OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Kari Kawa Harding of Johnny’s Cafe
Omaha, Nebraska.com here with …
Please tell me a little bit about what you did before you became owner and your earlier days here.
Yes. My grandfather started the restaurant in 1922, and then my father and my Uncle Jack took it over in the early ’60s.
So I did grow up being here. Not as much as people think I was, but I do remember driving up to the back and hearing all the mooing, and flies would be everywhere. It smelled awful, but they always said it was the smell of money. I do remember all of that.
I went to a hotel and restaurant management school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Then I worked for Marriott Corporation in California for a couple years, and then I decided to come back and work for the family. My sister Sally also came back, so we both have taken it over now. My uncle has passed away and my father is semi-retired, so Sally and I are both running it now.
The restaurant industry is really hard, and there was a whole lot that happened with COVID. Tell me how you kept going and things you learned that might be good advice to other people.
To be honest, COVID was very, very difficult. We had never seen anything like it. We had gone through recessions. Closing of the interstate. People always wanting to go to the new place. But this was something we’d never seen. We’d never had the government tell us, “You have to close.”
And you still have bills to pay. This is a very big building, so you still have power, water, everything that you just have to keep paying.
We just really put our heads down. And as soon as we were able to open, we did three weeks later. While we were closed, we did “Easter to go” for people and stuff like that, so we did a couple of things here and there. But on the other side of it, we’re known for steaks and prime rib, and that isn’t really what people think of “to go.” And I think also at the time people were so nervous that they didn’t want to pay for high-priced items compared to places that were doing pizza and fast food.
We were very fortunate in that we did receive federal grants that helped us stay open, even though it was a long time coming. We really worked hard and got lean and mean because it was very slow for a very long time, and I think it was a mixture of people being nervous and everything else that was going on.
We did try to think outside the box. We would do huge holiday meals to go for people, like packages for 4, 8, or 12.
We did TV dinners on Friday nights that were chop steak with gravy or chicken fried chicken with chicken gravy which was a big seller.
I think it taught us a lot about how to get lean and mean to sustain, because it took quite a while until things got back to normal. And I think we kind of felt at the time that we’d never seen anything like that, so we thought once we opened, people would be dying to go out. People were very scared, but I think it helped us that we’re a well-known name. We have high ceilings here, and we really spread out tables. We did everything we could to make people feel comfortable. We’re both happy and proud that we survived it.
We’re glad you’re still here. You’re one of my favorite restaurants.
Wonderful.
I enjoy coming here. The staff is great, the food is great, and I love all the history.
It is fun to see.
Tell me a little bit about your grandpa and how he started it.
He was an immigrant from Poland, so really our last name is Kawalowski. And when he came over, he was around 12 years old. He came with an aunt, and he was just happy to be here. They shortened his last name to Kawa. When I was growing up, people used to think I was Japanese or something, but I was like, “No, I’m from Nebraska.”
My grandfather came to Omaha and he worked a little. During World War I he had a job in a kitchen. Then when he came back to Omaha, he bought a little bar. The name on the bar was “Johnny’s,” and my grandfather’s name was Frank Kawa. The story goes that he didn’t have enough money to change the paint on the building. We’re not even talking neon, we’re talking paint. So he would answer to the name of Johnny and he would sign things “Frank Johnny Kawa.”
It was just a little bar with eight tables. The old pictures show people who have guns on them, and oil lamps are on the walls. It was in South Omaha, which was kind of the Wild West in the ’20s. We didn’t find out until much later that he was a beer runner. He was well known and making a lot of money, and they were after him. Once Prohibition was over, I think he decided to go legit. He decided to really seriously get into food and drink.
As the story goes, Johnny’s just grew. As the stockyards grew, there were so many people around all the time. They were open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And they just kept adding on rooms every which way they could.
They talk about in the ’50s when there was sawdust on the floors and they’d have to hose it out every night because of everything on everyone’s boots. They were open from 6 am to 1 am every day, and they just grew with the stockyards.
My grandfather died in the early ’60s. I never met him, and my mother never met him either. And then my uncle and my father took over the restaurant. And then Sally and I were proud to be part of the next generation, and we took over in the late ’90s.
So this started out as a bar and then it came to this location?
It’s always been on this corner of 27th and L. Probably the really oldest part of it is the corner of 27th and L. There used to be a door right there. If you walked out now you would probably get hit by the cars going by.
I don’t even really know the old walls or anything. I mean, they’ve really changed it around. In the ’70s they changed it to what it is now. And they really did change it a lot. It used to be a lot of little dining rooms and all this stuff. The original part, though, would be the corner of 27th and L, and they just added on.
What’s your capacity here?
For the dining room, full capacity would be 175. The party rooms are 125. And the bar is about 75.
So you can hold anything from date night or just coming here to enjoy the food like I do, to really larger events.
Yes, yes, we do parties. We can do private parties up to 120. We have closed down for private weddings that are over 300. But we also have the booths which everyone loves, so it’s great for date night. And we have the old-school bar, which a lot of people love. They just like to go in there and have a cocktail and pretend they’re in the past.
Right now I’m looking at this beautiful wine area with the stained glass. Could you tell me a little bit about it and the wine that you offer?
This was built in 1971 when they redid the whole restaurant. They really wanted the restaurant to have what they called a “handsome feel” with the red walls, the dark wood, the red leatherback chairs, the wine cellar. They were very much into promoting wine, because they felt it was a good match with beef and prime rib. So they had it built. I believe the person who did the stained glass was from Omaha. They did all the J’s and the grapes. We have wines in there. Our wines range anywhere from $20 to… I think we go up to $180 bottles, but most of it is affordable. We’re here to sell wine and to match. And we want your dinner to be a wonderful experience.
