Category: Omaha Business

Omaha Interview: Mouth of the South Restaurant Interview with Samuel Voss, Part Two

OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Samuel Voss, General Manager of Mouth of the South Restaurant in West Omaha, Part Two

Please tell me a little bit about Ryan Ernst coming here, because both of you weren’t born here.

No, Ryan had family here as well, so he was raised kind of all over. But he had family here and came up. He kind of migrated north, and he just got into the food scene, and ever since then it just is the thing that drives him. And so that’s how he got here. But I was already a Midwest person. Didn’t really travel much until later on.

I’ve been around now.

Probably six months ago I was in New Orleans for about a week. And I was actually disappointed. You see all these cool pictures and Mardi Gras happening, Bourbon Street, all these things sound amazing. But I got down there, and it smells. Like, this city stinks. It’s cool to look at, but the smell and the heat and all that stuff. I didn’t find anything good to eat until the third night when we went to Drago’s and we got their char-grilled oysters. Amazing. Like, we should have gone here the first night. The second night, I’d take a Big Mac at that point. I was so disappointed because we serve better food here than you can get there. Ours has better flavor. Ours has better presentation. The rice isn’t cooked to death. Sometimes when you heat a sauce that has a has a roux in it or it’s thickened, sometimes if you get it too hot, it breaks. And so sometimes there’s oil pooling on the top, and that’s kind of what it was and just really disappointing. So I was, like, man, there’s gotta be somewhere where I’m gonna hit a home run. That third night we went to Drago’s, and I was like, this is probably the best I’ve ever had.

But for me, New Orleans was kind of one of those things where it’s like I’ve been there, and I’m good now. I know what we do, and I know what they do…

You have an amazing culinary background, you’re in a good place, and you went to New Orleans and just…

I wasn’t I wasn’t over thrilled.

This makes a really great testimony. You work here, and it’s really great.

I think the greatest thing that came for me out of New Orleans was I did a couple of tours like city tours, and their history is amazing…and the history of music, because I’m a music guy. And so you didn’t know a lot of these artists came out of New Orleans. You’re like, I didn’t know Harry Connick Junior was the one that helped build this music center where these kids that have no future can go in and learn how to play instruments and learn how to play music. I had no idea of any of that. And even touring the above-ground cemeteries, that was super interesting. So the history of the place was just amazing. And then it was at that point when everything clicked. Then it’s like, boom, the story comes from…you know, people in New Orleans eat red beans and rice on Monday. And you’re like, well, why do they do that? I could eat it Tuesday or I could eat it Friday or Sunday. Well, they do it on Monday because it’s an entrée that you can start on the stove and you don’t need to watch it. And Monday was laundry day, so back in the old days, these ladies are just with their washboards, their pot of red beans are just boiling away, simmering on the stove while they’re just grinding, washing laundry. And you’re, like, that’s what they ate on Mondays, because that was laundry day. Who knows that? Who, walking in Omaha, Nebraska, knows that? So some of those little nuances to the stories made perfect sense. But the history and the tourism and the architecture were probably the highlights of that trip for me.

You said he had family here…when did he get the idea for a restaurant and then starting out in Florence? I’m just curious.

Oh, boy. I would say… I’m not sure, exactly, of the dates. It was something that he wanted to do. Obviously, trying to get into this business is really difficult, and it’s very costly. We have some pretty unrealistic restrictions. too, in the city with build outs and trying to go through plumbing boards and getting inspections done is kind of challenging, so I’m sure he had some obstacles there, but it’s always been something he wanted to do. It was always in his heart, just waiting for him.

It was the right opportunity  when the location came up down on 30th and Florence. Even to this day, I wear this jacket or the shirt. I’m always in something that says Mouth of the South. And when I’m at the store, I’m stopped, like, “Oh, my God, you work at Mouth of the South.” I’m, like, “Yeah.” “I just love that place. When are you coming back to Florence?” And it’s like, “Well, there’s not really a location in Florence right now, but we do have the Lakeside location of 168th and Center, and visit us out there.” A lot of the same menu items from day one. A little bit of menu evolution that went on there, a little bit, but probably 60 to 80% of the menu is still the original from day one.

It must be hard figuring out what to keep and what to change. As you said, people’s tastes are evolving or can be influenced by different trends.

Yeah. Sure. Sure it is, and literally this business is all about trial and error. There’s not any equation like a perfect equation where you could get online and compute “I want my restaurant to be very successful.” There’s a lot of components that go into this business. This is probably next to the medical industry, and I always joke… because my good friend is a nurse and so we always chat. It’s like you have so many working pieces in your industry with medicine, so I can equate all the different medications to ingredients. If you make a wrong move to a patient and they’re harmed or whatever, I could do that too, if I don’t abide by guidelines for temperature and time. So, just like Chi Chi’s, the chain that closed years and years ago, they found a foodborne illness in green onions that tanked their corporation, something as simple as that, and it got back to somebody didn’t wash their hands. There’s so many working pieces. Like, from the vendors, you need to make sure that you’re getting reputable suppliers with products to make sure that you don’t have anything coming in that’s contaminated. And then it’s how do you train and teach your staff to handle things properly and cool them correctly and follow things correctly and reheat correctly and hold it correctly. There’s just a lot, and so this business is really, really complex. That’s the thing. Sometimes when you get on Food Network and you see these competitions, it’s all about the glitz and glam. And I just sit there and I chuckle, and… like, there is so much more to it than “Oh my gosh. you burn a salmon and the whole night just went to heck.” There’s so much more behind that.

 Not just fast, fancy chopping for 25 seconds…

Right.

 It’s hard work.

