Orsi’s: Historic Italian bakery-pizzeria reaches 100

July 5, 2019 leoadambiga Leave a comment

Orsi’s

Historic Italian bakery-pizzeria reaches 100

©by Leo Adam Biga

Appearing in the July 2019 edition of The Reader (thereader.com)

Jim Hall appreciates what a touchtone Little Italy landmark he owns in Orsi’s Italian Bakery & Pizzeria. Though not Italian, the 60-year-old is a paisan in every other sense. He started there at 8 and became a close friend and trusted worker of the namesake Orsi clan.

Markng 100 years in 2019. Orsi’s is a last vestige of a neighborhood whose gentrification trades on rich ethnic history. With all but one traditional Little Italy restaurant gone and no Italian market nearby, Orsi’s enjoys the sweet spot as purveyor of authentic, old-world fare.

“We’re the only one left. We’re Omaha’s original Italian bakery,” Hall said.

The city’s other major Italian bakery, Rotella’s, long competed with Orsi’s for patronage. Folks grew up loyal to one brand or the other. Since Rotella’s left Little Italy for the suburbs and went commercial mass-production, Orsi’s has had the local artisan field to itself

“Ours is an all hand-made (tossed) product,” said Hall. “Some people don’t look at quality a much as price, but there are always stalwarts who want the quality.”

That quality is all in the dough. The ingredients are simple enough: yeast, salt, water and high gluten wheat flour. But it’s the small batch, time tested- care and craft that gives the classic Italian twist its signature chew.

“I know the bread’s an outstanding bread,” Hall said. “People come from all over to buy it. People that grew up around here and now live far away make the drive down because it’s something special they can’t get anywhere else. The same with the pizza, the garlic bread and the garlic cheese bread.”

Dave Lassek makes the pilgrimage from 168th and Blondo. “Their pizza and bread dough is the best,” said Lassek, who stopped to get dough for a homemade pizza his wife was making for Father’s Day.

Pat Smith’s been a devoted customer since the 1950s. Why? “Because they’ve got the best bread in town.”

“The bread’s like our calling card,” Hall said, “but more and more people are finding out about the pizza. Pizza pays the bills.”

Orsi’s is No.1 on Trip Advisor for pizza places in Omaha. Small wonder given its distinctive Romano-Mozzarella cheese mix and slow-cooked, homemade Sicilian sauce thick with tomato paste, olive oil and fresh garlic.

Unlike some fresh foods with a long history, Orsi’s has remained constant despite ownership changes.

“The quality stays the same,” said Smith.

“They still use the original recipes,” fan Mary Thompson said admiringly.

The familiar smell, taste, texture provide instant sensory triggers for legacy customers and artisans alike.

“It takes you home,” said lifetime Little Italy resident Nancy D’Agosta Calinger.

“It’s the same ingredients we used when I was a kid back in the 1960s when I learned how to make it,” Hall said. “There’s no change in it. No preservatives. Preservatives will give you longer shelf life, but will change the flavor and the texture – and what people want is that texture. It’s crispy, crunchy on the outside and soft inside. It’s why it comes out so good for toast.”

The dough contains no sugar or milk either. That purity is why Orsi’s can’t be found in stores. Since its products don’t turn over fast enough to retain freshness, stores get credited for unsold loaves. There’s no margin niche-supplying far-flung grocers. Thus, pilgrims must come to mecca for their fix.

Fresh, sometimes still warm bread from the oven guarantees the unmistakable texture and aroma you can only get at Orsi’s.

Between Hall and his mates, the bakers have hundreds of years on the line.

“Some of us have worked together since we were kids,” Hall said..”We all take pride in what we’re making because we want it to come out the way we remember.”

Hall learned the trade from co-founder Alfonzo Orsi’s sons Claudio and Olivio Orsi and from Claudio’s son Bobby Orsi Sr.

“I wasn’t the fastest, but I was good at everything I did because I made sure I learned it the right way,” Hall said. “I was taught it’s more about being consistent than fast because fast doesn’t always mean good.”

Hall cultivates customer stories that tell of Sunday mornings when folks come after church for fresh bread to go with their Sunday pasta dinner. There’s nothing like dipping a piece into nanna’s sauce. Some loaves don’t even make it home.

“People come down for a hot loaf of bread in the winter, stuff it up under their shirt, bring butter and a knife, pull it apart, butter it up, and eat it on the way home,” Hall said with satisfaction.

Until well into the 1970s, Orsi’s didn’t offer a sliced loaf. You can still get a whole by request.

Hall savors the memories and traditions.

“I try to be a good steward and keep the tradition going – and make it even better. That’s why i took it over (in 2010) because I didn’t want to see it end before the hundred years. Just in my time here, three to four generations have come through. I might not know all their names, but I know a lot of the faces.”

The lobby features photos that speak to the history.

“A lot of them are from guys that worked at the bakery as kids or that grew up with the Orisi or went to St. Frances Cabrini or St. Anne’s. This is where they can see themselves. It’s another thing they can count on that’s still here.”

It could have all ended in 1997 when fire gutted the place, but the community pitched in to bring it back.

“There were fundraisers. Some local smaller bakeries – Olsen’s, Emminger’s, Ferd’s – let us use their production areas when they were in their down time so we could bake our products, still fill the grocery shelves and have revenue coming in,” Hall recalled. “The fire happened in February and we were back in August (in a new, updated, expanded structure).”

Area resident Mary Thompson wasn’t surprised the community “rallied around” the bakery.

“They’re good neighbors,” said Thompson, adding that current owner Jim Hall is known for his “generosity.”

She and others say the bakery couldn’t have fallen to a better caretaker.

“Yeah, I hear it a lot from people,” Hall ackowledged.

As an entrepreneur, he’s boosted the pizzeria side and added value with a deli of imported meats, cheeses, homemade italian sausage and gourmet olive oils and pastas. It’s filled the gap since Marino’s grocery closed.

Pat Smith echoes others in saying Orsi’s is “the best place to get Italian specialties.”

Long-in-the-works plans for a permanent dining section may finally come to fruition this fall.

“It will definitely help enhance things,” said Hall.

A makeshift option exists now with card tables and folding chairs.

Hall, whose wife Kathy does all the books. is an ever-present fixture at Orsi’s.

“I do it all. I usually i average between 80 and 90 hours a week. It’s a lot of love, hard work and long hours.”

Even when employed at UPS and OPPD he worked evenings and weekends at Orsi’s. He and Bob Orsi Jr. had it together before he bought out his shares.

“I’ve been here my whole life. Basically the only time I was out was when I broke my knee in a car accident and I broke my neck in a fall.”

Even while wearing a halo drilled into his skull he worked 70 to 75 hours a week.

Finding good help is tough.

“It gets frustrating because the work ethnic and desire is not as much with younger people today.”

It’s why he surrounds himself with trusted old cronies.

Hall’s seen a surge in business from the area’s redevelopment boom.

“It’s just introducing more and more people to Orsi’s. Once they taste it, they come back.”

No, the German-Austrian Hall isn’t Italian by blood, but if anyone’s earned honorary Italian status, he has.

“Yeah. I’ve earned it a lot. Over and over.”

Visit orsibakery.com.

Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at leoadambiga.com.

Orsi’s Italian Bakery & Pizzeria

621 Pacific Street

402-345-3438

Tuesday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Sunday, 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Closed Mondays

Categories: Culinary/Cuisine, Ethnic Food, Food, Jim Hall, Omaha, Omaha Little Italy, Orsi's Italian Bakery & Pizzeria, Pizza, Writing Tags: Culinary/Cuisine, Ethnic Food, Food, Jim Hall, Omaha Italian Food Places, Omaha Little Italy, Orsi's Italian Bakery & Pizzeria

Ted Genoways Gives Voice to Rural Working Class

August 23, 2018 leoadambiga Leave a comment

Ted Genoways

Gives Voice to Rural Working Class

by Leo Adam Biga

Photography by Bill Sitzmann

Originally appeared in July-August 2018 issue of Omaha Magazine ( http://omahamagazine.com/articles/ted-genoways/)

Award-winning poet, journalist, editor, and author Ted Genoways of Lincoln, Nebraska, has long been recognized for his social justice writing as a contributor to Mother Jones, onEarth, Harper’s and other prestigious publications. While editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, the magazine won numerous national awards.

His recent nonfiction books—The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food, and This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Farm—expand on his enterprise reporting about the land, the people who work it, and the food we consume from it. The themes of sustainability, big ag versus little ag, over-processing of food, and environmental threats are among many concerns he explores.

He often collaborates on projects with his wife, photographer Mary Anne Andrei.

His penchant for reporting goes back to his boyhood, when he put down stories people told him, even illustrating them, in a stapled “magazine” he produced. His adult work took root in the form of secondhand stories of his paternal grandfather toiling on Nebraska farms and in Omaha meatpacking plants.

His father noted this precociousness with words and made a pact that if young Ted read a book a week selected for him, he could escape chores.

“I thought that was a great deal,” Genoways says. “Reading John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men was the first time I remember being completely hooked. After that, I tore through everything Steinbeck wrote, and it made a huge impact on me. I thought, there’s real power in this—if you can figure out how to do it this well.”

Reading classics by Hemingway, Faulkner, and other great authors followed. The work of muckrakers such as Upton Sinclair made an impression. “But those Steinbeck books,” he says, “have always really stuck with me, and I go back to them and they really hold up.”

Exposing injustice—just as Steinbeck did with migrants and Sinclair did with immigrants—is what Genoways does. Nebraska Wesleyan professors Jim Schaffer and the late state poet of Nebraska William Kloefkorn influenced his journalism and poetry, respectively. Genoways doesn’t make hard and fast distinctions between the two forms. Regardless of genre, he practices a form of advocacy journalism but always in service of the truth.

“I’m always starting with the facts and trying to understand how they fit together,” he says. “There’s no question I’ve got a point of view. But I don’t show up with preconceived notions of what the story is.”

He’s drawn to “stories of people at the mercy of the system,” he says, admitting, “I’m interested in the little guy and in how people fight back against the powers that be.”

