Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [190]
Open only for lunch Monday through Friday and with a daily customer count of about twenty, Al’s is as small-town an eatery as we ever have visited. It is located in a former gas station and while no breakfast is served, it is a gathering place each morning for a good cadre of Melbeta’s men. They come to gab with one another and to make sure Ruth is doing okay. Each day she makes a couple of specials: fried chicken and baked ham the Thursday we stopped in—as well as two kinds of pie—we had apple and pecan. The chicken was deliciously homey. It was served, like the ham, with terrific mashed potatoes and gravy, creamed corn, and a small green salad topped with Ruth’s sweet dressing.
We complimented Ruth on her pie crust, which has a brittle, sugary surface, and asked her secret. She advised that it was using half white Crisco, half yellow Crisco, the latter giving it a buttery savor. “People tell me to use a mixer when I make the crust, but I do it with my hands,” she said. “How can you feel the dough with a mixer?”
As we forked up the last crumbs of pie from our plates a regular customer down the counter made us promise to return on a Monday, when Ruth makes banana cream pie that he described as “the best on earth.” If ever there was a restaurant we have yearned to return to, Al’s is it.
Bohemian Café
1406 S. 13th St.
402–342–9838
Omaha, NE
LD | $$
The Bohemian Café is an immensely cheerful place, a vast, multiroom eating hall decorated with colorful old-country woodwork and pictures of men and women in traditional peasant attire; tables are patrolled by veteran professional waitresses in bright red dirndl skirts. “Vitáme Vás,” meaning “we welcome you,” is the house motto of this 1924-vintage Omaha landmark. Whether you are an old-timer who came with your parents decades ago or a visiting fireman who wants a fun-time meal with polka music setting the beat in the dining room, you will feel welcome.
The traditional way to begin a meal is with a cup of liver dumpling soup; we also love the plain-dumpling, chicken-stock soup that is often available as an alternative. Every meal begins with a basket of chewy sour rye bread. The big menu includes American-style steaks and seafood, a quartet of specials every day, and traditional Czech specialties. Foremost among the kitchen’s accomplishments is roast duck—half a bird with crisp skin and flavorful meat that pulls off the bone with ease. We are particularly fond of the sauerbraten, which is a stack of pot-roast-tender hunks of beef that are a joy to pull apart with the tines of a fork. We also like the Czech goulash, a vivid red, smoky pork stew. There is a large choice of side dishes, but the two for which the Bohemian Café is best known are dumplings and kraut. The former is a pair of saucer-size slices of doughy matter covered with whatever gravy your main course demands; the latter is a fetching sweet and sour mix, thick as pudding, dotted with caraway seeds. Whatever entree you choose, it will come flanked by dumplings and kraut—an awesome presentation that is a challenge to all but the mightiest appetite.
Paper place mats remind diners that this restaurant is home of the Bohemian Girl Jim Beam commemorative bourbon bottle (there is a huge collection of Jim Beam commemoratives in the entryway), and the mats also list the lyrics to the house song, which has been used in radio advertisements:
Dumplings and kraut today
At Bohemian Café
Draft beer that’s sparkling, plenty of parking
See you at lunch, Okay?
Crystal Café
4601 Dakota Ave.
402–494–5471
South Sioux City, NE
Always open | $
At 8:30 in the morning at the Crystal Café, the sour cream raisin pie comes