Right. If I could take 14 minutes to put a garnish on an entree, I certainly would do that, but it’s not… When you’re in the… and you got tickets to move, and you’ve got people to serve…because in my history, what I have realized in this business is people coming in, they get hangry. They want to eat right now. They don’t want to wait. And I don’t blame them cause I’m the same way. When I go somewhere, I’m like, “I am starving, and I want to eat.” I don’t want to wait 45 minutes for something to come out, or 30 minutes. I want something quick.

 But it’s also amazing to say I’m where you are.

Right. And so that’s where you the balance comes in, to teach your staff on how to do that and how to execute that the right way. Don’t cut corners. You don’t get anywhere in this business by cutting corners. Just don’t. And that’s what I teach, too. You can’t rush something. We don’t microwave anything, so don’t even think about it.

 So nothing is microwaved.

Yeah. We don’t use a microwave at all. And even our freezer space is super, super small. We don’t have a lot of things that come in frozen, either, so it’s fresh. And like I said, we process, we make, and we sell. We do it in small batches. So it’s the freshest that we can get.

Mouth of the South’s Shrimp and Grits, artfully placed in a bowl on wooden table by window with sun streaming in to the restaurant

I enjoyed the meal that I had here. The shrimp was very fresh. It didn’t seem like it was sitting in a freezer forever.

Right.

And then the peppers were really good. What kind of peppers were those?

Those are poblanos, and we get those fresh. And again, like, when I say literally we do everything, we’ve got a team back there that roasted peppers. And then they wrap them and then they’ll stand… and I’m like, holy cow, there’s got to be a simpler process for this. But there really isn’t. And they love it. Like the Hispanic crowd that we have back there—amazing workforce for us. Love them. They’re just literally like a family. They’ll stand back there for hours just peeling the burnt pieces off of these roasted peppers. And that’s what we put in things, so it’s…

There was a little surprise with the shrimp in there, and it was just like at the perfect timing. You’re enjoying all these flavors. And then there was the pepper, and it was really enjoyable.

Awesome. I appreciate it. So yeah, that’s it in a nutshell. That’s Mouth of the South. It’s always evolving. There’s always things coming. We sort of got menu ideas stabilized to where we want to go, and now I think it’s time we…because dining out is more than just grabbing a bite. It’s more about, you know, you want an experience. If you’re going to…especially in this day and age, we hear the word inflation so much and it’s like I understand that word, and how do you then create a better value for somebody that’s coming to your establishment to spend money with you? You’ve got to give them a better experience. That’s what it is.

When I go out to eat, I love to just chat with the server, because it’s more than just… Of course they’re taking care of me, but they’re not my servant. I can form a relationship with somebody and ask, “How are you? How long have you worked here?” Because I always ask those questions when I go out. And I always frequent places that I find somebody that’s interesting like that, where my service was just the best I’ve ever had, and then I tend to go there. I’m a creature of habit. If I like the product and I like the service, I always go back. And so that’s kind of what we preach here: Just get to know your people. Just give them what they expect. Don’t cut corners. Don’t rush. Never ask anybody to hurry up or leave. Even if there is a wait, they have the table for as long as they want it. And that’s just kind of how we operate here. And we have a lot of good people, too, and I think it gets back to the character of the person as well. Everybody here gets along. There’s not a single person on our team that we have an issue with. Everybody just knows what to do. They’re willing to come in, they’re ready to take care of people, they’re ready to give good service, they’re ready to sell a really great product, and they’re ready to get somebody to come back. We want repeat business because that’s the way that we can showcase what we’re doing.

But like I was saying earlier, our next plan of attack is our bar offerings on that side, to kind of elevate cocktails a little bit. So we’ve got a bunch of new glassware that we just got in. We’re going to be making a few changes there, just with some better things. Trying to get some local things. Maybe instead of using an off-brand vodka like a normal bar does, just provide a good vodka like a Tio’s. There’s no reason to put a really crappy vodka in something nice that you made. And the syrup from scratch, that you’re just going to load it down with this garbage vodka.

Yeah, this just seems to need to have a better partner. I haven’t had anything here, but when you’re spending that much attention to detail and trying to keep the food more like food instead of some of the other things we have out there, it makes sense that you’d want to do that as well.

Yeah, yeah.  We do want to elevate it. And like I said, that’s kind of my motto. Every day that I walk in, I look at something and say, “How could we do that better?”

So constant ideas, creativity, innovation…

Have to. Yeah, have to every day. You just can’t… and sometimes you get those places that are just unwilling to look at the menu, or like, “There’s nothing wrong with my Caesar salad.” You’re right. It’s not. I’m not saying that it’s wrong. It’s good. But I think your dressing could be better. Maybe if you used anchovies in there like a true Caesar salad, it might be a little bit better and have a little bit more robust of a taste instead of just it tastes like mayonnaise with a little bit of Parmesan cheese in it and maybe a crack of black pepper, right? Or there’s no reason why you’re buying pre-cut lettuce. Like, lettuce should be fluffy, and the edges shouldn’t be brown, and it shouldn’t be soggy and dense. Lettuce should be nice. Okay, well, is there a farm somewhere where we could buy locally grown lettuce, you know? And that just where my mind is always at… like, what can we get? How can we do it better? Even from a layout. Like, does the layout of the restaurant makes sense, or are people kind of packed in here like sardines? Do I want to sit this close to somebody else if I’m sitting here, like, they’re trying to have a good experience and so am I, but I feel like we might be part of the same group, right? And so there’s just some of those…

Yeah, in some places it’s way too tight.