While working at the Minnesota State Historical Society Press, Genoways released a book of poems,Bullroarer: A Sequence, about his grandfather, and edited Cheri Register’s book Daughter of a Meatpacker. At the Virginia Quarterly, he looked into worker illnesses at a Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota, and the glut of Latinos at a Hormel plant in Fremont, Nebraska. He found a correlation between unsafe conditions due to ever-faster production lines—where only immigrants are willing to do the job—and the pressures brought to bear on company towns with influxes of Spanish-speaking workers and their families, some of them undocumented.

That led to examining the impact “a corporate level decision to run the line faster in order to increase production has up and down the supply chain” and on entire communities.

“That’s become an ongoing fascination for me,” Genoways says. “I can’t seem to stop coming back to what’s happening in meatpacking towns, which really seem to be on the front line of a lot of change in this country.”

The heated controversy around TransCanada Corp.’s plans for the Keystone XL pipeline ended up as the backdrop for his book, This Blessed Earth. He found “the specter of a foreign corporation coming and taking land by eminent domain” from legacy farmers and ranchers “and telling them they had to take on this environmental risk with few or no guarantees” to be yet another challenge weighing on the backs of producers.

His focus became a fifth-generation Nebraska farm family, the Hammonds, who grow soybeans, and how their struggles mirror all family farmers in terms of “how big to get and how much risk to assume.”

“They were especially intriguing because they were building this solar and wind-powered barn right in the path KXL decided to cross their land, and that seemed like a pretty great metaphor for that kind of defiance,” he says.

Pipeline or not, small farmers have plenty to worry about.

“Right now, everything in ag is geared toward getting bigger,” Genoways says. “The question facing the entire industry is: How big is big enough? What do we lose when we force farmers off the land or make them into businessmen more than stewards of the land? To my eye, you lose agri-CULTURE and are left with agri-BUSINESS.”

Farming as a way of life is endangered.

“Nebraska lost a thousand farms in 2017,” he says. “Those properties will be absorbed by larger operations. The ground will still be farmed. The connection between farmer and farm will be further stretched and strained. That’s the way everything has gone, and it’s how everything is likely to continue. Agribusiness interests argue these trends move us toward maximum yield with improved sustainability. But it also means decisions are made by fewer and fewer people. Mistakes and misjudgments are magnified. So we not only lose the culture of independence and responsibility that built rural communities, but grow more dependent on a version of America run by corporations.”

Chronicling the Hammonds left indelible takeaways—one being the varied skills farming requires.

“We saw them harvest a field of soybeans while keeping an eye on the futures trading and calling around to elevators to check on prices; they were making market decisions as sophisticated as any commodities trader,” Genoways says. “This is one of the major pressures on family farms. To survive, you have to be able to repair your own center pivot or broken tractor, but also be a savvy business owner—adapting early to technological changes and diversifying to insulate your operation.”

The Hammonds weathered the storm.

“They are doing well. They got good news when the Public Service Commission only approved the alternate route for KXL,” he says.

Meanwhile, Genoways sees an American food system in need of reform.

“We would benefit mightily from a national food policy,” he says. “How can you explain subsidizing production of junk food and simultaneously spending on obesity education? How do we justify unsustainable volumes of meat while counseling people to eat less meat? If we really want people to improve their eating habits, we should provide economic incentives in that direction.”

Visit tedgenoways.com for more information.

This article was printed in the July/August 2018 edition of Omaha Magazine.

Categories: Agricuture/Ag, Authors/Literature, Farming, Food, Food System, Journalist, Meatpacking, Nebraska, Ted Genoways, Writing Tags: Agribusiness, Agriculture, Farming, Food, Food System, Journalist, Nebraska, Reporter, Ted Genoways, Writing

Life Itself X: Food Stories Through the Years – A Pot Liquor Love Archive

June 8, 2018 leoadambiga Leave a comment

Life Itself X: Food Stories Through the Years

A Pot Liquor Love Archive

Follow my food writing at:

leoadambiga.com

https://www.facebook.com/LeoAdamBiga

and in

Food & Spirits Magazine

The Reader

Omaha Magazine

Harvesting food and friends at Florence Mill Farmers Market, where agriculture, history and art meet

https://leoadambiga.com/2018/06/06/harvesting-food-…ory-and-art-meet

Journalist-author Genoways takes micro and macro look at the U.S, food system

https://leoadambiga.com/2018/06/06/journalist-autho…u-s-food-system

Finicky Frank’s puts out good eats

https://leoadambiga.com/2018/04/24/finicky-franks-puts-out-good-eats

Tenth Street Market will bring Vic Gutman’s dream to fruition

https://leoadambiga.com/2017/06/27/tenth-street-mar…ream-to-fruition

A systems approach to addressing food insecurity in North Omaha

https://leoadambiga.com/2017/08/11/a-systems-approa…y-in-north-omaha

Good Memories and Good Eats

http://thereader.com/dining/good-memories-and-good-eats/

Soul food eatery Omaha Rockets Kanteen conjures Negro Leagues past and pot liquor love menu

https://leoadambiga.com/2016/11/17/soul-food-eatery…liquor-love-menu

Anthony Kueper Dedicated to Creating Memories at Dolce

Big Mama, Bigger Heart:

Serving Up Soul Food and Second Chances

https://leoadambiga.com/category/big-mamas-kitchen-catering/

Maria Bonita

http://omahamagazine.com/articles/tag/maria-bonita/

Mary Current and her Crazy Gringa Hot Sauce

https://leoadambiga.com/2017/03/06/mary-current-and-her-crazy-gringa-hot-sauce/

The Long Goodbye for Bohemian Cafe

https://leoadambiga.com/…/the-long-goodbye-for-bohemian-cafe-iconic- omaha-eatery-closing-after-92-years/‎

Tacos and Tequila Take Center Stage at Hook & Lime

Bomb girl Zedeka Poindexter draws on family, food and angst for her poetry

https://leoadambiga.com/2015/03/11/zedeka-poindexte…t-for-her-poetry

Chef Jason Hughes setting bold course at Happy Hollow Country Club

https://leoadambiga.com/2015/03/23/chef-jason-hughe…low-country-club

Culinary artist Jim Trebbien

https://leoadambiga.com/2015/03/02/culinary-artist-…ommunity-college

Eat to live or live to eat, Omaha’s culinary culture rises …

http://thereader.com/visual-art/eat_to_live_or_live_to_eat_omahas_culinary_culture_rises/

Chef-Owner Jared Clarke Goes Wood-Fired

Chicken is King at Time Out Foods

https://leoadambiga.com/2015/10/28/chicken-is-king-at-time-out-foods/

Southern Fried Love Road Trip Diary I

https://leoadambiga.com/2016/06/01/a-southern-road-trip-diary/

Southern Fried Love Road Trip Diary II

https://leoadambiga.com/2016/08/12/southern-fried-love-road-trip-diary-ii/

Book depicts area whole foods culture in stories, recipes …

http://thereader.com/visual-art/book_depicts_area_whole_foods_culture_in_stories_recipes_pics/_

Anne and Craig McVeigh Bring Beacon Hills Take on American Comfort Cuisine Back to Where Their Food Careers Started

JOURNEYS:

Within Our Reach: Feeding a Starving World

http://www.spiritofomaha.com/Metro-Magazine/November-2014/JOURNEYS-Within-Our-Reach-A-Starving-World/

No More Empty Pots Intent on Ending North Omaha Food Desert

https://leoadambiga.com/2013/08/13/no-more-empty-po…t-in-north-omaha

Omaha Culinary Tours:

New company hopes to make Omaha’s burgeoning food culture a tourist attraction

https://leoadambiga.com/2014/02/05/omaha-culinary-t…urist-attraction

Two Old Market Fixtures Celebrate Milestones

https://leoadambiga.com/2013/01/18/two-old-market-f…brate-milestones

Chef-Owner Jenny Coco Proves She Can Hang with the Boys

Shirley’s Diner

https://leoadambiga.com/tag/shirleys-diner/

A. Marino Grocery

https://leoadambiga.com/tag/a-marino-grocery/

Omaha Chapter American GI Forum

https://leoadambiga.com/tag/omaha-chapter-american-gi-forum/

Omaha’s Pitch Man:

Entrepreneur Extraordinaire Willy Theisen is Back with His Next Big Business Venture

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/04/25/omahas-pitch-man…business-venture/

Entrepreneur and Dealmaker Greg Cutchall

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/08/entrepreneur-and…er-greg-cutchall/

Doing Things the Dario Way Nets Omaha Two of its Most Distinctive Restaurants

Passing the Torch at the Dundee Dell

Vic’s Corn Popper Owners Do More Than Make Snacks: They Mentor Young People

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/21/vics-corn-popper…tor-young-people

George Payne and the Virginia Cafe:

Restauranter Family Legacy of Filmmaker Alexander Payne

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/07/06/remembering-the-…-alexander-payne

“The Bagel: An Immigrant’s Story”

Joan Micklin Silver and Matthew Goodman team up for new documentary

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/03/16/the-bagel-an-imm…documentary-film

George Eisenberg’s love for Omaha’s Old Market never grows old

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/19/george-eisenberg…-never-grows-old/

In Memoriam: George Eisenberg

https://leoadambiga.com/2018/03/27/in-memoriam-george-eisenberg

Righteous Southern Grub at Dixie Quicks

Back Home in the Fields of Comfort and Plenty

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/07/08/back-home-in-the…mfort-and-plenty

The Great Omaha Chocolate Festival

http://thereader.com/dining/the_great_omaha_chocolate_festival/

A Culinary-Horticulture Marriage

unities.com/gardening/culinary-horticulture-marriage

New film ‘Growing Cities’ takes road trip look at urban …

https://leoadambiga.com/2013/10/21/new-film-growing-cities-takes-road-trip-look-at-urban-farmers-cultivating-a-healthy-sustainable-food-culture/

Issue 22

Itzel Anahi Lopez: Young Latina on the rise

https://leoadambiga.com/2018/03/24/itzel-anahi-lope…tina-on-the-rise

A Different Kind of Bistro

http://thereader.com/dining/a_different_kind_of_bistro/

The much anticipated return of the Bagel Bin

https://leoadambiga.com/2010/12/03/the-much-anticip…of-the-bagel-bin

Big Mama’s Keeps It Real

A Soul Food Sanctuary in Omaha

https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/11/big-mama’s-keeps…ve-ins-and-dives

Chef Mike Does a Rebirth at the Community Cafe

https://leoadambiga.com/2011/06/22/chef-mike-does-a…e-community-cafe

Favorite Sons:

