattle town on the planet.

The rest of the state

Omaha also carries Spezia, Jerico’s and J. Gilbert’s. Elsewhere: Venue in Lincoln, Ruhlman’s in Ashland, Joy’s Table in Kearney and The Speakeasy in Holdrege.

The national chains

Two, both in Omaha: Fleming’s and Sullivan’s. In the city that once out-traded Chicago, the brands barely bothered.

Browse by city: Omaha and Lincoln.