Late one Sunday evening Shane and I decided to go out for dinner. After driving around until approximately 9pm and finding no open restaurants, we came across Rice Bowl and decided to venture inside. I had been told by a colleague that Rice Bowl was a great little Chinese place, so my expectations were somewhat high.
The sign on the door said that the dining room closed at 9:30pm. We arrived around 8:50, so we decided to dine-in. The server made sure to let us know that the dining room closed at 9:30, and promptly asked us what we would like to order. We took a few moments to look over the menu and I decided to order my Chinese staple, Moo Goo Gai Pan, while Shane ordered Imperial Pork.
Each dish came with either white rice or fried rice and two crab rangoons. The fried rice was bland and resembled white rice, and the crab rangoon were dry, crispy, and had minimal filling. The crab rangoon filling tasted of primarily cream cheese, and neither of us could detect any crab meat. We both would have liked to have some sweet and sour sauce to dip our rangoon into. My Moo Goo Gai Pan was good, but it was definitely not authentic. The sauce was very similar to sauce you would find on a beef with broccoli or chicken with Chinese vegetable dish.
Shane's dish was a little bit better than mine, but still not authentic. His pork was lightly breaded and crispy, with a sauce that was more similar to sweet and sour sauce with some small chili peppers, containing hardly any spice at all.
Overall, this restaurant is a good choice if you want a cheap meal late at night when everything else is closed. Otherwise, I suggest looking for a more quality Chinese restaurant, as the food at a Chinese buffet would have been better than our meals at Rice Bowl.
We had read online that the "best burgers in Omaha" were at Dinkers Bar so we decided to check them out. Before leaving, we looked at the menu and I was very excited to see that Dinkers served chicken gizzards. Shane was excited about the "world-famous" onion rings featured on the menu.
Dinkers was located on a street with limited parking, and many people parked along the side of the building by driving over a curb. You place your food order at the back of the restaurant and are given a table number for a server to bring you your food. All drink orders must be placed at the bar, and Dinkers only accepts cash.
We ordered an appetizer of chicken gizzards, which were perfectly spicy and served with either homemade ranch, bbq sauce, or honey mustard. We ordered both ranch and bbq, but the gizzards were good enough be eaten on their own without any sauce. These gizzards were only $6 and can only be ordered after 5pm.
Shane ordered the Haystack Burger, which was a juicy medium burger topped with a slice of honey smoked ham, American cheese, and a fried egg. Shane added all the fixings to his burger, he says that it was good, but that the cheese, ham, and egg did nothing to make it "best burger" quality.
Shane also ordered onion rings, which were supposed to be "world famous". They were lightly breaded and somewhat soggy, with limp onions and bland flavor. Shane had to add salt to the onion rings to make them worth eating, and he never adds salt to anything.
I ordered the Husker Burger, which was a juicy medium burger topped with hickory smoked bacon, bbq sauce, and sauteed onions. I added all the fixings to my burger as well, and was very happy with my choice. The bacon was very thick and crispy, the burger was perfectly juicy and seasoned, and the bbq sauce was the perfect touch to put this burger over the top.
My burger came with french fries that were nothing spectacular, but with how incredible the burger was, I will definitely be back for more. Shane says he will order something different next time, but I enjoyed my burger so much that I may just get the same thing. One thing we do want to try on our next visit is the Rocky Mountain Oysters featured on the appetizer menu for after 5pm. Hopefully we like them!
If there is one thing we have discovered since moving to Omaha, its that 24th street has amazing Mexican food. We wanted to try a new place near 24th street, so we ended up going to a place called San Luis Restaurant. We always take it as a good sign when we go to a Mexican restaurant and most of the customers are Hispanic, and San Luis certainly did not disappoint.
Our experience at San Luis started with a basket of homemade chips, which were thick and reminded me of pita chips, as well as a squirt bottle of orange salsa. The salsa was very flavorful and delicious, our only concern was that we did not have a dish to put the salsa in, so each time we tried to squeeze some on a chip, a chunk of tomato would come out and make the salsa spray in all different directions, making a complete mess. This salsa was good enough to just squeeze straight into your mouth... if you are feeling very uncivilized.
Similar to our visit at Taco Peligro, we decided to try a variety of items to see how they compared. We ordered a $3 appetizer of Chicherones y cueritas, which is basically a large fried pork skin covered in what appeared to be boiled pork rind with lettuce, tomato, avocado slices, and a sour cream sauce. The fried pork skin was flavorless and crispy, and the pork rind was tender and cold, but a little too slimy for my liking. While this dish was not completely awful, it was definitely something we will not order again.
For our meal, we ordered four items to share: An al pastor sope, a carne asada huarache, a milaneza torta, and a cheese gordita. The al pastor in the sope was absolutely phenomenal with the perfect amount of seasoning and incredibly delicious pork.
The huarache had moist and delicious carne asada, and was basically a really big sope, as the toppings were the same as the sope, with lettuce, tomato, sour cream, and cheese.
The torta was full of milaneza beef. Milaneza is very similar to chicken fried steak with a saltine cracker breading. There was also tomato and lettuce on the torta. This sandwich was very flavorful, but did not compare in flavor to the sope or huarache.
When we were placing our order, we asked the server which gordita she would recommend and she told us to order the cheese & peppers gordita. Taking her advice, we ordered it, and were incredibly disappointed. The tortilla "crust" was bland and flavorless, and the cheese was mild and pretty flavorless as well. The peppers were the only added flavor in this dish, and they were all clumped together in the middle, creating an overpowering amount of flavor in one single bite. This picture makes the gordita look as appetizing as it actually was:
Overall, the salsa, sope, and huaracha made this experience worth a second visit, and after seeing what the customers around us were ordering, I think we know what we will get next time (the Mega San Luis, basically a giant plate full of pasta, shrimp, veggies, meat of all types, guacamole, etc). Also, one of the best things about this restaurant was that our entire meal, including tip, was under $20. We will definitely be returning, but next time, we will ask for a dish for salsa, and will order the Mega San Luis!
