There’s a small sign on every table in the dining room at Johnny’s Cafe, Omaha’s oldest and perhaps original steakhouse.

“103 years,” it reads. “Perfectly aged.”

Johnny’s is a Nebraska icon, still owned by the descendants of a Polish immigrant named Frank Kawa, who bought a bar on 27th and L Streets in 1922 with no idea that the business would still be going strong in 2025.

Sisters Sally Kawa and Kari Harding, who run day-to-day operations at the steakhouse with their dad, Jack Kawa, Frank’s son, said they have faced highs and lows in the three years since celebrating a century in business; perhaps the largest of any of those being the amount of Omahans that mistakenly believe the restaurant has closed.

I can assure you of this: Johnny’s is still very much open. It draws a crowd, particularly on the weekends, when generations of families and groups of friends fill its dining room. They dine on prime rib and filet, still aged on site, homemade desserts and, in this writer’s humble opinion, the best onion rings in Omaha.

Let’s start there, shall we?

I have sent many friends and Omaha visitors to Johnny’s specifically for these onion rings, which are a shade of pale gold, dotted with specks of black pepper and a fine texture, filled with sweet, tender onion and fried to crispy perfection. There’s a note of umami in the simple batter, which Sally Kawa told me later gets made using the same formula it always has. The key ingredient: a thick sort of cracker meal that is the base of the coating.

Every morning, a member of the kitchen staff hand-slices onions into rings for two hours. They get dredged twice, then refrigerated. Huge sheet trays of rings stay chilled until the moment they get dropped into a hot fryer used for that purpose alone.

“It’s labor intense,” Kawa said. “We haven’t changed one thing. It’s old school.”

It’s not the only thing that feels old school at Johnny’s.

Cocktails are strong, and the Iowa Manhattan, made with Templeton Rye, has been a longtime favorite of mine. That hasn’t changed. A Negroni, though, was a bit too heavy on the gin and strangely garnished with a lime slice.

The Polish vinaigrette salad dressing is based on an old recipe, and is a well-known local favorite the restaurant bottles and sells in stores. It is herbaceous and lovely in its simplicity. The salad is nothing fancy, simply this dressing over crisp iceberg, but I devoured the whole thing.

Shrimp cocktail arrived alongside the onion rings; the rings’ deliciousness overpowered the seafood, which was fine — cold and fresh — but not the best we have had this year.

The real stunner came in the soup of the day: a steaming bowl of cheesy, rich French onion. Made in the traditional fashion, with a slice of bread submerged in flavorful beef broth, thick with caramelized sweet onion, a layer of cheese on top got brûléed to melted perfection.

Kawa said it’s a seasonal favorite, like the dessert we tried. More on that shortly.

Johnny’s has gotten a bit of a spruce up this summer. Last year, the restaurant received a $50,000 grant from the Backing Historic Small Restaurants Grant Program, presented by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express. It was one of 50 small restaurants across the country to receive a grant, something the family applied for several times before winning.

The money went toward exterior improvements, including new signage and photographs, a new sculpture outside, new landscaping and lampposts and improvements to the parking lot.

“Reviving everything was a fun process for us,” Harding said. ‘We’ve had those thoughts in our head for decades.”

But, as you might imagine, running a century-old restaurant doesn’t come without bumps in the road.

“We’ll be honest, there’s been a lot of challenges in the last year,” Sally Kawa said.

The family fought against a massive property tax hike proposed by the Douglas County assessor earlier this year and won. They have worked out the math to pay required sick-leave costs for their mostly part-time staff. Rising costs of beef led them to make the tough decision to raise their prices for the first time in years.

Compared to several of the steakhouses I have written about this year, even Johnny’s higher price point still feels like a deal: A 13-ounce ribeye is $43.95, and it comes with a side dish, soup or salad and bread. You also get for free the restaurant’s cottage cheese spread, a menu staple since the 1950s made with a secret recipe. Like the salad dressing, it has roots in Poland. Like the salad dressing, it’s delicious.

“We don’t want to become a special occasion restaurant,” Kawa said. “We don’t want to become someplace our customers can’t afford on a Tuesday night. We worry about it.”

To that end, they run some lunch hour specials at a more affordable price point. They also offer less expensive cuts of beef for the price-conscious customer. 

Johnny’s tries to source its beef locally, and the prime rib comes from Omaha Steaks, which Kawa said has helped the restaurant perfect the cut so when they cut it in-house, like they do with all their beef, it’s standardized. The rest of the meat comes from Nebraska Beef.

Though Johnny’s also has fish and chicken on its menu, most customers still order beef.

“That’s what you come here for,” Kawa said.

Indeed. The filet was the better of our two steaks, nicely seared with a red, mid-rare center. Though the ribeye was a bit over medium, the homemade mushroom gravy that comes with every meal helped; its savory smoothness complements beef well.

The loaded baked potato, though topped simply with bacon bits, cheese and a healthy dollop of sour cream, is as solid as ever. The cowboy mashed potatoes come topped with a dollop of compound butter, but we felt like they’d have been even better with more of it, made with bacon and jalapeños.

And then, finally, there was the carrot cake, the other seasonal dish we tried, available only in the autumn and winter. It’s worth waiting for. Matthew, my lifelong dining partner, is the true carrot cake aficionado in our house, and he loved its almost nutty finish, thin layers of cream cheese frosting, dense but moist bite and crunchy topping. It’s not on the menu, so if you want to try a slice, ask when you sit down.

Kawa said the restaurant makes all its desserts in house except for one.

I thought, as our interview ended, that there wasn’t another restaurateur in Omaha better to ask my ongoing query, “Is steak really better in Omaha?”

Kawa thought about it for a moment after I asked.

“I think it is,” she said.

After years in the business, she believes that most of the local distributors keep the best cuts of steak for the local restaurants. She also said not all restaurants take beef as seriously as Omaha steakhouses, citing Johnny’s in-house cutting and aging programs and its simple seasoning, just salt and pepper. Each cut ages in the restaurant’s basement between 14 and 21 days, and that, she said, is how it has been for 103 years.

Maybe, she said, there’s one real key when it comes to beef in Omaha: simplicity.

“We want you to taste the meat. The way we do it makes a difference. And ultimately, that makes it taste different when people visit,” she said. “We don’t mess around with it.”

Johnny’s Cafe

johnnyscafe.com

4702 South 27th Street Omaha, Nebraska

402-731-4774

Hours: Tuesday - Thursday

11AM - 2PM and 5PM - 8PM

Friday 11AM - 2PM and 5PM - 9PM

Saturday 5PM - 9PM

Closed Sunday and Monday

This year, during Steak Town USA, we will try the same selection of dishes during each visit to an Omaha steakhouse:

a ribeye, cooked to medium;

a filet, cooked to medium rare;

an order of onion rings;

shrimp cocktail;

a loaded baked potato;

a Manhattan; and a Negroni.

We’ll also try one specialty item per stop, identifying one thing the steakhouse is known for and adding it to the list.

(Ratings are from one to five in each category)

Ratings:

Ribeye, medium - 2

Filet Mignon, medium rare - 3

Onion Rings - 5

Shrimp Cocktail - 2

Loaded Baked Potato - 2

Specialty item (carrot cake) - 4

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/steak-town-usa-omahas-103-year-old-steakh...