And so we don’t age wine. That’s not our goal. Our goal is to match it with our food. But we do sell wines by the bottle, in the glass, at lunch and dinner.
We do wine tastings twice a month, which are $30 a person. We have different wine people that come in and you taste five wines. Then we do hot and cold appetizers with it.
What are some of your favorite foods here and some of the most popular dishes?
I think what got us on the map definitely was our steak and prime rib. Everything is corn-fed beef from the Midwest. We age and hand cut it all here, so we have our own butchers. All of our soups, dressings, gravies, they’re all homemade from scratch, which I think tastes much better. AndI think that puts us on the map because I don’t think a lot of people still do that.
But the menu is well rounded. There are other things. If you don’t want beef, there is seafood, fish, chicken items.
We do a lot of old-school specials at lunch, which we’re kind of known for because a lot of people don’t do that.
We have oxtails on Tuesday. Thursday they do actual roast turkey and dressing, where they’re actually cooking whole turkeys.
Every Thursday?
Every Thursday at lunch.
Wow.
Turkey and dressing. And then I think my favorite is the tenderloins. I do like petite filet or chateaubriand. I think the prime rib is always wonderful. We slow roast it.
We do fresh salmon. We do a sea bass at night with a lemon piccata sauce, which is wonderful.
And we also do old-school four-piece fried chicken, which you’d be surprised how much we sell, because people like that. We also do chicken that is more heart healthy, like a ginger chicken, which is a chicken breast marinated in ginger and soy sauce and grilled.
So we try to have a little bit for everyone.
And then also our desserts are homemade, too. I forgot to say that.
Oh, wow. Tell me a little about your desserts.
We have a pretty large dessert menu. We have creme brulee. We have bread pudding served warm with a Jack Daniel cream sauce.
We have a warm apple crisp served with a scoop of ice cream.
We have apple, cherry, and pecan pie at all times. We also have plain cheesecake or Oreo cheesecake. So there’s quite an array of desserts, and they’re all homemade.
And then we don’t always have it, but once in a while he does make homemade carrot cake, which people go crazy for.
Any favorite memory stories from when you were little or now?
I do always remember that when I was little, like, we would drive up, and being girls, I think we would always tell our dad, “Oh, my gosh, it smells terrible. And all these cows are mooing, and there’s flies everywhere.” And he would always tell us it was a smell of money, which I think is what every cowboy and rancher in Nebraska would say.
I do remember in the ’80s, the stockyards were still open, but barely, and a cow got loose and was running down L Street. No one could decide exactly what to do. So the police are out there, the Humane Society is out there.
The cow started coming toward Johnny’s, and they were afraid it was going to hit the big front doors, and they didn’t want it to ruin anything. The police and the Humane Society couldn’t decide what to do. So my uncle took serving trays and threw them as Frisbees to the cow to get it away from Johnny’s. The story actually made USA Today.
Oh, wow. I was thinking, this is a bad direction for the cow to run.
It is. It is. It might be served.
How did the stockyards change everything when they went away?
The amount of people in this neighborhood had slowly been dwindling for quite a while after they decided to get rid of the stockyards.
They really thought seriously about moving Johnny’s, like, maybe out west. And I think they just decided it was a historical place and they should stay where they are.
We’ve seen a lot of transitioning in south Omaha, both bad and good, but we’re proud to always be, like, one of the footholds that was always here. So that was very hard.
The stock yards were dwindling, and by the time they closed, they had been gone for quite a few years because there was hardly anything going on there, and there were not many people going through. And right around the same time, the Interstate was closed for a couple years as they redid everything around us.
So it was a hard time in that you really had to know Omaha, how to get into here, because you had to come the back way. This was before GPS and before you could talk to your phone about how to get here. After they finished the Interstate, they did make us a cement island. People are very scared to take the frontage road because they’re afraid they’re getting on the interstate. We used to spend so much time on the phone telling people how to get in here.
That was my concern the first time I came here, and the second and the third time, and then I got used to it.
We would be on the phone all the time telling people, “You’re not gonna get on the Interstate. It’ll take you in.” So that did make it easier when there was GPS and people understood that. But still to this day, on big weekends like Berkshire when there’s a lot of people out of town, there’s people who ask, “How do I get in there?”
But you don’t really have a choice when you’re dealing with Nebraska roads: they do what they want to do.
Today, GPS took me because I was in a different location. It was like a historical journey almost to get here. And it’s a real testimony to your resilience and being able to pivot but still keep the core value and the core wonderfulness of what’s Johnny’s.
South Omaha has always been where the immigrants go. And really, the packing plant jobs pay great money, so there’s always been a melting pot around us. It has changed over the years but it works to our benefit, too, because those are people that want to work and want a job.
Is there a question you wish I would have asked that I didn’t or something people don’t know about Johnny’s that you’d like them to know?
I don’t think a lot of people realize that we’re open for lunches Tuesday through Friday. Our lunches range from $11 to $24, but you can get a soup, a meal, a roll, a potato for $15, and it’s cooked to order. It’s homemade. That’s almost the same price as fast food. I don’t think people realize that and that we do have more than just beef at lunch.
Something for people to keep in mind is that we will be open for both Easter and Mother’s Day. We do a limited menu from 11:30 to 2:30 on both days, even though usually we’re closed on Sundays. I think we’re a nice choice for Easter or Mother’s Day if you don’t want to cook.
Thank you.
Johnny’s Cafe
Omaha, NE 68107
(402) 731-4774
https://www.johnnyscafe.com
