THE INSPIRING OMAHA STORY FOOD NETWORK MISSED
Guy Fieri missed it.
Not much gets past the restaurant mogul and celebrity chef who owns nearly 100 restaurants and has visited hundreds more while filming his beloved Food Network show, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. But when Fieri recently visited Omaha to feature six restaurants on DDD, one of the city’s most inspiring storylines flew right underneath his nose.
And he even talked to all the most important people involved.
Before working at Kitchen Table, Dan Whalen and Moses Moseley were complete unknowns in the Omaha restaurant community. Moseley was a backstage chef for touring musicians; Whalen was an unhappy furniture store employee perusing Craigslist ads. But Kitchen Table and its owners, Colin and Jessica Duggan, not only brought the two together, but took them under their wings and taught them the techniques and skills they’d eventually use to open their own restaurant, Dirty Birds, together.
And though Guy and his crew visited both Dirty Birds and Kitchen Table, neither segment made the connection between the two.
“They missed a big story, and that was us coming from (Kitchen Table),” Moseley said during a live episode of the Restaurant Hoppen podcast. “Two guys coming off the hot line that had no business owning a restaurant, running the Flatiron (building).
“That’s so Omaha, isn’t it? That’s very us and what we can achieve in this city. Our story should be replicated. There should be dudes on hot lines in restaurants right now saying, ‘Yo, I can do that.’ We’re still that city that can make that happen.”
For a restaurant to last more than a decade, it must do something very special to stand out. For Kitchen Table, which opened its doors in 2013, the secret sauce was its unwavering commitment to using fresh, local products and scratch making everything possible.
“Casual with a lot of work put behind it,” as Jessica Duggan described the approach.
You’ll find no Hellman’s mayonnaise in the sauces here. No Heinz ketchup on the tables. Kitchen Table makes all of its own condiments, bakes its own bread, and builds everything up from the base. That adherence to scratch cooking, as well as partnerships with more than 40 local farms, are what attracted Food Network to the restaurant.
“We take the time to be ready for you,” Colin Duggan said. “We’re focused on the ingredients and the quality of the food. “We’re constantly in that cycle of preparing and prepping and breaking down ingredients for, when you walk in the door, we give you something that you couldn’t necessarily get at a fast food joint, but we get it to you fast. We’ve spent the time to get ready for you, and here’s what we love.”
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re just trying to make the wheel from scratch.”
The couple, who live in the apartment above their restaurant, also place a high priority on mentoring their team. Their crew is generally small, sometimes only 5-6 deep, but that allows Jessica and Colin to spend more time propping up each individual.
In fact, it was Colin’s mentors that taught him the importance of scratch cooking, and now he’s looking to pay that forward.
“The Omaha neighborhood has given me my wings for sure,” he said. “I grew up in this town before it was a food scene, when there were like two chefs in town that people knew their names, and I was really fortunate enough to work for both of them.
“Coming out of high school, I worked for Gene Cammarota down at the Brass Grill and he really opened my mind to the idea that food could be more than just cooking the same thing over and over and over again.”
Then a couple of cooks who were pretty rough around the edges entered the Kitchen Table picture.
Whalen came first, starting as a dishwasher and prep cook in 2015. He worked some minor restaurant jobs in college, but had no real kitchen experience. But as he realized he didn’t have a long career at Nebraska Furniture Mart, he started working shifts at Kitchen Table and found a new passion.
“I was groomed by (Jess and Colin), “ Whalen said. “I’m trying to impress the people I’m working with, and that bond leads to greater things every day.”
Moseley went to Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Atlanta before catering backstage at different event venues around the city. He eventually became a tour chef, cooking for bands across the country. Trans Siberian Orchestra was one of them, and they often rehearsed in Omaha. During those seasons Moseley met the Duggans, who allowed him to work at Kitchen Table between tours until he decided Omaha was his home in 2016.
“I always had the experience of being backstage and being able to procure amazing products and present it in elegant fashion for big-time artists,” Moseley said. “But Colin and Jess and Kitchen Table taught me to make that stuff. Breads, cured meats, anything that I would say, ‘I have to go to this grocery store to buy this great product,’ instead, it was ‘Let’s make it.’ That’s what hooked me and kept me here.
“(Kitchen Table) took me back, but it’s taken me so much further. I’ve had to go back and work on my knife skills. I’ve had to go back to my training in culinary school. But it’s taken me so much further (in my career).”
Whalen and Moseley developed a strong bond and became roommates. They’d discuss recipe adjustments over beers, especially for their fried chicken, which became infamous as they served it at parties for friends. Colin helped them hone in the original recipe, which included the hack of pickling-brining the chicken.