Weekly Omaha pasta feeds at Sons of Italy Hall draw diverse crowd

https://leoadambiga.com/2011/04/28/favorite-sons-we…lse-little-italy

Allan Noddle’s food industry adventures show him the world

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/04/28/allan-noddles-ad…ow-him-the-world

Cousins Bruce and Todd Simon Continue the Omaha Steaks Tradition

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/21/cousins-bruce-an…steaks-tradition

This version of Simon Says positions Omaha Steaks as food service juggernaut

https://leoadambiga.com/2010/06/15/this-version-of-…rvice-juggernaut

A Soul Food Summit

https://leoadambiga.com/2010/05/31/a-soul-food-summit/

Charles Hall’s Fair Deal Cafe

https://leoadambiga.com/2016/05/11/charles-halls-fair-deal-cafe/

An Ode to the Omaha Stockyards

https://leoadambiga.com/2012/06/14/from-the-archive…omaha-stockyards

It was a different breed then:

Omaha Stockyards remembered

https://leoadambiga.com/2016/06/24/it-was-a-differe…yards-remembered

Categories: Coding, Culture, Food, Food Insecurity/Hunger, Food System, Leo Adam Biga, Pot Liquor Love, Restaurants, Writing Tags: Chefs, Cooking, Cuisine, Culinary, Food, Food Writing, Leo Adam Biga, Omaha Dining, Omaha Food Scene, Pot Liquor Love, Restaurants

Journalist-author Genoways takes micro and macro look at the U.S, food system

June 6, 2018 leoadambiga 2 comments

Journalist-author Genoways takes micro and macro look at the U.S, food system

©by Leo Adam Biga,

Originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of Food & Spirits Magazine (http://fsmomaha.com)

It should come as no surprise that a writer who chronicled a year in the life of a Nebraska farm family, exposed the dangers of a broken American food system and is now researching Mexico’s tequila industry has always marched to the beat of a different drummer.

Growing up, Ted Genoways was encouraged to read books well beyond his years by his natural museum administrator father, Hugh H. Genoways. That was okay with the youngster because he liked reading, even though it took his dad makiing a bargain with him to replace comic books with classics.

The great American interpreter of the common man’s struggles, author John Steinbeck, became an inspiration for Genoways and remains so today. The exposes of muckrakers such as Upton Sinclair further lit a fire in him – that still burns – to stand up for the underdog.

“I just recently got fascinated by the work done by the ‘Stunt Girls,’ the forerunners of the muckrakers and the first undercover investigators. Their whole notion was to get into spaces hidden from public view and write about what was going on there in order to bring public pressure to bear and change conditions.”

Following in the footsteps of these socially conscious writers, Genoways has documented the hardships facing small farmers, migrants and immigrants and he’s explored the effects of big ag on towns and families.

Storytelling has captivated him for as long as he can remember. “Strangely fascinated” by the stories others told him, Genoways developed a habit of writing them down and illustrating them, a precursor to the student journalism he practiced in high school and college and to his career today as journalist and author.

Some of the stories he heard as a boy that most captured his imagination concerned his paternal grandfather’s experiences working on Nebraska farms and in Omaha meatpacking plants. Though Genoways hails from an urban background, this city boy has repeatedly turned to rural reaches for his work. After all his travels, including a short stint in Minnesota and a decade-plus back east as editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Lincoln, Nebraska is where he now calls home.

His father’s work meant a nomadic life for Genoways. He was born in Lubbock, Texas and grew up in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, where the family stood out both for lack of want and for the title, Dr., his Ph.D. father carried. Most of his friends and schoolmates were the sons and daughters of blue-collar working parents, some of whom were laid off by the mills and struggling to get by. By contrast, his father was curator of mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

When the elder Genoways accepted the directorship of the Nebraska State Museum, the family moved to Lincoln in 1986. At Lincoln East High School, Genoways found in Jim Schaffer the first of two crucial mentors in his foundational years as an aspiring published writer.

“Jim was our journalism teacher and the publications advisor,” said Genoways, who with some fellow students and the encouragement of Schaffer founded a school magazine, Muse. Only three years after its launch the Columbia School of Journalism named it the nation’s best high school publication.

“That whole experience of working on that magazine was really formative. It was also a case where because we were all so new to that stuff, we didn’t think a lot about genre distinctions. We were all writing fiction and poetry and descriptive pieces and to whatever extent a high school student can we were trying to report on things that seemed to be of broader significance – national issues and things relevant to the school.”

Muse getting singled-out resulted in Genoways and his classmates going to New York to accept the Columbia recognition. By virtue of Schaffer working on a dissertation about baseball columnist Roger Angell, the Nebraska group got entree to visit the legend at his New Yorker magazine office during their Manhattan trip.

“It was quite an experience. We went also to Spy Magazine, which we were interested in because one of the editors, Kurt Andersen, was from Omaha.”

Three decades later, Genoways is now the established professional emerging young writers seek out.

All in all, he said Muse proved “definitely an important beginning point for me.”

It worked out that Genoways and Schaffer matriculated to Nebraska Wesleyan University at the same time – to study and teach, respectively. Again, with Schaffer’s blessing, Genoways founded a magazine, Coyote.

“It was more ambitious and probably more openly irreverent,” Genoways said. “It was something we really enjoyed. it was a great incubator for just trying out all kinds of ideas and really seeing what a magazine could be.”

At Wesleyan, Genoways found another key influence in the late state poet William Kloefkorn.

“To have an interest as I did in both the literary side and the journalistic side and then getting to work with Bill Kloefkorn at Nebraska Wesleyan while also working with Jim there was really ideal. I’ve had a lot of great teachers over the years, but I think it would be pretty impossible to match the kind of wisdom and knowledge Bill had with that incredible generosity. He was always teaching and always glad to share his thoughts with young people who were wanting to know more. I feel really lucky to have had somebody like that at a point when I was just getting started.”

Genoways soaked it all in.

“I was an English major with a creative writing-poetry emphasis and thesis but was a journalism minor. I would say over time my interests and my work have moved back and forth between those things. But I don’t see them as all that different. I mean, my first book of poems, Bullroarer, was kind of a reimagining of the life of my grandfather, who worked in a meatpacking plant in Omaha when he was young, and that definitely was part of what got me interested in investigating the meatpacking industry and writing the book The Chain (Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food).”

A particular story oft-told by the author’s father influenced Genoways eventually writing The Chain.

“When my dad was a kid. the family came to Fort Calhoun for Easter. And for whatever reason, his father thought it would be a good idea to show him where the Easter ham comes from. The story is that my grandfather worked in the Swift packinghouse, He took him into the kill floor there. My father said he didn’t know exactly what his dad was thinking taking an 8 or 10 year old kid to see the hogs being slaughtered, but it made a real impression on him.”

As an adult, Genoways sees an interconnected tood system full of health hazards that span the planting, fertilizing and harvesting of the grain that feeds livestock to the ways animals are housed, killed and processed.

“The Chain was this whole idea of wanting to see this go from seed to slaughter.”

More family lore has spurred his work.

“My grandfather’s upbringing during the Great Depression and landing out in western Nebraska on a farm and raising my dad out there was a big part of what was behind writing This Blessed Earth (A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm). That’s the reason there’s kind of a coda at the end, where I go back to some of those places I remember from my childhood with my dad – but now with a new understanding of all the pressures my grandfather had been under and all the factors that had helped shape my dad’s childhood.

“So to me it’s all part of the same work – it’s just different ways of approaching it and reaching different audiences. But also I suppose kind of testing out what medium and what approach works best for different kinds of material.”

He has used literary journalistic prose and straight investigative reporting for examinations of unsafe, unsanitary conditions at Hormel hog plants in Austin, Minnesota and Fremont, Nebraska and animal abuse in Iowa and for his delineation of challenges facing small family farmers. His work has appeared in Mother Jones, OnEarth, Harpers and other national magazines.

“As much as I love the pure activity of the research and writing, my hope always is it does more than just entertain and inform. I would hope it’s also shining a light on issues people hadn’t thought about before and making them see the world in a different way and maybe moves them to want to do something about injustices of the world. There’s no question I’ve got a point of view. It’s one of the reasons magazine journalism, which traditionally is more forgiving on those sorts of things, feels like the right place for me.”

Genoways doesn’t shy away from showing his sympathies for the average Joe or Jill who get the shaft from big money forces beyond their control.

“I’m always starting by seeing a complex of issues or events I think are worth investigation. I always feel like what i can contribute to the conversation is constantly saying it’s not simple – here’s another complex dimension of that. I’m interested in exposing the mechanisms of systems to show how things are stacked against the little guy. So my interest is in leveling the playing field and making sure everybody gets a fair shake. But that’s really as far as my philosophy extends. I don’t have a big political agenda.”

His reporting in meatpacking company towns revealed sped-up productions lines whose workers. many illegal. suffer more injuries and illnesses. He also shed light on predominantly white Fremont’s racially-charged stands and measures to make life inhospitable for undocumented workers and their families.

Finding packers willing to talk to him can be a challenge, but he said he’s hit upon a reliable strategy of reaching out to “whoever in the community is advocating on behalf of the workers,” adding, “There’s all these nonprofits providing interpretive services or medical help or helping navigate the immigration process.” In Austin, Minnesota, where workers suffered a neurological disorder from exposure to an aerosolized mist created from liquifying hog brains, he developed enough rapport with the afflicted that he got several to sign waivers.

“That waiver allowed the state-appointed social worker for this case to turn over her records and the release of their medical records. Having these monthly reports on their progress created a timeline, a kind of verifiable trajectory for their symptoms and illness. It also then allowed me to have this record of dates to go back to the workers themselves and jog their memories. It also opened up other kinds of conversations.”

Since paranoid management makes on-site journalist observations at any plant next to impossible, Genoways finds other ways to recreate what goes on there.

“The central problem of working on anything with meatpacking is you’re almost certainly not going to see the workplace, and so you have to kind of reconstruct it from what the workers can describe but then also try to find whatever you can in the way of documentary evidence to go with that.

“in addition to second-hand accounts from line workers and supervisors,” he said “ideally I try to get applicable government inspection records and reports of problems documented at those places. so it’s a lot of triangulation rather than direct access. To me, the process is interesting. Anytime someone tries to drop the curtain to conceal what’s going on somewhere, it feels like the place we should be going and trying to see what is behind the curtain. It’s an indicator there’s something going on we should be paying attention to.”