Right. So it’s just thinking outside of the box in those ways, and it’s every day. You just walk in, even when you park your car. You look at the patio, like, “Oh, wow, our patio…”

Yeah, it was very inviting.

And in the midsummer, it’s like, “Oh, there’s wrappers out there. I gotta go get them, because they blew off the table” or “Could the landscaping be better?”

Thank you. Thank you so much. Favorite menu items are things people should try?

I would say probably my go-to is gonna always be the shrimp and grits.

Yes, it’s amazing.

We have the best grits. Like I said, I always chuckle every time I pass a Waffle House, and I was like, “Man, I used to love their grits,” and I think they just boil them with water and there’s nothing to them. Maybe a little salt. They’re just kind of flat. But then I got here, and ours are just fluffy. It’s just like clouds, you know? And you got that Gouda coming through, and you taste the butter and it’s just real. Our burgers are really good. We hand patty those in-house so we’re not getting like a pre-done, pre-grill-marked or pre-frozen patty or a “puck” is what they call them. So we patty those. The crispy romaine salad is really good because we do the crispy tasso, which is like a Southern-style New Orleans bacon. Sometimes when people hear the word tasso, they’re like, “Oh my God, what is that?” It’s like, “No, you’re going to love it. It’s cured, it’s salty, it’s crispy. It’s just like bacon. And then we make our famous black peppercorn dressing the real way, with eggs and all that.

 Oh, I’ll have to try that.

It’s really good, and we take the Gruyere and we shave it. So you’ve got nice strips of Gruyere in there, and then we make our croutons out of French bread. We toss those in oil and some herbs, and we cook those, so it’s a really solid sandwich. A lot of people love the kicking chicken, but I’m not a I’m not a carb guy, so I don’t eat a lot of pasta or bread. I try to stay more on the whole-muscle meats. I love the Bourbon Street Surf and Turf because that’s got the crawfish and the Hollandaise on it with blackened shrimp and the mashed potatoes with garlic and real butter. It’s super good.

 I’m very full, but now you’re making me kind of hungry and wanting to try something.

It’s super good. Super good. And we have a Gouda ale right now that’s really delicious.

 I saw that. That sounds really strange.

It’s really good, and we use Abita beer. That was a nice thing, too, I forgot to add about touring New Orleans. We try to feature as much Abita products as possible because they’re based out of New Orleans. I toured their brewery while I was there. I got a VIP tour.

 Oh, nice.

It was amazing. I got to try a lot of things that we can’t get up here in the Midwest. And I was just, like, bummed. I’m, like, “Why? I want your… your blueberry wheat beer was delicious.” I think people here would really love that. But so I would say for the most part, that. And obviously the bread pudding. Once in a while, I’ll snag a bite if somebody’s got one. I can’t eat it, obviously, for the for the bread and the carbs. But we’re known for that. It won awards here in the city, #1 Bread Pudding in Omaha.

 Ooh, okay!

And we do a Bananas Foster cheesecake that’s really phenomenal.

I saw the description on that. That looked really good.

Yeah. It’s, like, bruléed bananas, and it’s just really tasty. The brownies that a lot of the younger kids like those, like the teenagers. It’s just this big brownie that comes all bubbly with this praline frosting and a big bowl of French vanilla bean ice cream, and homemade chocolate sauce that we make with… there’s whiskey in it. Yeah, it’s just… there’s so many things that are just really good.

 Thank you. I’ve got a lot to look forward to for next time.

Sure.

Thank you. I appreciate the interview.

 Visit this Omaha restaurant at:
Mouth of the South
16909 Lakeside Hills Plaza
Omaha, NE 68130
(531) 375-5399

Omaha Interview: Mouth of the South Restaurant Interview with Samuel Voss, Part One

OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Samuel Voss, General Manager of Mouth of the South Restaurant in West Omaha

Samuel Voss at Mouth of South Restaurant

Tell me your name please and a little bit about the restaurant and how you came to be here.

Okay. My name is Samuel Voss.

Mouth of the South is a restaurant that I visited when it was in Florence on 30th. I ate there, had no clue that I would ever work at it. You just never make those connections at that point. I just loved it from day one. And I think back then, I don’t even know what I had. It was something like a kicking chicken, I think. It was just a small place and that’s how it started. Ryan built it from basically nothing.

Obviously there was a fire 10-plus years ago; that one burnt to the ground . It started with a smoker that caught on fire. It took the building. And so he looked and looked to rebuild because it’s just his passion. He found a spot on 72nd and Ames. There’s a Baker’s right there. There’s a Home Depot. I think there’s a seafood place in there now. A little bit too big of a building; it just never really fit.

And so then he opened up Lakeside . Gosh, I think this was on Year 5 or. 6. And this has really been kind of the bread and butter. It just fits the area, the people…just a really supportive community that really, really love it. And it’s just doing great.

 It’s home now…

It is.

He comes from a little bit of a background… his family is from New Orleans. And so the thing sometimes that I get discouraged about is there’s an education piece that comes along with this concept. And so when people hear of Southern food, they automatically think of soul food, and so both are really good.

Cajun Creole is not soul food, and so sometimes there’s a misconception there or a stigma. But soul food kind of generates more of like your Georgia area, kind of the more of the Bible Belt, and Cajun Creole is specifically, like, Louisiana, that kind of sell. So you’re going to have more seafood heavy, and it’s more robust in spice and flavor. People come in sometimes and they’re, like, “Oh my gosh. I thought you would have fried chicken on your menu,” and it’s just not in the cuisine. One of my favorite things to eat is fried chicken, but I wouldn’t expect that here just because of my background and being in this industry for 28 years and doing the culinary school thing at a really young age and living in Chicago, a big city, for many, many years.