The pair dreamed of starting their own concept one day, and when the owner of Dandelion Pop-Up, a downtown space that allowed chefs from all over the city to serve lunch on Fridays, approached Colin, he brought the opportunity to Whalen and Moseley: want to try your hand at your own concept?
They jumped at the chance. Colin introduced them to Dean Dvorak at Plum Creek Farmers, the region’s premier chicken provider, and Dirty Birds had its first official pop-up on Sept. 11, 2020. Serving chess pie and Froot Loop kettle chips alongside their famous fried chicken, Moseley and Whalen were swamped for hours.
Dirty Birds was a hit.
Just a few months and several pop-ups later, Dirty Birds moved into a bay in The Switch Beer & Food Hall, where they quickly became the top attraction. And when the food hall closed in 2022, Dirty Birds graduated again, this time to the historic Flatiron Building in downtown Omaha.
From pop-up to tenants in one of Omaha’s most recognizable buildings in just a few years… Dirty Birds’ rise is so meteoric it’s almost dizzying.
“It’s wild,” Whalen said. “We didn’t expect this at all. We’re grateful for everything and all the response we’ve gotten from everyone.”
And the duo knows it wouldn’t have been possible without Kitchen Table. Early on, the Dirty Birds crew didn’t have enough space inside The Switch, so Whalen would break down chickens at Kitchen Table on Sundays and Monday nights when it was closed. The Duggans were also extremely helpful in helping the Dirty Birds duo understand all the non-cooking parts of the business: payroll, insurances, hiring, and other behind-the-scenes red tape.
“You just want to make mom and dad proud,” Whalen said. “It’s really cool that they can be a part of this journey with us.”
The Kitchen Table you’ll visit today isn’t the same one that Whalen and Moseley worked at years ago. Gone is the restaurant’s dinner service, which has been replaced by the Shopette, a small in-store bodega of local products and Kitchen Table biscuits, jams, and pizza crusts.
Dirty Birds has changed, too. Though fried chicken is still the star, the restaurant now commonly offers handmade pasta specials and serves brunch on Sundays. Both eateries continue to evolve as the industry figures out what most resonates with diners in a post-COVID world.
But the strict commitment to thrilling guests with scratch cooking will never change, and that’s what attracted the Food Network to these kitchens.
Guy may have missed the story within the story, but one key fact didn’t elude him: both Dirty Birds and Kitchen Table serve fantastic food.
“Anybody that likes chicken and waffles is going to lose their mind,” Fieri muttered between bites of Dirty Birds’ Chicken & Pancakes, a dish that pairs sweet tea-brined chicken tenders with fluffy pancakes loaded with brie and blackberries.
And after multiple bites of The Whole Bird, Kitchen Table’s signature sandwich: “Chef, the only thing I don’t like about the sandwich is absolutely nothing.”
But it was what he said as he summed up his Kitchen Table experience that got him oh-so-close to discovering the connection between the restaurants.
“It’s very cerebral,” he said. “What seems simple is really a meticulously thought-out, maybe genius thing.”
That’s the throughline that makes these restaurants special. Their menus consist of meatloaf sandwiches, deviled eggs, and fried chicken, but all crafted with meticulous detail, an adherence to using local products whenever possible, and the desire to make everything they can in house.
Fieri, a man who’s visited more restaurants than entire cities of people combined, could taste the difference. But Dirty Birds and Kitchen Table didn’t get on the show by accident. The same dishes they served to a Food Network star are available to anyone who walks in their doors, and that’s just the way they always intended it to be.
It’s the ethos that the Duggans built their business on, and one they’re proud to see Dirty Birds keep carrying.
“That’s the business. That’s how it works,” Colin Duggan said. “I have mentors that I worked for for years that are incredibly proud of me for what I’ve accomplished, and it’s the same thing. We hired Dan 8 years ago as a dishwasher. He was just a goofy kid working at Nebraska Furniture Mart and he wanted to do something different and then he fell in love with food. We’re incredibly proud of those guys, and they’re great friends. We’re able to lean on each other a little bit here and there when we need to.”
And now Whalen and Moseley hope their story inspires the next generation of hopeful restaurateurs.
“We had a chance to experience a lot of places that we fell in love with in the city: the Nite Owls of the world, the Kitchen Tables, all these places, then take that and become our own, “ Moseley said.
“It’s a story I think only Omaha can produce at this point: guys on the hot line, wanted to open a restaurant, go for it, do it, make it happen.”
***All quotes comes from appearances on the Restaurant Hoppen podcast; Guy Fieri quotes are from episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.