He suggests instead of companies investing in mega security to keep prying eyes out “money might be better spent changing processes and policies so you don’t have to worry about public scrutiny.”

He and photographer wife Mary Anne Andrei have worked on magazine and book projects together.

“I love working with Mary Anne. We seem to have some kind of built-in radar that allows us to be focused on our part of the project while remaining attuned to what the other person needs. That communication means Mary Anne is asking questions in interviews and I’m sharing what I see as she’s getting shots. It’s a true collaboration.”

In the Hammonds, they found a tight-knit, fifth-generation farm clan now growing soybeans who defied a proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline route to have cut right through their property.

“Our interest really got ramped up when the neighbor to the south of them who had been renting them two quarters of ground for many years said, ‘I don’t agree with this stance you’ve taken and I’m not going to allow you to farm this ground anymore.’ The Hammonds took a real financial hit from having expressed this strong opposition to the pipeline and that was the point at which we said we’d like to spend a year as your family works to deal with struggling to make ends meet when you’ve taken a stand like that.”

Genoways saw the family as a symbol for thousands jlike them.

“They embodied so many of the challenges of modern farming as well as struggles that all family farms are up against — how big to get, how much risk to assume.

Things just kept stacking up, Prices bottomed out

There were all sorts of new pressures. And to their great credit Rick Hammond and his daughter Meghan and her fiance Kyle all said, ‘We’ve committed to doing this, we’ll stick it out. We want people to see what it’s really like here – what the stresses are.’ So they let us follow them around for that year, It was a tremendous commitment on their part and they really hung in there with us, even in times that were incredibly stressful for them.

“I hope that openness they exhibited translates into something that allows people to see just what that life is really like.”

Genoways recently returned from a trip south of the border for research on his new book, Tequila Wars: The Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico.

Visit http://www.tedgenoways.com.

Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at https://leoadambiga.com.

Categories: Agricuture/Ag, Farming, Food, Food System, Journalism, Meatpacking, Nebraska, Social Justice, Ted Genoways, Writing Tags: Agri-business, Agriculure, Author, Farming, Farms, Food, Food System, Journalist, Meatpacking, Nebraska, Social Justice, Ted Genoways

Harvesting food and friends at Florence Mill Farmers Market, where agriculture, history and art meet

June 6, 2018 leoadambiga 1 comment

Harvesting food and friends at Florence Mill Farmers Market, where agriculture, history and art meet

©by Leo Adam Biga, Originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of Food & Spirits Magazine (http://fsmomaha.com)

The Mill Lady is hard to miss at the Florence Mill Farmers Market on summer Sundays. She’s the beaming, bespectacled woman wearing the straw hat adorned by sprays of plastic fruit and vegetables.

Market vendors include local farmers, urban ag growers, gardeners and food truck purveyors. It’s been going strong since 2009 thanks to Linda Meigs, aka The Mill Lady. As director of the historic mill, located at 9102 North 30th Street, she’s transformed a derelict site into a National Register of Historic Places cultural attraction “connecting agriculture, history and art.”

She “wears” many hats beyond the fun one. As market manager, she books vendors. She organizes exhibits at the Art Loft Gallery on the mill’s top floor. She curates the history museum on the main level. She schedules and hosts special events. She writes grants to fund operations. Supervising the mid-19th century structure’s maintenance and repairs is a job in itself.

Ever since she and her late husband John acquired the abandoned mill in 1997. Meigs has been its face and heart. An artist by nature and trade, she also has an abiding appreciation for history.

“Omaha would be such a beautiful city with some of the architecture we’ve torn down. This is not the most beautiful architecture in Omaha, but it is the oldest historic business site and the only still-standing building in the state that bridges the historic eras of the overland pioneer trails of the 1840s with the territorial settlement of the 1850s. That’s a very small niche – but what a cool one. And it has this Mormon heritage and connection to Brigham Young, who supervised its construction.”

It took her awhile to arrive at the ag-history-art combo she now brands it with.

“I had very vague, artsy ideas about what to do. But that first summer (1998) I was in here just cleaning, which was the first thing that needed to be done, and I had a thousand visitors and the building wasn’t even open. A thousand people found their way here and they were all coming to see those 1846 Mormon hand-hewed timbers

“It was like those timbers told me it needed to be open as an historic site after that experience.. This is my 20th summer with the mill.”

She made the guts of the mill into the Winter Quarters Mill Museum with intact original equipment and period tools on view. Interpretive displays present in words and images the site’s history, including the western-bound pioneers who built it. She converted the top floor into the ArtLoft Gallery that shows work by local-regional artists. Then she added the farmers market.

“It was not really until after it happened I realized what I had. Then I could stand back and appreciate the integrity of it. I felt like it was a natural fit for that building because it was an ag industrial site and an historic site. The pioneer trails is certainly a significant historical passage of our country.

“Then, too, I’m an artist and a foodie. I think supporting local is good for both personal health and for conservation of resources. It promotes individual health and the health of the local farm economy. It has less impact on the environment with trucking when you bring things in from close by as opposed to far away.

“I’m into fresh, locally-produced food. In the summer I pretty much live on local vegetables. I am a gardener myself and i do support my farmers market folks, too.”

Farmers markets are ubiquitous today in the metro. Hers owns the distinction of being the farthest north within the city limits. It proved popular from the jump.

“That first farmers market started with six vendors. Hundreds of people showed. It was a crush of people for those vendors. And then every week that summer the number of vendors increased. I think we ended up with about 40 vendors. I was pleased.

“Really, 30 is about the perfect number. It’s the most manageable with the space I have. I’m not trying to compete with the maddening crowd market.”

Finding the right mix is a challenge.

“You want to have enough variety to choose from, but you also have to have the customers that will support those vendors or they wont come back. If the community doesn’t support it, it’s hard to keep it going.”

Other markets may have more vendors, but few can match her setting.

“This one is quite unique. It’s in a field. It’s inside and outside an historic ag building. And it feels like an authentic place for a market.”

She cultivates an intimate, upbeat atmosphere.

“It’s like a country fair. I have live music. Dale Thornton’s always there with his country soft pop ballads in the morning. The afternoon varies from a group called Ring of Flutes to old-time country bluegrass circle jams. Second Sundays is kind of a surprise. One time I had harpists show up. Lutist Kenneth Be has played here several times. I’ve had dueling banjos. Just whatever.”

A massage therapist is usually there plying her healing art. Livestock handlers variously bring in lamas, ponies and chickens for petting-feeding.

A main attraction for many vendors is Meigs.

“Oh, she’s beautiful. Nice lady, yeah,” said Lawrence Gatewood, who has the market cornered with barbecue with his T.L.C. Down Home Food stall.

Jared Uecker, owner of O’tille Pork and Pantry, said, “Linda’s exceptional to work with and really cares about the market and its vendors. She’s passionate about local food and is a frequent customer of ours.”

Jim and Sylvia Thomas of Thomas Farms in Decatur, Nebraska are among the produce vendors who’ve been there from near the start and they’re not going anywhere as long as Meigs is around.

“Everybody loves Linda. She’s what makes it,” Jim Thomas said. “She’s really doing a good job and she’s pretty much doing it for free. I mean, we pay her a little stall fee but for what we get its a deal.”

“Jim and Sylvia Thomas came in the middle of that first season and they’ve come back every year,” Meigs said.

“We kind of grew along with it,” Thomas said. “It’s a really nice friendly little market. We’re also down at the Haymarket in Lincoln, but it’s touristy, This (Florence Mill) is more of a real, live food market.”

Thomas is the third-generation operator of his family farm but now that he and his wife are nearing retirement they’re backing off full-scale farming “to do more of this.” “I like the interchange with the people. I guess you’d say its our social because out in the boondocks you never see anybody. The thing about Florence is that you get everybody. It’s really varied.”

That variation extends to fellow vendors, including Mai Thao and her husband. The immigrants from Thailand grow exquisite vegetables and herbs

“They came towards end of the first season and they’ve always been there since,” Meigs said.

Then there’s Gatewood’s “down home” Mississippi-style barbecue. He learned to cook from his mother. He makes his own sausage and head-cheese. He grows and cooks some mean collard greens.

Gatewood said, “I make my own everything.”

“I call him “Sir Lawrence,” Meigs said. “He’s come for the last three years. He smokes his meats and beans right there. He grills corn on the cob.”

Gatewood gets his grill and smoker going early in the morning. By lunchtime, the sweet, smokey aroma is hard for public patrons and fellow vendors to resist.

“He’s a real character and he puts out a real good product,” said Thomas.

Kesa Kenny, chef-owner of Finicky Frank’s Cafe, “does tailgate food at the market,” said Meigs. “She goes around and buys vegetables from the vendors and then makes things right on the spot. She makes her own salsa and guacamole and things. You never know what she’s going to make or bring. She’s very creative.”

Kenny’s sampler market dishes have also included a fresh radish salad, a roasted vegetable stock topped, pho-style, with chopped fresh vegetables, and a creamy butter bean spread. She said she wants people “to see how simple it is” to create scrumptious, nutritious dishes from familiar, fresh ingredients on hand.

“From a farmers market you could eat all summer long for pennies,” Kenny said.

More than a vendor, Kenny’s a buyer.

“She’s very supportive,” Meigs said. “For years, she’s bought her vegetables for her restaurant from the market.”

“It’s so wonderful to have that available,” Kenny said.

Meigs said that Kenny embodies the market’s sense of community.

“She comes down to the market and does this cooking without advertising her own restaurant. I told her, ‘You need to tell people you’re Kesa of Finicky Franks,’ and she said, ‘No, I’m not doing this to advertise my restaurant, I’m doing this to support the market and to be part of the fun.’ That’s a pretty unique attitude.”

“Kesa’s also an artist. She I knew each other back at the Artists Cooperative Gallery in the Old Market. She quit to open a cafe-coffee shop and I quit to do an art project and then got the mill instead. It’s funny that we have reconnected in Florence.”

Jim Thomas likes that the market coincides with exhibits at the ArtLoft Gallery, which he said provides exposure to the art scene he and his wife otherwise don’t get.

“I really enjoy the artsy people and the crafts people. They’re so creative. I guess what I’m saying is for us it isn’t about the food as much as it is about the people.”