So I kind of understand what all these cuisines are, and that was just my expectation. I understood it from day one, and I loved it. He’s really good with flavor. His palate is really good. He just knows how to pair things together, things that work, things that don’t work. And he’s not unwilling to try things either, which is really good, too. As we know, we (chefs) are as good as our last meal. That’s been the saying in the culinary world forever. And palates and taste do evolve. What was good yesterday isn’t necessarily good tomorrow, and so you’ve got to evolve and change. I say that the Food Network and all that stuff has just ruined restaurants, because now everybody has become a foodie with no formal training. Sometimes when I watch those shows my head just explodes. It’s like “That’s not what that’s called” or “That’s not the processor” or “That’s not the true way to do it.”

 Where did you go to culinary school?

At Le Cordon Blue in Chicago.

Wow.

I graduated in ’07, many years ago, and restaurants have just been something that was in my DNA. My mom was from a huge Catholic family, and cooking was the thing that always brought everybody together. But it’s just been an interest to me. I love that in this concept it’s small, but it’s mighty. People sometimes underestimate what it is or, or maybe just don’t know what it is or aren’t willing to give it a try. And I think once they kind of step out of that… over the line or out of those boundaries, they love it and they understand it. This is one restaurant, I would tell you, that since day one has been true scratch, 100%. There’s not a lot of restaurants here that can say they mix up, case, and smoke their own sausage.

 Yeah, I was really surprised and really happy about that [real made from scratch cooking including the sausages].

Right. We process all of our meats. We cure a lot of things. We smoke everything here. There’s very little that we get in besides butter and milk—we don’t have a cow out back. where you know, I can churn butter. I can certainly do that, but it just seems to be a waste of time for me. But to really put the focus into scratch. And I think when you do that, you can control not only the taste or any of those things, but you can control the quality. You can also control what ingredients that you’re then selling to your guests to then consume. Like, we’re having meatloaf. There’s no reason for it to have red dye in it. Like, what’s the reason for that?

 Oh, my. I didn’t know it could have red dye in it.

Right? I want our meatloaf to have beef, and I want it to have onions and aromatics and vegetables. And maybe a few eggs and a handful of bread crumbs or two. And that’s truly what meatloaf is. But, you know, a lot of places where they get it out of a package, you have no idea what you’re eating. So that’s a big thing for me too. Outside of the restaurant, I try to eat as clean as possible. And so inside the restaurant, it really just makes me excited that we don’t add artificial flavorings to things…even in the bar, with the bar drinks. And that’s been kind of an MO for Ryan. We make the peach syrup, we make the blueberry syrup, we make the strawberry syrup. And so when somebody wants a flavored lemonade, we don’t run and get this red jar of things or this yellowish off-colored jar of something that sort of remotely tastes like a peach. We make it with real peaches in the back. And so it’s sugar and it’s water and it’s lemon juice and it’s a pinch of salt and it’s peaches. And we boil that and maybe add a little bit of natural agave or sweetener to that. And that’s really sort of in every component and aspect in this restaurant. I’m really excited to be a part of that, and it’s good to know that people really support that because it is seeming to be more of a lost art, I guess, in a sense. I can open a can or my sister can open a can of green beans. Sure, they’re going to keep you sustained, but they’re not good. Let’s just get some fresh green beans and maybe, you know, blanch them a little bit, sauté them with a little avocado oil or olive oil. A little bit of sea salt, and call it a day. We don’t have all that junk. If you turn the label over and there’s all this other additives in there, it’s like it doesn’t make any sense. And like I said, that’s kind of been Ryan’s thing from day one. It just impressed me coming on, because I didn’t have that expectation, joining Mouth. And I knew what the food was, but I didn’t know how it was made. I knew how it looked, but I didn’t know like what the process was or how it was prepared, and it was just interesting to see that.  He’s got stacks of recipes everywhere and he just writes them all the time.

 Wow.

And so it’s neat to do that, but it’s been a fun, fun ride cause I stepped from kind of multifaceted concepts. I’ve done a lot of things. I worked at Coco Pazzo in Chicago in the NBC Tower. I was executive chef at 19 years old. I wasn’t even old enough to drink, and I was running an eight-million-dollar piece of business in downtown Chicago. So I’ve done, that and then it’s just… you know, when you’re at a young age you want all that glitz and glam, and then as you start to mellow out a little bit, you’re just like…I’m content with good. I’m content with great. It doesn’t need to be big or a lot, but I want it to be good.

I think you want to experience a lot of things, see what’s out there, and then eventually you learn what’s important to you. And for some people, maybe it’s staying here. And for other people it’s making other choices.

Yeah. And you know that.

But without doing that, then you don’t know how valuable right here is.

Right. And scratch is just something that just fits in my vocabulary, and that’s why I appreciate here. When I was growing up, a canned good to me meant something else than it meant to another kid in my class. We didn’t have 10 cans of carrots or 10 cans of corn. It was a Mason jar. I grew up on a farm. We had all kinds of animals, and we had a garden, and that was a different meaning to me. It’s like “What is this tin thing?” “Oh, that’s a can.” I’m like, “Oh, my God. Mine comes in a Mason jar. I’m not sure where you got that thing.” But that’s how we ate as kids. So, just kind of starving for that. Even to this day, I do a lot of my own preserving and canning at home just because I know the benefits of it.

 It’s something I wanted to learn and do once, but I haven’t found anyone to…for that process. It looks pretty laborious.

