KITCHEN TABLE

Hoppen Hierarchy:★★★★

Casual Cafe with Inventive Sandwiches and Vegetarian Dishes

Perfect For: Baked Goods; Breakfast/Brunch; Lunch; Casual Dining; Vegan Options

Standout Dishes: Chili Crisp Egg Biscuit Sandwich; BLT; The Whole Bird; Gougeres

Few food items are as simple as the humble BLT. With so little filler, the quality of each ingredient in a great BLT is critical. If just one is lacking, it can bring down the whole sandwich.

That’s why the BLT is the perfect encapsulation of what makes Kitchen Table a great restaurant.

This downtown delight prides itself on creating or locally sourcing everything in its kitchen. So when you order the BLT, you’re getting:

Thick-cut bacon that’s cured in-house for 14 days
Homemade levain bread
A creamy house aioli
Crisp greens

But the heirloom tomatoes are the kicker. These plump, juicy slices bring the sandwich to life, but Kitchen Table will only use them when they’re at peak ripeness—which is about 6 weeks out of the year. Kitchen Table is so unwilling to sacrifice quality that this potential best seller only sees the menu when the tomatoes are at their very best.

That dedication and care shows up in every dish at Kitchen Table, and that’s why it’s one of Omaha’s most endearing restaurants.

Located in a cozy space in Downtown Omaha, Kitchen Table is an ideal casual eatery. The decor is funky, modern, and warm. It’s a long restaurant with many small tables that can be pushed together for larger groups. Orders are placed at the counter and delivered within minutes.

Though there are a few staples on the menu, the options constantly evolve based on what products are in season and what talented owners Colin and Jessica Duggan want to create. The everyday menu mostly consists of breakfast dishes, salads, and creative takes on classic sandwiches (such as the Pulled Pork Reuben or Buffalo Tofuwich), though the Kitchen Table also has specials such as lasagna, soups, and Kitchen Table’s take on a Nebraska classic (more on that soon).

The menu’s variety comes from the creativity of its chefs/owners. Jessica Duggan is a vegetarian who wanted a place that served delicious veggie meals beyond another bland salad. Colin needed protein on the menu. The result is a creative mix that fits both lifestyles.

Kitchen Table doesn’t do premade. The restaurant crafts its ketchup and mustard, bakes its bread, mixes its hot sauces, forms its burger patties… if you order it, someone at Kitchen Table has made it themselves.

Unless, of course, it came from one of the 40+ local farms and producers Kitchen Table works with.

The restaurant is especially adept at serving breakfast, in large part because of Colin’s scrambled egg mastery. He stirs the eggs constantly in a pan with oil and water until they have a heavy cream consistency. They’re then finished in the oven, where they fluff up into a buttery, luscious product.

Those eggs, along with a bacon and a copious amount of American cheese, make the traditional Egg & Cheese Sandwich a hit. But Colin takes things to another level with the Chili Crisp Egg Biscuit Sandwich, which has my money for the best breakfast sandwich in Omaha. Those picturesque eggs are infused with soy sauce and scallions to give them a salty Asian flair. Combined with a jam-y spread of spicy chili crunch and creamy, herbaceous green goddess dressing inside a homemade buttermilk biscuit, this sandwich is an umami bomb that will change the way you look at breakfast. It’s as if Chinese takeout and breakfast sandwiches had a baby.

It’s not all about breakfast at Kitchen Table, however. Among the most popular items it The Whole Bird, a sandwich that cleverly takes apart a chicken and rebuilds it in a new form.

There’s a playfulness to this sandwich that makes you appreciate it all the more. The base is a marinated chicken breast, which is topped with confit leg and thigh salad, fried chicken skin, and a fried egg. Chicken is presented in four different ways, yet each preparation adds something different: there’s juiciness from the breast, fat from the confit salad, texture from the skin, and a brilliant, rich creaminess from the yolk.

It’s emblematic of what makes KT stand out: when you order a chicken sandwich, you’re going to get something familiar, but also very different than anything you’ve had before.

Another of KT’s specialities is the Aksarben, the restaurant’s take on a bierock. Fresh-baked bread is stuffed with tangy sauerkraut and lightly-seasoned beef to create a warm, tender pocket of flavor. No offense to Nebraska’s flagship fast food restaurant (which I adore), but an Aksarben is what a Runza wants to be when it grows up.

The entrees are large enough, but KT has you covered if you need some shared plates to fill up. The Deviled Eggs, amped up with some dill and smoked paprika, are tremendous. No visit should be complete without an order of Gougeres, a baked savory choux pastry mixed with cheese. The dough is so light and airy, the the flavor of white infuses every bite. It’s an incredibly odd but pleasurable experience: you get the wonderful doughiness of bread, but it tastes like like pure cheese. The Gougeres are wonderful in all the right ways.

Visit during the summer and you’ll get to experience the rich bounty of summer veggies and fruits from local farms. The Elote starts with a healthy ear of corn, grilled so each kernel offers its full pop of sweetness. A creamy aioli is slathered on top before the cob is dusted in zesty smoked jalapeno salt. And the Melon takes a perfectly tender, ripe cantelope, drizzles it with just the right amount of honey, and adds some salt and pepper to balance the sweetness.

For all the greatness Kitchen Table has to offer, it’s Colin and Jessica that make it shine. The chefs are extremely friendly and hard-working. They’re not only behind the counter most days, but they venture out and interact with customers, making sure the meal is excellent.

Kitchen Table doesn’t make fancy food. It takes simple dishes and makes them great by refusing to compromise at any step of the process. That extra effort is prevalent in any bite… and if you don’t believe me, just get the BLT. You’ll never look at the sandwich the same way again.