Being part of a site with such a rich past as a jumping off point to the West is neat, too.

“That’s some big history,” said Thomas.

He added that the variety and camaraderie keep them coming back. “It’s really diverse and we’ve developed a lot of friendships down there.”

“It’s a great mingling of different nationalities and cultures.” Sylvia Thomas confirmed. “All the vendors help each other out, which is very unique. At a lot of markets, they don’t do that. Here, if you don’t have something that someone’s looking for, we’ll refer you to who has it. After you’ve been there long enough like we have, vendors and customers become kind of a family. Our regular customers introduce us to their kids and grandkids and keep us posted on what’s going on, and they ask how our family’s doing.

“We kind of intertwine each other.”

The couple traditionally occupy the market’s northeast corner, where gregarious Jim Thomas holds court.

“Linda (Meigs) tells us, ‘You’re our welcoming committee.’ It’s very fun, we enjoy it a lot,” Sylvia Thomas said.

Lawrence Gatewood echoes the family-community vibe found there.

“It’s real nice there. Wonderful people.”

Even though business isn’t always brisk, Gatewood’s found a sweet spot on the market’s southeast side.

“Not every Sunday’s good, but I still like being out there mingling with the people.”

But food, not frivolity, is what most patrons are after.

“Our big deal in the summer is peppers and tomatoes,” Jim Thomas said. “We also have onions,p ottos, cucumbers, eggplants. We do sweet corn but sweet corn is really secondary. Early this year, if we get lucky, we might have some morels down there. Morels sell like crazy. We can sell just as many as we’ve got.”

In the fall, Thomas pumpkins rule.

The veggies and herbs that Mai Thao features at her family stall pop with color. There are variously green beans, peas, bok choy, radishes, fingerling potatoes, cucumbers, kale, cilantro and basil.

Makers of pies, cakes and other sweets are also frequent vendors at the market.

The farmers market is not the only way the mill intersects with food. Meigs has found a kindred spirit in No More Empty Pots (NMEP) head Nancy Williams, whose nonprofit’s Food Hub is mere blocks away.

“We both have an interest in food and health,” Meigs said as it relates to creating sustainable food system solutions. “Nancy is also into cultivating entrepreneurs and I guess I am too in a way.”

Jared Uecker found the market “a wonderful starting point” for his start-up O’tillie Pork & Pantry last year.

“It was the perfect home for us to begin selling our meat products. I really enjoyed its small-size, especially for businesses new to the market such as ourselves. It gave us a great opportunity to have a consistent spot to showcase our products and bring in revenue for the business. I particularly enjoyed the small-town family feel to it. It’s filled with really great local people using it for their weekly shopping as opposed to some other bigger markets which can feel more like people are there more to browse.”

The mill and NMEP have organized Blues and Barbecue Harvest Party joint fundraisers at the mill.

Meigs has welcomed other events involving food there.

“I’ve hosted a lot of different things. Every year is kind of different. In 2014 the mill was the setting for a Great Plains Theatre Conference PlayFest performance of Wood Music. The piece immersed the audience in reenactments of the mill’s early history, complete with actors in costume and atmospheric lighting. A traditional hoedown, complete with good eats and live bluegrass music, followed the play.

Kesa Kenny catered a lunch there featuring Darrell Draper in-character as Teddy Roosevelt. A group held an herb festival at the mill. Another year, crates of Colorado peaches starred.

“I occasionally do flour sack lunches for bus tour groups that come,” Meigs said. “I make flour sacks and stuff them with grain sampler sandwiches that I have made to my specifications by one of the local restaurants. It’s like an old-fashioned picnic lunch we have on the hay bales in the Faribanks Scale.”

The mill is part of the North Omaha Hills Pottery Tour the first full weekend of October each year. The Czech Notre Dame sisters hold a homemade kolache sale there that weekend.

Visit http://www.theflorencemill.org.

Read more of Leo Adam Biga’s work at https://leoadambiga.com.

Finicky Frank’s puts out good eats

April 24, 2018 leoadambiga 1 comment

Finicky Frank’s puts out good eats

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in April 2018 issue of The Reader (www.thereader.com)

Finicky Frank’s stands apart from North Omaha restaurants with its farm-to-table commitment and casual-meets-fine dining balance. Chef-owner Kesa Kenny sticks with quality ingredients and keep things simple to create five-star comfort food.

The Salina, Kansas native worked the family farm growing up, gaining an appreciation for fresh-natural-local even though things often got overcooked by her elders. As a stay-at-home wife and mother, she raised the kids, maintained a home and made art (dried gourds became a medium). Then, almost on a dare, she poured her creativity and love of good food into cooking.

She stretched herself in the kitchen to the point she made her own cheese, butter, bread, noodles.

“I was awfully close to self-sufficient. I went to the library and researched. I just got into cooking. I guess I always had been, but didn’t realize how good it could be,” she said.

After moving to Omaha in the late 1990s, she worked factory line shifts and flipped houses, saving enough to open her first eatery, the soup-salad-sandwich Center Street Cafe. It was a hit but when she couldn’t swing buying the building to renovate, she looked elsewhere.

The first version of Finicky Frank’s – named for a persnickety Ponca Hills neighbor – folded at the Forgotten Store. Then she and husband Brian Kenny, who manages and tends the bar and repairs anything that breaks, opened in one small bay of their present 9520 Calhoun Road location.

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They found kindred spirits among the local gourmands, small growers and urban farmers, thus making her farm-to-table practice a welcome fit.

“They are kind of foodies for the most part out this way.

The restaurant soon outgrew its snug confines and seven years ago the couple expanded into the adjacent bay – doing a total makeover. The result is a cozy spot with a not too heavy black and white tiled motif. The laid-back, curated ambience extends from the art on the walls to the music overhead to the soul satisfying, un-rushed food coming out of the kitchen.

The aesthetic is hers.

“Art flows in everything I do,” said the self-taught Kenny. “Anything creative is my realm. Anything I can get my hands on, found objects or ingredients, I repurpose. It just follows me.”

As time allows during service, the plain-talking Kenny engages diners about their meal or makes small talk. If there’s a snafu with a dish, she personally addresses it.

It’s a neighborhood place but both loyal followers and newbies come from near and far. Everyone’s treated the same: warmly.

The same confidence and drive that convinced Kenny to be a restauranteur infuses her cooking approach.

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

Years reading recipes and food books, finding new ingredients and ways to use them, fortify her culinary arsenal.

“You just change it up. That’s what keeps me fired up.”

She’s open to good ideas wherever she finds them. Like her fried chicken.

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“I stole that recipe from a restaurant I waitressed at years ago in Kansas.”

She starts with fresh, never frozen, organic free-range chickens from the family farm. Salt, pepper and flour. Fried in a stainless skillet in pure vegetable oil.

Simple sums up her overall approach to cooking.

“Start with a good basic ingredient and keep it simple. If you mess that up, you have no business behind a skillet. Don’t overcook it, don’t over-stress it, don’t overwork it.

“It’s wise to keep it to good basic comfort foods people remember growing up. That’s why our Saturday night fried chicken is a huge success, Some of my fondest memories are passing platters of food at family dinners and having meatloaf or chicken night. It’s bringing those things back and just putting a little twist on them of my own and keeping it fun to where I can stay creative.”

The same ethos applies to her walleye Thursdays. Her meaty, slightly sweet catch come direct from Canada.

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The Walleye at Finicky Frank’s is a feast for the eyes first, then the soul.

“It brings people from all over the place. I keep it as simple as can be with a light coating of homemade bread crumbs. Salt and pepper. Served with twice-cooked Yukon gold potatoes and fresh cole slaw. It’s just like the lakeside meals you make with fresh caught fish.”

For her succulent steaks, she uses teres major cuts (shoulder blade) from a local purveyor.

“That piece of meat is like a filet – a little more marbling but not much. The flavor’s really nice. It’s tender every time.”

People tell her her burger is “hands-down” the best in town. It’s all in the details. She hand forms full 8 ounce patties of 80 percent lean Angus beef accented with sea salt for a medium grill on the flat-top. Grilled red onions add a sweet, creamy bite. She serves it all on a buttered brioche bun with choice of add-ons and sides.

The moderately priced menu also includes crab cakes, a veggie stir fry, a seafood enchilada, a spinach-mushroom enchilada, a Reuben sandwich, a pork tenderloin sandwich, wood-fired pizzas, scratch soups, crafted salads and various wines, draft beers and cocktails.

A small patio offers an outdoor seasonal dining option.

She decides daily specials by whim, weather, season and what diners tell her they’re craving.

Her own urban farm-garden at her 11-acre Hills home supplies kale, bok choy, peas, green beans, cucumbers. radishes, onions, peppers, tomatoes, fingerling potatoes, cilantro, basil, parsley, et cetera.

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“It means getting up earlier in the morning to pick and wash, but it’s worth it. It doesn’t get any better than right out of the ground.”

The nearby Florence Mill Farmers Market is another fresh produce source.

“I bring it from there right over here. It’s so wonderful to have that and it supports them.”

She’s a vendor at the market, where she likes educating people’s palettes with homemade, garden-fresh salsa and guacamole and from-scratch roasted veggie broths.

At Frank’s, everything is prepped back of the house to arrive ready in the galley-style kitchen, which has the same black and white checkerboard tile as the rest of the place. About the tile, she said, “It’s fun, it’s vibrant, it keeps the kitchen a part of the whole and it cleans really well. Tile never wears out.”

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She has anchors in her husband – “He will never let me give up on an idea” – and daughter-in-law Stephanie, who waitresses there – “We mesh like no other.”

The most satisfying thing for Kenny is seeing customers savor their meal by tipping back a bowl to drink the last of their soup or sopping up sauce with a dinner roll. Best of all is when they “clean” their plates.

“That is like the best compliment ever. There is something about me that always has to be loved and I figured out through cooking no one will never bite the hand that feeds you.”

She’s enthused by fellow North O good eats destinations (Alpine Inn, Enzo’s, Florence Mill, Fat Shack BBQ, Omaha Rockets Kanteen). Area options took recent hits when fire totaled Mouth of the South and Fair Deal Cafe closed.

Kenny said northeast Omaha is still “underutilized and under-seen.” She envisions a trolley tour hitting historic venues, scenic overlooks and area food spots.

