OmahaNebraska.com’s Interview with Ryan Barry of Willie Dogs and Willie’s Ice Cream
How did you come up with the idea of Willie Dogs?
A few years ago, I originally thought I would just kind of get a hotdog cart to make some extra money and have a lot of fun. But soon, I realized there was a gap in the market as far as a nice local made hot dog.
Of course, New York’s got theirs. Chicago’s got theirs. So, my intent at that point was to create Omaha’s hot dog while doing everything as locally as possible. So, we do it from scratch by hand. These are all natural casing cold smoked hot dogs.
What were the ideas or flavors running around your head that were inspired Omaha?
Omaha to me is always kind of been the home of beef and baseball, right? You know, we’re the home of you know, stockyards and a lot of a lot of baseball, Men’s College World Series and other things. And it kind of always frustrated me that like we didn’t have something that kind of represented Omaha during those times or that took those things into consideration. So, for me a lot of those flavors were of course a natural casing that was the must have there’s something about that snap that is just like, it just it just hearkens back to that old-fashioned-Old World style of of making sausages and things of that nature.
I grew up obviously with the Stoysich families around and other butcher shops. My wife’s family was a butcher shop family as well, the Bickels family. So, we have this idea of this flavor. We’ve had these sausages, these hot dogs, we’ve made it home. It was really about taking that that flavor profile and kind of sharing it with the rest of the city.
You have a lot of different flavors from time to time. What are your favorites? The different specials that you have…
Yeah, so I think my favorite is always goes back to the Willie Dog itself like that’s, you know, it’s like your firstborn.
That’s my favorite. I haven’t tried all of them yet…There’s just something about the Willie Dog that I just have to have.
Same. Same. Yeah, I think you know, the Willie Dog. I really do think the scope for the sausage is probably the greatest sausage you have ever had. It’s just really good. It’s a quarter pound sausage. It’s natural casing. It goes to a hickory snow process. So, it’s a little bit more smoky flavor. A little bit more cured. A little bit coarser grind. A little bit more fat to it. So, it’s just a tasty sausage.
Man, I think. I think if I had to pick a favorite, it would be less a different sausage. It would be more about some of the toppings we’ve done. I think the opening weekend topping was really awesome. That was a roasted garlic goat cheese with the bacon that went over really, really well. Anytime we do anything with goat cheese, I’m usually a fan of it.
I like goat cheese too.
Yeah, most recently we did a whipped goat cheese with a balsamic onion jam and that was pretty darn tasty.
Of course, Willie Way, not just because it’s named after me but because it is my favorite.
Where does the name Willie come from?
It’s definitely one of the, you know, probably more prominent questions that we get. My middle name is William. My son’s middle name is William were named after William Barry that originally came from Ireland. And so that’s kind of where Willie started to come from. And then we also kind of like to joke in our family that Willie Nelson is our spirit animal. So that’s why we spelled it the way that we do.
I was suspecting it might be a middle name or something..
I’m Ryan William Barry. My son is Carter William Berry and our relative emigrated from Ireland, United States, William Barry.
We have always a couple of different types of sausages. There’s always the smoked sausage and then always the Willie Dog and we have some other ones that filter in how. We also do pretzels. We will look at the different ways so I do a kind of classic style which is just buttered with salt and cheese, which we have a new cheese we’re using now that we are making like little ale and beer cheese ale which I really dig and so hopefully everybody else is. You can also do cinnamon roll pretzels, so we’ll coat it with butter tossing cinnamon and sugar and then it gets topped with our house made cream cheese frosting. Or a salted caramel pretzel where it starts out the same way as the originals with the new gets a twist with our new caramel sauce.
One of the surprises I had when I was trying to different things at your restaurant was your baked beans. Those were so good and I was not expecting that.
Yeah, so the baked beans was normally something that on the hotdog carts or food trucks that we would only view during the College World Series because we were in one spot for a longer period of time as opposed to a couple of hours like like a normal food truck event. And so, we did it every year at the College World Series. There’s people that come from other states, other cities that will come just to get the beans and the dog from us during the CWS and when came to Inner Rail, obviously we wanted to offer some other side options and some other things that weren’t always you know, hotdog related, and so that we decided to bring those smoked peach baked beans here. So, take peach pie filling and smoke that. Take our big beans and they smoke those and then we marry it all together and then smoke it again.
Those were just so good.
Yeah, they’re pretty, pretty darn tasty. Some people look and they see smoke peach baked beans and I go “peach”? I am like, just don’t knock it till you try it. I’ll give you a free sample, if it’ll help change your mind.
How did you come to Inner Rail? Please tell us a little bit about it?
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. So, Inner Rail kind of came after us. There is an individual that works for Inner Rail. His name is Wes. We were both part of Culinary Team Nebraska which is a competition culinary team. It’s very high level like fine dining, very highly scrutinized competition and working for Inner Rail, someone in Inner Rail had said that they wanted to bring a hot dog in a new concept. And Wes says,” Hey, I you know I’m on a competition team with the guy that makes his own hot dogs. You should reach out to him,” which they did. We had a nice meeting here at Inner Rail and within about five minutes, it became pretty clear to everybody sitting at the table that maybe this would just be a good fit for Willie Dogs. Already we had the branding. We already kind of had the messaging. We already have the dog and the sausage and some of the other things that we already go into the toppings. And so yeah, they came after us and gave us an offer to come in here. And it’s been pretty awesome so far to the point where we’re expanding into another stall here with another company.
Please tell us about that.
So yeah, absolutely. So, one of the things that I’ve always kind of prided myself on with Willie Dogs is that it really kind of pulls on some of those nostalgia strings. Those nostalgia heartstrings.
There’s something about that old world style that natural casing, that snap. That just is not around anymore. A lot of our older clientele go again now that that’s the hot dog I remember from when I was younger.
Taking some of the that same marketing and that same kind of brand identity and applying it to a different option, like a dessert option is how we’ve landed on Willie’s Ice Cream is to really hearken back to some of our kind of good old fashioned ice cream shops. The soda fountain type shop, you know that scooped ice cream, malts, shakes, sundaes, and banana splits. Really not trying to reinvent the wheel but what we’re doing and what’s on the menu, we’re just trying to do very, very well.
And then it’s also going to be a fudge shop so we’re going to be making homemade fudge here at the Inner Rail.
Will you be having an Omaha spin?
An Omaha spin within the ice cream shop? Yes. So, there’s a lot of desserts a lot of things that are very famous around here, but butter brickle ice cream was actually invented here in Nebraska in Omaha. And so taking some of the notes from some of the more classic dishes, you know, and some of the famous splits, trying to kind of recreate an era.
We are trying to get as local as we can with all of our ingredients. So, the milk that we use is local. The ice cream that we’re using comes as local we can get it. It’s only a couple hours away. And so, we’re trying to tie it in as close as we can.
In some of the menu ideas that we have down the road for some of the specialty sundaes and stuff, we’re really trying to tie into the to the old Aksarben area and hearken back to some of those horse racing times.
When will Willie’s Ice Cream be open?
Shooting for February 2.
Check out Willie’s Ice Cream at Inner Rail and visit back here for more stories.
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https://www.williedogs.com
Inner Rail Food Hall
1911 S. 67th St
Omaha, NE 68106
