DANDELION POP-UP
Hoppen Hierarchy:★★★★
District: Downtown Omaha
Pop-Up Hosting Different Chefs and Cuisines Each Week
Perfect For: Lunch; Casual Dining; Takeout
Standout Dishes: Varies by week
One of the most important pieces of the Omaha food scene isn’t a restaurant.
It operates out of a building smaller than the snack shack you’ll find behind a little league baseball field.
It doesn’t have a head chef or a standing menu.
And it’s only open for three hours each week.
Yet there’s something unique and fun going on at Dandelion Pop-Up, as evidenced by the counter’s line that occasionally extends as long as a block. It may not be a typical, but it’s an essential way to understand who and what matters in Omaha food.
Each Friday from 11 AM-2PM (spring-fall), a different Omaha chef takes over the tiny space on the corner of 14th and Howard in downtown Omaha. The setting may be humble, but it attracts some of the heaviest hitters in Omaha.
One week it might be Jess and Paul Urban, the friendly masterminds behind Block 16. Next week, the headliner could be Jennifer Coco of j coco fame. Or you could be blessed by the presence of Paul Kulik (Le Bouillon; Via Farina), Sagar Gurung (Kathmandu Momo Station), or Dario Schicke (Dario’s Brasserie; Avoli Osteria).
Regardless of who’s manning Dandelion on a given week, you can feel secure in the knowledge that it’s going to be delicious.
The beauty is chefs are given free reign to let their creative minds try new things that might not be available in their restaurants. David Losole (Virtuoso Pizzeria) makes the best Italian beef sandwich you’ll find within a 500-mile radius, but his pizza joint doesn’t serve fries. That can change at Dandelion, where he topped crispy crinkle-cut fries with the beef shavings, giardiniera, and cheese sauce that make his Italian beef sandwich such a knockout (pictured in the header of this post).
Or Glenn Wheeler, head chef of Spencer’s for Steaks & Chops, can sling out Italian classics like the Polish Kilbasa and Steak Supreme Sandwich he grew to love while living in Chicago.
Tim Maides, the talented chef at Omaha County Club, isn’t able to serve his take on Mexican cuisine at his day job. But at Dandelion? Bring on the big-as-your-head tortas and decadent Elote Fritters. It’s all fair game.
Dandelion takes Omaha’s greatest culinary minds and provides them a space to try new ideas and concepts they never could in their own kitchens. It’s the ultimate expression of creativity, and a tremendous way to showcase the talent that exists in the city.
And while the restaurant provides an opportunity for established chefs to stretch their creative muscles, it also creates a space for newcomers to announce their arrival. Take, for example, chef Ismara Gonzalez of Isla Del Mar, a fairly new seafood/Mexican restaurant in South Omaha. I’d not yet had the chance to visit Isla, but after feasting on Ismara’s incredible Birria Quesatacos and Ceviche de Camaron (shrimp ceviche tostada), I visited the restaurant the very next day. The Dandelion experience opens patrons’ eyes to restaurants they may not have previously considered.
Dandelion also removes the physical walls that separate the chefs and diners in a normal restaurant. You can watch these masters create your food right in front of you and interact with them. Dandelion humanizes restaurants by helping diners understand the people who put the food on their plate.
Perhaps Dandelion’s most important contribution to Omaha, however, is it serves as a gathering space for the community. Whatever happens during the week, there’s comfort in knowing that there’s a delicious lunch downtown every week, where the food will be different and you’ll meet new people. I can’t tell you how many times at Dandelion I’ve bumped into old acquaintances or met for the first time fellow foodies that I’d interacted with on social media.
There are large groups of people at a normal restaurant, but everyone is sitting at different table interacting with just a few others. At Dandelion, however, there’s a communal feel, especially because everyone is savoring the same 4-5 dishes.
These interactions were important before COVID-19, and are even more so now. With so many people working from home and limiting contact with others, isolation can set in.
Dandelion provides a safe place to gather, if only for a short time, and in a sense “share” a meal with others. At the very least, people are out of their homes and get time with other humans, which helps lift the weight of isolation.
In a city with a rich food scene and so many iconic restaurants, it can be hard to stand out. But Dandelion does so by introducing a unique concept that continues to evolve and grow. It excels in breaking down barriers: between chef and diner; between chef and the food they like to cook; and most importantly, between each other.