It is, but it’s easier than you would think. It is. You see all these gadgets, and then everybody has a different method of doing things. And you have to sanitize the jar and you gotta boil this and you gotta simmer that and peel this. It’s not as daunting as it appears. Actually, in my case, I think it’s actually therapeutic to just stand there over a boiling pot of tomatoes, making stewed tomatoes and you’re just jarring them up. You’re in your own world. You’ve got music on in the back and the dogs are laying across the room, and you’re just doing your own thing. And all of a sudden it’s just gratifying to hear all the little pops and tings on the lids as soon as they seal as they sit there and cool down. That’s really cool. And even jams and jellies, sauces, and all those things, I make from scratch. In this restaurant, too, there’s a lot of things we make, all the way down to the Bloody Mary mix. There’s obviously stuff that we have to get, like the raw ingredients, natural ingredients. We’re not going to make cheese, for example, because it’s very hard and it’s risky if you don’t time and temperature control it just right. Bacteria can do really horrible things to people. But that’s maybe something that we might learn at some point, I don’t know, but it is what it is. Now, most mozzarella I can make. I can make that with my eyes closed, or cream cheese, or all that stuff. But I’m not going to make a wheel of cheddar or a great big wheel of Parmesan or whatever it is.

 How did you end up coming here from Chicago?

I’m from the Midwest, eastern Iowa, and I actually moved here probably five or six years ago, maybe. I was doing a long-distance relationship and just realized, like…when you hear Nebraska on a map, you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, that place sounds boring.” Like there’s nothing in Nebraska, and I know what it’s like driving across western Iowa, and then you get to Nebraska and it’s twice as long and there’s nothing. So anyway, I came here and I was just like, “Holy moley!” Omaha’s a city of food. There’s restaurants everywhere. If you want anything at any time of the day, you can get it, and it’s a 20-minute drive or a 15-minute drive wherever you’re going. You go all the way north, all the way south, east, or west, and it’s still 20 minutes. And so that’s how I ended up here. But I ended up back in the Quad Cities after Chicago during the recession. It was really tough in the city in, like, 2008, 2009. It was really tough. So I actually went back and ran the restaurant that I worked in, going through high school. I had an opportunity to take it over, and I did that, so that’s how I got here. But and then just the corporate thing… I worked at a restaurant over at Village Pointe, an Italian place. They went belly up probably six months ago, but I sort of had an inkling that it was coming. It was poorly run by a corporate office, and that’s when this became available. And then Ryan and I just clicked from, like, day one. We are just, like, literally the same person on the same level.

 Wow.

We always say to each other, “Just get out of my head.” We could probably finish a sentence if we wrote half of it on paper, I could probably write the rest of that sentence, but we’re just on the same page. We’re working on some new menu items. We’ve got some ideas that we’re going to launch, starting out with brunch, because I feel like brunch is one of those things where you’re just out for the day to relax. You just want to have something good, sit down and have a conversation and make it a social event. So we’re going to attack our brunch menu first. And in the office, even, here, there’s just things that we have done that we have printed and posted to the wall with notes like “This is awesome, but I think it needs this” or “I like the idea of that, but I think it needs sunnyside up eggs instead of over easy.” And then, like, “This one’s a go. This was spot on—everything about it: the taste, the presentation, all of that.” So what we’re working on now is just dissecting, thinking outside of the box, to where…you know, I like to go out and have an omelet or a thing of scrambled eggs, but I can get that at home. If I’m going out, I want to have something that’s a little bit elevated, something that I wouldn’t normally eat at home, or something that I might not even select at all if it was an option, like would I eat avocado toast if I went out? But this sounds really good. I certainly wouldn’t make it at home because I don’t eat a lot of carbs, but I’d eat the avocado, I’d eat the crab salad, I’d eat all of that stuff. But it’s trying to get that and pass that along to people that really appreciate it. So that’ll be coming out here probably in the next two to three weeks.

Mason Jar Lighting, one of the unique features of the Mouth of the South Restaurant
Mason Jar Lighting Section

Visit this Omaha restaurant at:
Mouth of the South
16909 Lakeside Hills Plaza
Omaha, NE 68130
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Omaha Interview: Lexi Christensen, General Manager of Clio’s Restaurant in Omaha’s Old Market

Lexi Christensen behind the host desk at Clio’s Restaurant

OmahaNebraska.com here with..

My name is Lexi Christensen, and I’m the General Manager of Clio in Omaha’s Old Market.

How long has Clio’s been open?

Clio opened on June 3rd just this last year. So just two months ago, we celebrated our birthday. So yeah, very fresh in the Old Market still.

And were you here when it opened?

Yeah, I was here June 3rd. But my time with Clio actually started on April 15th. That’s when our job fair started. We had a five-week hiring event where Monday through Friday 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM we were taking interviews, building our team both for the kitchen, but then for our front of house for our house servers and bartenders as well. So yeah, April 15th is when I started on the project.

Have you been in the Omaha area a long time?

Yeah, born and raised. So Omaha is in my blood, if you will.

So you have a really good feeling, especially for the Old Market area…

I think so. Yeah. My family is still based out west. I grew up off of 160th and Q and then I went to Creighton. I moved downtown when I was 18, and I’ve been in, like, the downtown, Midtown area ever since. Yeah. The Old Market’s definitely…as someone who’s from West Omaha, I didn’t appreciate it as much as I could have. But in my time at Creighton and then especially in the restaurant industry, I’ve definitely learned to truly love the space for what it is.

There’s so many amazing things about, you know, each neighborhood.

Yeah, 100%.

What did you do before you came to work for Clio?