She feels North O still suffers a stigma that sees business drop after high profile shootings – even if incidents occur a mile or more away. She wants folks to know about gems like hers and there’s nothing to fear unless you’re counting calories and carbs.

Lunch: Tuesday-Friday, 11 a.m to 2 p.m.

Dinner: Tuesday-Saturday, 5 pm. to close.

Visit finickyfranks.com or call 402-451-5555.

Categories: Finicky Frank's, Food, Kesa Kenny, Omaha, Restaurants, Writing Tags: Chef-Owner, Dining, Eating, Finicky Frank's, Food, Kesa Kenny, Omaha, Omaha Restaurants, Restaurant

Filmmaker Alexander Payne and his father George remember the family’s Virginia Cafe

April 1, 2018 leoadambiga Leave a comment

Filmmaker Alexander Payne and his father George remember the family’s Virginia Cafe

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

It’s nearly 40 years since filmmaker Alexander Payne‘s family owned and operated the Virginia Cafe, a restaurant that for generations held a niche in the city’s downtown dining market. Recently, the filmmaker’s father, George Payne, shared some history and memories of the place and the family with The Reader.

George’s immigrant father, Nicholas (Papadopoulos) Payne, was founder and proprietor of the Virginia. Nick, as the patriarch was called, came to America in 1910, learning the confectionery trade from an uncle, John Birbilis, who helped Nick and brother Peter open the Palace of Sweets in Council Bluffs. In 1920 Nick, with cousin Fred Schizas and two other partners, bought the Calumet, a large, busy, around-the-clock food joint at 1413 Douglas Street that dated back to 1893. They remodeled it, renamed it the Virginia and kept it one of Omaha’s few 24-7 operations, George said. The other partners eventually dropped out.

According to George the Virginia served strictly American fare — steaks, chops, sandwiches, salads, a full breakfast line, daily lunch and dinner specials and traditional holiday favorites. The cafe housed its own bakery, had its own butcher and stocked a freezer with eight kinds of ice cream.

At its peak, he said, the popular cafe kept a payroll of 85 employees on three different shifts and served up to 3,000 diners a day.

George joined his father in the family business in the early ’50s. An Omaha Central High, Dartmouth and Northwestern University grad, George is a World War II vet who worked on the war production board in Washington D.C., where he met his wife, Peggy. He and Peggy settled in Omaha, where the youngest of their three sons, Alexander, fell in love with movies.

The future filmmaker was only 9 when a fire destroyed the Virginia but he has fond memories of the cafe.

“People loved that place,” Alexander Payne said by phone. “There was no key to the front door. They didn’t need one — they never closed. I used to like to go back to the kitchen and watch the chefs work. I remember all the wait staff and cashiers were so nice to me because, of course, I was the owner’s son. Our family ritual was dinner there every Thursday night.”

The Paynes ordered right off the menu.

While no Greek food was on the menu, the restaurant embodied Nick Payne’s classic immigrant made-good success story. Like many newcomers he went out of his way to be a super patriot. He sold millions of dollars worth of government Liberty Bonds during the Second World War, said George Payne, who added his father landed “quite a coup” when he inked a contract to feed all area military enlistees. From WWII through Vietnam, the Virginia served “last meals” to wide-eyed recruits en route to basic training.

“Those are the kinds of things that are a little unique from the Virginia,” the dapper George Payne said. There’s more. The cafe played a part in a tense chapter of Omaha history when a 1935 streetcar strike erupted in violence. George was 20 then and working part-time in the restaurant. Martial law was declared and more than 1,000 National Guard troops sent in to restore order. “That was serious stuff,” George recalled. The Virginia, located right on the streetcar line, was near the conflict between strikers and strikebreakers. The soldiers’ presence quelled the rioting. The cafe was commandeered into serving three meals a day to the troops.

“They came in and took over our business,” said George, who remembers the first guardsmen tromping in with their boots and packs and hanging their rifles on coat hooks attached to the fine mahogany wainscoting, which sent his father into a fit. From that point on the soldiers stacked their weapons safely out of harm’s way.

The Virginia was justly proud of its decor. Its glorious neon signage, plate glass windows, decorative tile-fronted exterior and rich mahogany interior with white table cloth covered tables and booths were straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. Distinctive murals of the American landscape and fine renderings of all 50 state seals adorned the lounge and dining room and the massive cross-section of a redwood tree was mounted in the party room.

“There wasn’t a restaurant in town that had that kind of atmosphere at all,” George said. “It was very well done. My dad had vision.”

This eclectic design reflected the diverse customers the Virginia catered to — professionals, office workers, politicos, housewives, clerks, stock boys, cabbies, crack-of-dawn delivery men, night owls and bar crawlers.

Up front, right at the door greeting customers, was Nick, trademark cigar in hand, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie and kibitzing with the line of people that formed at lunchtime. If anyone tired of the wait and started to leave George said Nick would coax them to stay with, “‘Don’t go. You know you’ll be back in five minutes. Where you going to go?’ He had a way with people.”

The cafe enjoyed a brisk trade before it went up in flames in 1969. Neither Nick nor George were there when the fire broke out on a Sunday night. They were awakened with the news and came down to see a burned out shell. After two full days of being hosed down, George said, the building collapsed in on itself. It was a total loss. George salvaged a few mementos and artifacts. There was talk of reopening at another spot but the family opted to walk away. The site of the Virginia was sold to the city, which built the W. Dale Clark Library near there.

“I really didn’t quite know what I was going to do…” George said. He wound up with the Sheraton Hotels group and then the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration — posts that took him around the world.

Nick Payne left a rich legacy that George has carried on. The elder Payne helped found the Omaha Restaurant Association, which his son presided over as president, as he did the Nebraska Restaurant Association. In 1956 American Restaurant Association Magazine inducted Nick into its Hall of Fame. The father was heavily involved with St. John Greek Orthodox Church. Nick Payne died in 1989. George Payne, now 92, has continued, with Peggy, his father’s support of the church.

The family retains close ties to Greece and has made periodic trips to their ancestral homeland. Alexander Payne one day intends to shoot a film there.

Categories: Alexander Payne, Entrepreneurial, Family, Food, Omaha, Writing Tags: Alexander Payne, George Payne, Virginia Cafe

Itzel Anahi Lopez: Young Latina on the rise

March 24, 2018 leoadambiga 2 comments

Itzel Anahi Lopez: Young Latina on the rise

Originally published in El Perico

Rising young Latina professional Itzel Anahi Lopez is making her mark.

This past spring the 20-something earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Bellevue University. Her studies included marketing and communication arts.

She wants to be a CEO, but she already successfully launched her family’s popular restaurant, Maria Bonita, 1921 Missouri Ave., a year ago in August.

According to Lopez the eatery attracts everyone from South Omaha residents to suburbanites to visitors from Mexico. Her mother Miriam is head chef and her father Miguel the jack-of-all-trades assistant. Both her sisters work there.

Lopez manages the busy catering operation that serves major community events, including the Latino Heritage Awards Banquet and Cumbre.

“What we offer is very unique, very personalized. We decorate our banquet tables. It’s all authentic, flavorful, colorful. We go above and beyond.”

The restaurant’s received high praise for its authentic, homestyle food, inspired by the cuisine from the family’s native state of Hidalgo, Mexico, and for its colorful, festive decor. The warm, floral greens, blues, purples, oranges and reds are on a mural adorning the west wall, on signs out front, and on the table tops inside. Miriam’s handmade arts and crafts hang on the walls. Homemade, hand-wrapped candies occupy a display case.

Even the menu and website (www.mariabonitaonline.com) continue the theme.

The distinctive look is a homage to the family’s homeland.

“Where we’re from. it’s just sun all year long,” said Lopez. “My grandparents owned a huge ranch, growing watermelons, papaya, you name it.”

She said her father would harvest the fruit and bring it to the local market, where the entrepreneurial family sold not only produce, but flowers, tacos and craft items.

“My grandmother used to garden. Lots of flowers. Very colorful. That was transmitted from my grandmother to my mother, our mother transmitted that to us. This is what we grew up with — colors, flowers, gardens. It was just all in our lives, So, when we opened this place, we wanted to transmit that in the color scheme. We admire our culture, we love our customs, we want our traditions to still be here.”

Wherever Lopez’s path leads, she said faith and family will be front and center in her life. Education, too. The Omaha South High graduate was the first in her family to attend college. A younger sister followed in her footsteps, just graduating from Creighton University. The sisters’ youngest sibling starts at Central High School in the fall.

Itzel was 14 when she came to America. After a year in ESL classes she was proficient enough in English to join regular classes at South, where she excelled academically and in extracurricular activities.

“I love South and South loves me. They have been very supportive of my restaurant and we support South any way we can.”

She earned South alumni scholarships and other financial support, opting for Bellevue University, where she said she “fell in love with the small class setting and personalized attention from teachers.” Gina Ponce was her mentor and advisor. Her biggest influence though is her mother:. “My mom’s definitely my role model. She’s done great things.”

She’s grateful her father’s dream of sending his girls to college is being fulfilled. “My dad’s dream came true, that’s quite nice,” she said. She’s humbled by how far her family’s come in America in only a decade.

“It’s very satisfying,” she said. “I’m very proud of my family.”

Studying for a master’s may be her next move on the path to “help minorities reach their goals. That’s my passion. That’s why I do all the things I do.” Her community service includes Cinco de Mayo coordination, South Omaha Arts Institute educational outreach and Community Learning Center site supervision (Castelar).

Turning Kids Away from Gangs and Toward Teams in South Omaha (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
Where Community, Neighborhood and Representative Democracy Meet (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
A South Omaha Renaissance (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
UNO/OLLAS Resident Expert on Cuban and Latino Matters Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)

Categories: Education, Entrepreneurial, Food, Itzel Anahi Lopez, Latino/Hispanic, South Omaha, Writing

Pot Liquor Love: Anthony Kueper Dedicated to Creating Memories at Dolce

October 23, 2017 leoadambiga Leave a comment

The Omaha fine dining scene features so many top chefs doing their versions of elevated American comfort that it’s not only hard keeping up but keeping them straight as well. One chef-owner doing his best to stand out from the pack is Anthony Kueper at Dolce in northwest Omaha. Here is my profile of him in the Fall 2017 issue of Food & Spirits Magazine.