Directly before Clio, I was the assistant general manager over at Plank, so Plank is within our parent company still, and I was the AGM [Assistant General Manager] over there for a year and seven months. And then before that I was a server at one of the steakhouses downtown, and then before that I was still in school. So I’m still relatively new in the restaurant industry, which is crazy to think about. I’m very lucky to have the support and the teachers that I’ve had in the past few years to get me to where I’m at right now.

I’ve been here a couple of times. The service has been amazing. The food has been great. You are doing so many things right.

Thank you. Yeah, it’s definitely been…as many things, it’s been a process. We’re still growing and learning every single day, but I’m very proud of the community we’ve formed within Clio, both with our kitchen team and then our front-of-house service team. Truly, just some of the most genuine and hard-working individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working with. And I think that’s what’s unique about Flagship, our company, too. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later.

We can talk about it now, if you’d like.

Cool, yeah. We’re part of Flagship Restaurant Group. Flagship started in 2002 when our four main owners kind of came together and started the first Blue Sushi. So Blue Sushi off of 144th and Maple is the OG restaurant in our company. And then we’ve expanded…now, I think Clio was restaurant number 40 if I remember correctly, so we have 40 different restaurants, between, like, eight or nine concepts in twelve or thirteen states. A lot of it is Midwest and Southwest focused, but we go a little bit east, and then I guess Denver is in us, too. But it’s mostly Midwest and Southwest, I would say.

So Flagship has Plank, Blue Sushi, Clio, and…

Yeah. And so in the Omaha area, Plank, Blue Sushi, Clio… we also have Memoir off of 10th and Harney. We have Blatt Beer and Table. So we have one downtown here and one out west—Roja out west—and then the Flagship Commons in the Westroads Mall, and then we have a few, like, really eclectic concepts in other places, right? So in Des Moines, we have this really cool kind of like island-tiki-bar-inspired place called Revival. So Revival is really cool. We have two bar-centric kind of concepts. One is called Ghost Donkey, so Ghost Donkey’s a Mezcal tequila bar.

I’ve heard about that.

Yeah, we’re actually gonna have one in Omaha at the end of September.

Ah, that’s why I’ve heard about it.

Yeah. And then also at the end of September, another concept, Champagne Lanes, or we kind of shorthand it to CPL. So Ghost Donkey and CPL are going to be here in Omaha in the next, like, month or month and a half. It’s going to come up really quickly. So those are really cool concepts. Champagne lanes is a concept where they do champagne on tap, so sparkling wine on tap with fried chicken bites, because champagne and fried chicken pair really well together.

I did not know that.

Yeah. So the champagne is, you know, nice and dry and it kind of like, makes your mouth kind of pucker a little bit. And then the greasy, kind of fatty, in the fried chicken complements it and balances out really well.

Okay. 

So it’s just like a really fun pairing there, and then Champagne Lanes also has duck pin bowling. So mini-bowling; that’s where they get the “Lanes” part. And then we have this really cool concept in Phoenix and one in Texas called Palma. Again, kind of like island inspired, but they have a really cool menu there too. So yeah, they do. They, as in our owners and all of the minds that work together with this. They just do a really good job. The team that comes up with the menus for these concepts is pretty extensive, so it’s like, depending on the concept, it’s anywhere from four to like six or seven chefs that come together for these menu creations. And then our operations team, they’ll come together to kind of come up with the steps of service. So like how the store is run and operated, and that can be anywhere from like three to even like eight to ten people. You know, it’s a lot of really great people that are coming together to get these concepts going.

Sounds like a very collaborative experience, which is often, you know, richer in fruit than just one or two people together and then sounds like a lot of teamwork here on this side. You said you were trying to create a family within this.

Yeah, 100 percent.

How do you do that? It’s so hard for restaurants and places to get this kind of flow going that I see, and it feels like you’ve been here a while. I mean, you’re new and fresh, but the teamwork seems like it’s just been this way for years.

Yeah. Well, that’s a really big compliment. Thank you. That was definitely something that our management team strived for since day one. So even before our hiring event, I met with our head chef. His name is Donnie Topolsky. Donnie’s been with the company for going on, almost seven years now. For the first, like, six 6-1/2 years of his tenure, he was at the chef at Blatt West. So, Donnie and I had a brief meeting shortly after he got hired on to that position, and we are in this transitionary period, and in that meeting, Donnie and I came to the agreement that our goal is to make sure that our relationship between our front of house and our back of house and our relationship between all of these people are built on teamwork.

So when we were in the interviews, I think it was like the second or third question we asked every single candidate was “What’s your teamwork style?” And then we would follow it up with “What’s your relationship with front of house?” or “back of house?” So, that was definitely a precedent that we set really, really early on. And that was intentional because this is such a unique concept. It’s so beautiful. And you know, I’ve been very lucky. I’ve only ever worked with collaborative teams. I really like that my experience is like that, because that’s a little unique.

Not a lot of people come from restaurant backgrounds that are as collaborative as we sit here as my experience in the past is. So yeah, just setting that precedent literally since day one. And then I think it helps that it kind of trickles down, right, so our owners are all, like, very family-based people, like, that’s their priority, right? Making sure that our families are taken care of, ourselves are taken care of, and then we can take care of our job, right?

So, that’s something that is set from our owners, but then even specifically at our store level, all of us managers have weekly meetings. So, there’s three front house managers, myself, and then I have two AGM’s, and then we have our head chef and two sous chefs, so we all come together every Monday and kind of just talk about the restaurant. We talk about our goals. We talk about where we’re excelling, where we have room for improvement, and I think the team sees that and it definitely just helps with that positive energy that we have going on here.

Well, this is very different than other restaurants downtown and also other restaurants in the city. What’s sort of the inspiration for that? And could you tell people what makes Clio so special?