Anthony Kueper Dedicated to Creating Memories at Dolce

In four-and-a-half years, Anthony Kueper has gone from sous chef to executive chef to chef-owner at fine dining Dolce in northwest Omaha.

Dolce is another of the city’s new crafted American food spots, but unlike the young, fresh-from-culinary-school phenoms running some of those other kitchens. Kueper is a 43 year-old veteran of the food wars.

From savoring fresh mussels in France at age six to taking cooking classes at 12 to preparing meals at home for his younger siblings and for friends, his life as a gastronome started early.

Born into a military family, he moved with his father’s U.S. Air Force assignments and everywhere he went he indulged in the indigenous food culture: street frites in Holland, Tex-Mex in the American southwest and paellas in the Philippines.

His father twice got posted to Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue and it was that second, more permanent posting that saw Kueper finish school here and get his first professional training.

“I worked atJulio’sandJones Street Brewery. It was good food but it was basic stuff.”

Then there was fortuitous stint atThe Bistroin theOld Market.

“Two chefs there influenced me a little bit and actually got me to go to culinary school –Gene Cammarota and Kenneth Hughes,” said Kueper.

Being exposed to their high end techniques, he said, “gave me the idea there was more to just cooking.”

Along the way he bumped into future notables, includingPaul Kulik.

Kueper left Omaha for culinary school in Kansas City, Missouri in the early ’90s, but as with any chef it’s what came after that most shaped his aesthetic.

“I got a piece of paper from culinary school – the rest of it was learned in kitchens and from the people I rubbed elbows with and surrounded myself with. It’s who you choose to follow that’s important.”

He was in his early 20s when he landed a chef gig at the Ritz Carlton on the Plaza in K.C.

“My first chef position at the Ritz Carlton hit me hard. I almost didn’t recover. I was very talented at an early age. I had a lot of hype put behind me. I had a lot of powerful people around me.”

Under the Ritz Carlton brand he worked in Atlanta for the Olympics and in San Francisco opening a new venue. Then he felt it was time to do something else.

“When I left the Ritz Carlton and went to Colorado to try and do something on my own, it was a big challenge. It wasn’t a real niche for fine dining, so I ended up doing a lot of bar and grills – fun food – and tried to throw some of my technique into that. There’s only so much you can do.”

Colorado is where he grew personally and professionally and where he met his wife, Daniela. They have three children together.

“Yeah, I met a girl from Germany and she put hooks in my heart.”

After she returned to Germany, he sold most of his belongings and joined her there.

“I left my restaurant in Aspen and lived in Hamburg for two years.”

He joked that if it gets out he’s really a romantic at heart, he won’t be taken seriously as “a tyrant in the kitchen.” The couple returned to the States to start a family. Colorado became their home base.

He worked for some real characters there, including an eccentric Frenchman. Then there was ‘The Dude’ at a place called Toscanini. That led to Kueper joining VIN 48 in Avon. He was there from the end of 2008 to the beginning of 2012

“It was a good experience.”

Meanwhile, Daniela missed the flavors of home.

Fortunately, when they lived in Hamburg he schooled himself on the local cuisine.

“So she wouldn’t be homesick I learned how to cook German food. I learned how to make schnitzel at a two star Michelin restaurant.”

After all his travels, Kueper finally came back to Omaha. The decision to come here was all about family. One of his boys had respiratory issues in the high altitude of Colorado and Kueper wanted to be closer to his parents. But settling here was not the ultimate plan.

“I planned on spending a little time in Omaha before finding something in Chicago, Minneapolis or Kansas City. We weren’t going to put our roots down in Omaha.”

Besides, it was a rough go the first couple years back.

“It was difficult because I’m an older chef with a pedigreed resume. I’m not a 27-year-old kid that ran half the kitchens in town.”

Star chefs likeTim NicholsonatThe Boiler Roomweren’t even old enough to drink when he left here. Things had definitely changed.

To keep his fine dining skills honed he worked atV. Mertzfor nine months, but making $11 an hour wasn’t cutting it to support a family. That gig though led to Dolce.

“The V. Mertz name alone kicked open doors for me with the resume I had.”

Dolce’s original owner,Gina Sterns, discovered him there and brought him on board in 2013. He admired how she took what began as a pastry shop to a fine dining establishment. Health issues forced her to take a step back. In 2014 Lincoln restauranteursJason Kuhr and Tyler Mohr purchased it.

“We helped elevate this space to what it is because, I mean, it’s in a strip mall. You don’t know what to expect from the outside. It does surprise a lot of people that they can find this little gem of a place there. We’ve done a lot to improve the ambience. Jason had the financial strength to do the things that would have taken me a lot longer to do in terms of remodeling, revisiting and reinvigorating the space. My food and what he did made what Dolce’s standing on now.”

Meanwhle, Kueper helped the Mohrs openOllie and Hobbes in Omaha but found himself overextended.

“I wasn’t happy. I was working way too much, even Sundays, not seeing my family. I was pulling down a lot of money, but it wasn’t worth it.”

That’s when he decided to focus his energies on one venue and worked out the purchase of Dolce. He actually tried before, when Sterns still owned it, but he and a partner didn’t have the capital.

He had tried the chef-owner hat on in Colorado.

“It was an exciting thing to open a new restaurant, but it turned out to be a bad partnership, so I kind of wash it from my memory.”

This time around he’s flying solo and loving being his own boss. He’s taking the fresh-local upmarket comfort food thing to the next level.

“The whole local food movement – trying to get all your products from within a 120-mile radius – is the greenest way to go about it. I don’t want to be buying my pigs from New York. This is where food comes from. This is a huge farming community.

“Where it matters, we do buy organic – in our meat, in our dairy. About 50 percent of our produce is organic.”

If Kueper’s learned anything, he said, it’s “that people have to love what you do and how you do it,” adding, “That at the end of the day is what matters.”

“The people that come here like our food, they like what we’re doing with the food, they like our message.”

He’s all about providing an experience that touches deep reservoirs.

“Food is a memory. The bread pudding we do is based off my dad’s mother’s recipe. My dad says it’s the closest rendition he’s ever had, it’s just different. The thing that’s different is she saved up all the scrap bread from the bread she used to make. I’m using a different style bread. My dad generally tears through his food, but when he hits that bread pudding, he slows down, so he can savor everything.”

True to its comfort concept, Dolce keeps things simple.

“If you look at our menu, they’re simple things that people can identify with.”

But with that fine dining twist.

“We serve kale with our steak and I swear to God we go through more kale. And we’re not doing the kale chips or salads or anything like that, we actually use it as a good vegetable on our proteins and people are like, ‘You made me eat kale – and it was wonderful.’

“For our roast chicken we start with good local chickens that we brine in-house. A seven herb emulsion goes on it – it’s oregano, chives, parsley, thyme, rosemary, spinach and we add some roasted garlic. A lot of people can’t put their finger on it because it’s such a blend. We make a tomato marmalade by cooking tomatoes down with a little bit of sherry vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper. We serve the dish with simple gnocchi and broccolini.”

Kueper draws inspiration from the past.

“I’m really a traditionalist when it comes to the history of things. I cook with historical background. I try to do it the way it was done years ago before there were microwaves and preservatives. We dry-age some of our own meats here. I’d like to do more, but we don’t have the facility space.”

The day this reporter visited, a Mangalista hybrid hog got delivered. It’s an old breed valued for its high fat content that keeps the meat succulent when roasted.

Many myths attend fine dining that Kueper’s eager to overturn.

“People think it’s unhealthy – it’s not. We don’t use tons of butter. We use herbs salt, acidity, just the right amount of balance in things.”

Flavors are carefully curated.

“We don’t try to overpower flavors. There might be one thing that’s going to knock your socks off but then everything else is going to be subdued.”

Today’s Omaha food scene is quite different than the one he left two decades ago.

“Omaha has come a long way. The cooks and the kitchens in Omaha are there. The diners still need to be educated. You constantly have people tell you, ‘You know what you should do?’ Like put a crab cake on a salad. It’s very classic, it’s very nice. I’m not saying that’s not a good idea, but it’s just not my expression. It’s not the type of food I look to put forward.

“I like to push people out of their comfort zone just a little. It’s all driven by technique. And if I can win you over on one of those things, I will build a customer for life. It’s kind of cool that way. I have people that don’t like duck who love the duck that we do. I’ve had people tell me they hate salmon but ours was the best salmon they ever had.”

His Margarita Mussels is another example.

“That’s one of my signature dishes. I think I’m bringing it back this fall. The tequila is added to a citrus broth. It hits all the right notes.”

He said its creation came about “from just being playful.”

Experimenting with ingredients is a lifelong process.

“You’re never done learning. I’ll work with an ingredient until I think I’ve figured it out. I will try stuff and really shoot from the hip.”

A couple years ago he taught himself to make ramen noodles from scratch. “They seem so simple and basic, but when done right,” he said, they’re oh so delicious.

More recently, he concocted a translucent omelet made from just egg yolks.

Baking is something he’s mastered in recent years.

“I wasn’t much of a baker, but now I’ve become quite an advanced baker. I’ve learned a lot teaching myself.

“It’s all time and temperature. It’s just basic chemistry and all the laws can be changed in different applications to make things happen. It’s just how you approach it and if you’re willing to take a chance. I have a lot of failures, but I have a lot of successes, too. I don’t serve my failures – I eat them.”

Two things Dolce’s known for – ‘Taste of the Moment’ and ‘Date Night’ – continue. Taste of the Moment specials change every day according to his mood and shopping finds. On a late August visit it was herb goat cheese ravioli with red pepper pasta.

“We roast off sweet red peppers, remove the skin, and blend them up with the eggs. It’s served with smoked chicken broth with Shiitake mushrooms, spinach and truffle oil.”

More than ever, he can follow inspirations as they occur.

“Now that I’m not working for somebody else, I can do it my way. I don’t have to ask somebody if it’s okay to do a ‘weird’ dish. I’m doing my artichoke creme brulee this fall. It’s something I learned how to make in Germany. It’s artichoke and parmesan in a creme brulee, so it’s savory. It’s served with asparagus wrapped in our house-made prosciutto.”

Freedom to do your own thing is nice, but not everyone’s going to like everything you do. His five-course tasting menu usually has one dish that challenges diners. When he first took over as chef at Dolce four years ago, a local reviewer openly questioned his execution on some dishes. He took exception with the digs though he acknowledges he wasn’t at his best then.