Yeah. So, the creative process of Clio went through a really interesting evolution. My understanding is that when they first proposed this idea of a wine-bar-themed restaurant, because that’s kind of what the foundation was, right? We have this awesome company sommelier who’s actually one of our managers here too. Her name is Shannon Salsbury. She’s just a genius, and she chooses really lovely wines. And she’s very, very smart about the wines that she’s choosing. So yeah, Shannon, and you know, Shannon and team kind of came together and said, “Well, how can we do a wine bar concept?” So, it started out with maybe just like an Italian influence and doing like an antipasti and charcuterie board, maybe some flatbreads. But then as they were traveling and doing research for what we can do with this space, they kind of came upon this Mediterranean restaurant idea and just ran with it. So, then they visited some really cool restaurants in Chicago and Austin, TX. And that’s where they got the big inspiration for Mediterranean. But the name Clio we borrow from Greek mythology. The Greeks have eight muses, right? So Clio is the Greek muse of history. And so we kind of took that as our opportunity to share the history of our families. Right? So when you go and look at, you know, all of the people that in that are in our company, like, we have so many influenced from the Mediterranean. We have folks that have family from Lebanon, from France, from Italy, some Greeks in there, too, right? So, the Mediterranean was our inspiration. And then where the flavors came from, kind of, is just what spoke to us from our families’ history.

It’s interesting because you look at the dishes and you’ll have harissa, which is from my experience just from Tunisia, maybe from other places, and then you, but you have somehow amazingly paired it with things you wouldn’t think…and then the harissa is not so hot. So I don’t know how you come up with all those flavors. It’s really interesting.

I’m never going to claim that I’m a culinary genius. You definitely don’t want me in the kitchen—I can tell you that much—but I can tell you that the way that the flavors complement each other is kind of where we get a lot of those expressions from. So yeah, 100 percent harissa is typically a little bit on the spicier side, but the way that we express ours with the trout fillet for instance, right? We have our harissa trout. Or we put harissa in our tomato sauces. And so the fattiness from the trout or the acidity from the tomato sauce does a really great job of cutting the spiciness and balancing out that dish really well. And that’s a huge theme across our whole menu. I think when you take a look at the menu, you may notice a few flavors and words kind of repeat themselves, but although they repeat themselves, they are shown in such different and unique ways.

That’s what I thought was also interesting, because I saw it’s like, well, this looks like it’s going to be the same as this, and it was not.

Right, yeah. My favorite example of that is in our mezze section. So mezze is kind of like a Greek word where it’s another word for antipasti, right? So small plate that can be coursed out. And we have our Turkish beef dumplings…

They’re wonderful.

They’re so good, and then we have our stuffed dates, and they both have this really beautiful tomato sauce. They have slightly different spices in them, but I think they taste pretty similar, but when they’re paired with the other items in those dishes, they’re such a different experience.

White bowl with square Turkish beef dumplings with harissa-tomato sauce dotted with sour cream and cilantro

Yes. I happened to try those, too.

Yes. So yeah, you can definitely speak on the Turkish beef dumplings, which I should also side note. Turkish dumplings are a little bit different than your traditional kind of like Eastern Asian dumplings, right? They’re folded very beautifully and intricately, but they look a little more similar to like a ravioli. So that’s how we compare it. It’s a little bit similar to, like, a ravioli, rather than, like, a Chinese dumpling, maybe. So yeah, like, the Turkish beef dumplings have this really beautiful pasta-like dough. And then it’s got that really nice beef center and this beautiful tomato sauce.

Merguez sausage stuffed dates swimming in tomato sauce

And then the stuffed dates have those dates, and again another beef center but wrapped in prosciutto. And they’re just so different and so unique, but still complement each other really, really well, so yeah,  I love those two dishes.

I’m pretty sure you can’t pick one, but what are some of your favorite dishes or ones you would love people to try?

Yeah. So I was actually just talking to a table about this yesterday. I feel like when guests come here, they almost have to have all four spreads. So we have four house-made spreads that are beautiful. There’s hummus, there’s baba ghanoush, there’s labneh, and there’s muhammara. And you can get each of them individually or you can get a half-size portion of all four on one plate for $20. It comes with three pitas, and it is such a great way to start out the experience because it’s so many beautiful colors on the plate. The plate itself is really pretty, but then all of the flavors are so unique, but again, complement each other so well. I love to do all four and then get a little bit of spread on one bite and do all of it together because you get the smokiness from the muhammara, you get the creaminess from the labneh, you get just like that classic garlic hummus in there. And then the baba ghanoush, which is roasted and pureed eggplant, just like a very creamy texture. Super good. So yeah, that’s one of my top recommendations. I also think it’s a shame if you don’t get any of those kebab options. But you know, choose whichever kebab you like. There really is no wrong choice. They’ve got that salmon kebab and it has this za’atar seasoning on it. Za’atar is a very common Mediterranean seasoning. There’s thyme, there’s salt, there’s pepper. There’s one or two spices in there that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Sumac?

Yeah, sumac’s in there, 100 percent. So the salmon kebab is delicious. We also have a chicken kebab, so we use thigh meat for our chicken. You’ll notice that. The thigh meat relative to breast meat is a little bit juicier. There is a little bit higher fat percentage, but it really does help with the tenderness of the dish.

There’s certain dishes where that is really the right choice.

100 percent, yeah. And then that final kebab option is a beef kefta kebab. So kefta is…you know, initially when they were going through the process, they were wondering if we could do like a beef and lamb mixture because I think that’s what traditional kefta is, if I remember correctly. But this one is mostly just a beef. So we grind beef and we put it in these little rectangular molds and then stick them on the skewer. And we grill them and then we put them in the oven, and it’s really beautiful. So yeah, any of those kebab options are great.

All of those kebabs come on a bed of saffron rice that we make fresh, I think twice a day because of how much we’re going through. And then there’s a cucumber tomato salad. We’ve got pickled sumac onions on there. We’ve got Juanita peppers, which are kind of like banana peppers. They’re a little bit on the spicier side. And then we also have a little dollop of hummus on there as well.

There’s a very large selection of wine, as you were mentioning before, and some cocktails. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Absolutely. So like I said, Shannon is just a genius when it comes to wine programming. And I say that for a few different reasons. For starters, Shannon is very intentional with the wineries that she sources from. For Clio specifically, we don’t have any domestic wine in-house. All of our wine comes from the Mediterranean. We have bottles from Macedonia, Armenia, Italy, France, Turkey. We have some really, really unique flavors in there, which is really cool.

She also does a really great job with sourcing from wineries that are very fair trade. So whether they’re family owned and only have a very small business or they’re just like ethically and responsibly running their business. Making sure that all of the grapes that we have are hand harvested or have best practices. We like to source a lot of green wines too, so wines that don’t overuse water or pesticides, chemicals, any of that stuff.

Our cocktail list is made by Dustin Fox. He’s the bar program manager for the company, so all of our cocktails are from Dustin. And Dustin, again, is just a genius in his craft, where he does a really great job of getting classic cocktails but then putting a unique twist on them so that it’s unique to whatever concept that we’re catering to. We have a pretty small cocktail list. We’ve got three spritzers to choose from, so we have a very classic aperitiva spritz, kind of like an aperol spritz. We have a Hugo spritz, so it’s got that elderflower liqueur and mints in there, and then we have a limoncello spritz that’s actually topped off with a little bit of rosé rather than traditional prosecco. We still have really nice weather, so they’re great for patio. And then our cocktail list is six cocktails, all wonderfully paired together, but again, very similar to our food menu, so unique in their own way. So I think if a guest starts out with, you know, a spritz and then moves to a cocktail and then moves to a glass of wine, there’s truly no bad pairing in any of that, especially when you take into consideration all of the great food that’s going to come along with it as well. And then we have a really cool list of non-alcoholic cocktails too, so we’ve got three NA [non-alcholic] beverages. And then we have a few bottled and canned beers, and then we’ve got a couple of water options as well.

Any question I haven’t asked you that you would like me to ask?

Hmm. Well, I do like to point out that there are a few local places we partner with, because I love supporting local and I love being in a company that also supports local. So Miller Dohrmann Farm, that’s where we get our flour, our whole wheat grain, for all of the pita that we make. We also buy eggplant from them. So we have a few eggplant in those dishes and we’re moving through quite a bit of it, which is cool. So we support Miller Dohrmann and we’ve had a chance to host them in here and I’ve met them a couple of times. They are just such an awesome couple. They have such an awesome farm. They do a really good job over there.

We also work with Maven Bar, so Maven Social has a few bars in Omaha, but specifically in the Old Market we’ve got Berry and Rye down the street and then Laka Lono is actually our basement, so a tiki bar is owned by Maven right below us, and we source our perfect ice from them. So they like carve this ice, and it looks really perfectly clear. It’s really cool. It goes in a few of our cocktails. And then we also partner with Hardy Coffee. They give us our coffee beans for… we have an espresso machine back there, so we can make lattes and cappuccinos. But then we also make a cold brew concentrate, and that cold brew concentrate goes in our espresso martini.

Chocolate creme brulée with five artful dollops of cinnamon creme with mint leaf flags surrounding three mandarin orange slices in white bowl on marble table

Sounds good. I think it’s also in the creme brulee, no?

So the creme brulée has Turkish coffee in it. Those aren’t the beans that we source from Hardy, but the creme brulée does pair really well with the espresso martini. So I would say that’s one of my favorite pairings. If I’m looking for something like a little sweet treat, an espresso martini and chocolate creme brulée would be like my go-to pairing.

I guess another thing that’s fun to point out is the pita process is really intense.

I was guessing you made them here because it was very different and very wonderful.

We do. We make them fresh every single day. Yeah. So the pita that we have, the guests will come to find out that have a little bit of a nice crisp on the outside, but mostly they’re really soft and fluffy, but they’re not chewy by any means. Like they don’t overwhelm your palate. They don’t overwhelm the flavors that you’re pairing it with.

And lovely pockets with those too. I haven’t seen pita with pockets in a long time, and that’s what I’m used to.

Yeah. So we have this really amazing pizza oven back there that we actually got custom made for our store. I think we had it travel all the way from the East Coast somewhere, right? So yeah, we brought it in quite the distance. And that pizza oven just does wonders. It’s mostly an oak wood, if I remember correctly. But it’s a wood fire, a little gas-assisted as well. But it has that very nice, smoky flavor without overbearing anything. And so, yeah, our pita process starts with our starter, right? So it’s a sourdough pita, and so we have this starter dough that we feed every day, and from that starter we portion out the dough, and you know, I see the prep cooks back there rolling it out and… Day of production, we have one of our cooks come in at 6:00 in the morning, and he’ll start just like pumping out pita. He’ll, like, roll them out on the trays and then get the trays and start putting them in the oven. And then we keep them stored very, you know, organized. And then when it’s time to have service and the guests order them, we’ll put them in the oven again so that when the guests order it the first time it doesn’t take ten minutes to make a pita. So yeah, it’s a very intense process, but we do a really good job, I think.

You definitely do a really good job.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the interview. 

Thank you, too!