“That was a long time ago. At the time, I had a young crew. I was just getting established here under new ownership. I was trying to feel them out. I wasn’t cooking to my potential – not like what we’re doing now. It was good food, but I wasn’t putting it all out there. I was sparing some of myself inside.”

The vagaries and demands of his field can drain all but the heartiest souls.

“As a chef you can throw yourself out there and it’ll end up burning you up. It’s hard to keep stable mental health in this industry, it really is.”

With all his experience, he perhaps feels less compelled to prove himself and more inclined to bask in the glow of doing what he loves. It’s why on a recent vacation to his old stomping grounds in Colorado he made a point of catching up with buddies from VIN 48 so they could cook together again.

Before leaving for the trip, he said, “I haven’t seen them in five years. I’m doing it because I miss them. Two of the guys I trained are running the place.”

The trip served as a reminder to keep it simple, stupid.

“I’ve cooked some of the best meals with no running water. I was an avid backpacker and camper. I had tortillas, Fantastic Foods hummus (a dehydrated product) and fresh caught trout that I smoked over a live fire using a little orange juice and soy sauce.”

Food is what you make of it and Kueper’s all about giving diners a memorable experience in his warm-toned, intimately-scaled Dolce, where maybe you’ll meet your new best friends while dining.

“There are these two couples that come in to dine together at least once a month. They met each other here. Their love and passion was food and our restaurant brought them together, and I think that’s cool.”

How dolce (sweet) too.

Located at 12317 West Maple Road. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m, and for dinner Monday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to close.

For menu and reservations, vista http://www.dolceomaha.org, or call 402-964-2122.

Categories: Anthony Kueper, Culinary/Cuisine, Dolce, Food, Food & Spirits Magazine, Omaha, Omaha Restauants, Pot Liquor Love, Restaurants, Writing Tags: Anthony Kueper, Chef, Dolce, Fine Dining, Food, Food & Spirits Magazine, Omaha Chefs, Omaha Restaurants, Pot Liquor Love

A systems approach to addressing food insecurity in North Omaha

August 11, 2017 leoadambiga 3 comments

Nancy Williams with No More Empty Pots and other players are taking a systems approach to addressing food insecuity in North Omaha.

A systems approach to addressing food insecurity

Originally appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

Food insecurity in northeast Omaha is a question of access, education and poverty.

Nancy Williams has designed her nonprofit No More Empty Pots around “equitable access to local, fresh, affordable food” via a holistic approach. It offers the Community Market Basket CSA (community supported agriculture) as well as shared commercial kitchens, a training kitchen and classes. Its Food Hub in Florence is adding a business incubator, community cafe, kids kitchen and rooftop garden.

“We could just do one thing and satisfy a symptom, but we’re trying to address the root cause issue of poverty – of which hunger is a symptom. The food hub concept is a systems approach to not just deal with hunger but to get people trained and hired and to support startup businesses. So we have a multi-pronged approach to supporting local food and supporting people who need access to food and the people providing that food.

“Poverty is not just about food deserts and hunger. it’s about livable wages, adequate education, meaningful connections. It’s about being able to take advantage of the opportunities in front of you. It’s about people engaging. You see, it’s one thing to get people to food because they’re hungry or they don’t have access to it. It’s even something more if they have access to living wage jobs where they can then choose their food.”

Pots is based in North Omaha, she said, in recognition of its “rich cultural heritage of food and community” and concurrent “disparities in health, healthy food access, equity and economics.”

“So, we wanted to make a difference there first, then catalyze a ripple effect in urban, suburban and rural spaces. We believe in the reciprocity of local food.”

An effective food system involves a social contract of public-private players. In Omaha it includes United Way, Together, the Food Bank, Saving Grace Perishable Food Rescue, vendors, producers, schools, churches.

“It’s not a simple thing to talk about food access and deserts,” Williams said. “It’s a whole system of the way we produce food and get food to people, the way people consume it and how we value it. The different ways intersect. It takes all of it. But there needs to be some calibration, hole-plugging and shifting.

“We can get there, but it has to be done collaboratively so we’re not working in silos.”

On the access-education-employment side are community gardens and urban farms like those at City Sprouts, which also offers classes and internships. A farmers market is held there, too. Charles Drew Health Center and Florence Mill also host farmers markets.

Minne Lusa House is a neighborhood engagement-sustainability activator..

Some churches, including Shepherd of the Hills and New Life Presbyterian, provide free monthly community meals. New Life also provides food to participants in its youth summer enrichment program.

“There are food insecure kids that come,” pastor Dwight Williams said. “There is a lot more need than we are able to access.”

Community organizations serving seniors, youth and the homeless have a free meals component to meet food insecurity needs. The Omaha Public Schools provides free and reduced lunches to the majority of its students. Private institutions rely on donations to fill the gap. Local farmer Brian Vencil recently directed a $2,500 donation from the America’s Farmers Grow Communities program to help feed kids at Holy Name School.

Nancy Williams said everything has its place.

“Community gardens make food accessible, help people become more self-sufficient and engage. It’s about community building. You can’t have food without community. At farmers markets customers learn about where the food comes from, talk to growers about production practices and how to use products. It develops relationships. The more food customers get from farmers markets the more likely they’ll continue shopping there and expand their palette, which gives growers the opportunity to grow and sell more and put more money into the local economy.”

Pantries play a role, too.

“On average we have about 600 clients come through our food pantry weekly,” Heart Ministry Center executive director Eric Crawford said. “We’ve been seeing more clients come. We’re on pace to give away more than 3 million pounds of food this year.”

Heart case management services strive to get clients to self-sufficiency.

Project Hope director Lori Lindberg said its pantry serves mostly one-time, emergency needs recipients.

Church of the Resurrection is trying a mobile food pantry starting July 15.

Then there are the aquaponics systems Greg Fripp and his Whispering Roots team build, often with students in schools, that grow vegetables and fish.

“Aquaponics has its place in that next level of production,” Williams said. “There’s education, job training, entrepreneurship. There’s an opportunity to do institutional supply because you can scale it.”

The new Fair Deal Grocery was located on North 24th Street to fill fresh food scarcity in the area.

“Whenever you can put food where people are, it’s better than trying to find transportation or other means of getting people to it,” Williams said.

Fair Deal Village Marketplace manager Terri Sanders said it’s challenging getting people to try it.

“Sometimes it takes more education in some places than others,” Williams said. “If you’ve never been exposed to it, just because it’s plopped down in front of you doesn’t mean you’re going to go to it. You need somebody to help you make that transition. Sometimes you don’t even know you need it until somebody points out the benefits and then you take advantage of it.”

The Creatives Collective works with north side residents on education-advocacy through classes, events and activities, including culture fairs.

Jody-Ann Coore is community engagement coordinator for the Omaha Economic Development Cooperation, which sponsors the Collective.

“Education is a big gap for people,” Coore said. “Residents say it’s something the community needs. They often don’t know how to shop for healthy foods or don’t know some of the foods or don’t know how to cook them so they are tasty and appealing to the palette.”

Partnerships with local organizations help built food literacy. Still, getting residents’ buy-in takes time.

“It’s a neighborhood difficult to engage because they’re so used to being told what to do and not asked how to solve those issues. But we’ve seen progress. Resident committee members are taking part in the planning. We’re working on getting more residents involved. The beautiful thing is that each has personal networks they can tap into, so it’s pretty much radiating out.”

Greg Fripp’s sustainable practices dream is taking shape at Highlander Village on North 30th Street. The world headquarters for his Whispering Roots will include a greenhouse, education center and production center. Steelhead trout and vegetables will be grown there. He partners with farmers markets, Hy-Vee stores and others to get food to market. Roots teaches youth and adults how to build food systems and grow food.

“Highlander’s goal is about community development- engagement, and that’s exactly what Whispering Roots does. We say, ‘we grow, we feed, we educate.’ We need to draw more attention to North Omaha. it’s not that students in underserved communities can’t learn and don’t want to learn, they just need access to support, materials and resources. And then they can compete.”

Fripp said he’s learned “you have to meet people where they are and understand that community in order to deliver them a solution that actually works.”

“You provide solutions tailored for that specific community because every community’s different. Everybody needs food, but the way you implement these techniques, policies or systems needs to fit within that community.”

He sees more inclusivity happening.

“We’re getting more organizations that want to spend time with community and collaborating.”

“I am a fan of any model that works in a community with the community that produces what the community needs in the way the community needs and that values people in that process,” Nancy Williams said. “It’s not going to look the same everywhere and frankly most things shouldn’t look the way they’ve always looked because those things aren’t working.”

Fripp sees a need to bridge a disconnect between policymakers and “people implementing change on the ground.” “When that happens,” he said. “we’re going to see an acceleration of change in terms of how some of this stuff gets delivered. You still have some people who make decisions not really connected to the community.”

“We’ve made progress getting access to lots,” said Fripp, who also does community gardens and urban farms. “That was something that didn’t happen in the past. We put together a team to write new policies to allow people to use city lots to grow food.”

Similarly, he’s seen acceptance of aquaponics grow.

“We’re not as advanced as other cities, but we’re coming along. People are starting to see the power of what we do – from growing food to educating children to engaging public. They’re starting to see it really works
and at whatever scale you want to do it.”

Categories: Food, Food Insecurity/Hunger, Heart Ministry Center, Nancy Williams, No More Empty Pots, North Omaha, Omaha, Writing Tags: Food Desert, Food Insecurity, Hunger, Nancy Williams, No More Empty Pots, North Omaha, Omaha

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Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film

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Mini-Profile

leoadambiga

Author-journalist-blogger Leo Adam Biga resides in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He writes newspaper-magazine stories about people, their passions, and their magnificent obsessions. He's the author of the books "Crossing Bridges: A Priest's Uplifting Life Among the Downtrodden," "Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film" (a compilation of his journalism about the acclaimed filmmaker) "Open Wide" a biography of Mark Manhart. Biga co-edited "Memories of the Jewish Midwest: Mom and Pop Grocery Stores." His popular blog, Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories at leoadambiga.com, is an online gallery of his work. The blog feeds into his Facebook page, My Inside Stories, as well as his Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Tumblr, About.Me and other social media platform pages.