Omaha Forums

Place called Stirnella going into the building next to Brothers.

iamjacobm wrote:Place called Stirnella going into the building next to Brothers.

Chef from Market House and co owner from Flagship. Sounds like an interesting place.

Where do they come up with these names?

nativeomahan wrote:Where do they come up with these names?

Sturnella neglecta Is the Western Meadowlark, which is pictured on their menu and website.

Stirnella plans to be open within 30 days. Sign is up.

Taco wrote:Stirnella plans to be open within 30 days. Sign is up.

Open for dinner Feb 11th.

iamjacobm wrote:

Taco wrote:Stirnella plans to be open within 30 days. Sign is up.

Open for dinner Feb 11th.

Photo Update:

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We finally made it to Stirnella last night. Everything we had was great. Cool place, great service, nice bar menu and local beer selection.

There were 4 of use and we shared everything.

Appetizers: arancini, grilled oysters, wedge.
Small Plates: coddled egg, spatzle, pot roast, tortellini
Larger Plates: Blackstone burger, pork shank

Cool local place that is definitely worth checking out.

Brad wrote:We finally made it to Stirnella last night. Everything we had was great. Cool place, great service, nice bar menu and local beer selection.

There were 4 of use and we shared everything.

Appetizers: arancini, grilled oysters, wedge.
Small Plates: coddled egg, spatzle, pot roast, tortellini
Larger Plates: Blackstone burger, pork shank

Cool local place that is definitely worth checking out.

I went to Stirnella and The Red Lion on Friday night as well Brad. Funny coincidence.

iamjacobm wrote:I went to Stirnella and The Red Lion on Friday night as well Brad. Funny coincidence.

Nice! With an 8 month old, we were there fairly early.

Brad wrote:

iamjacobm wrote:I went to Stirnella and The Red Lion on Friday night as well Brad. Funny coincidence.

Nice! With an 8 month old, we were there fairly early.

Do they only serve alcohol to minors before a certain time...haha.

Stirnella Bar & Kitchen
3814 Farnam St
Omaha, NE 68131
402.650.5204
https://www.stirnella.com/
https://www.facebook.com/stirnella/

Looks like Stirnella will be closing permanently at the end of August.

From their Facebook page [link]:

Dear Stirnella Community,

It is with heavy hearts that we tell you Stirnella’s last day of service will be Thursday, August 31st. After much consideration and evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close our doors.

We have had many good years since we opened seven years ago, but over the last two years we have struggled to find the sales we need to be successful financially and we can’t go on anymore.

We want to express our deepest gratitude to each and every one of you for your unwavering support and patronage. It has been an incredible journey, and we are truly honored to have been a part of your lives and the Omaha community for as long as we have.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our dedicated staff members who have worked tirelessly to provide exceptional service and create memorable dining experiences. Their hard work and commitment have been instrumental in our success, and we are forever grateful for their contributions.

If you’re able, please come in this month to see us and give a final farewell to Stirnella. We will miss you.

Thank you,
Stirnella Management

I'm really sorry this place is closing. They have amazing food----one of my favorite restaurants in Omaha. The place should’ve been packed every night. I hope the chef sticks around.

That is very surprising.

Andrew Zimmer had a bit on an interview he did where he talked about how shocked people would be if most restaurants charged what they needed to charge to provide the quality of food, customer service, and attractive décor people say they want.

People just don't want to pay a lot to eat out (with a few fine dining exceptions, of course). So, something has to give and it results in the restaurant serving a subpar product, unable to retain good staff, or the place gets thread bare as there's no budget for maintenance and renovation. If nothing gives (or owners are unwilling to compromise on food and service) then the place closes its doors. Likewise, if they compromise too much and food and service get too bad, then the place closes its doors. If they charge too much and people stop coming, then they close their doors. It's not an easy business to be in.

I think the current inflation situation doesn't help. It takes people a while to get to used to the new prices of things when they're increasing as quickly as they have been. Consequently, I think people get sticker shock when they see the bill.

Gordon Ramsay (I know he's a divisive personality) makes a good point. If you can keep your restaurant full Sun-Thu then you're golden. Friday and Saturday usually take care of themselves. I've gone into plenty of genuinely good restaurants on a Tuesday, for example, and they're a ghost town inside. Most restaurants can't stay alive on only two busy nights per week.

That's my "armchair restaurateur" take on it.

Wow, that's too bad. Great place.
Hopefully the streetcar and 37 West Farnam will help restaurants in the future.

Of all the closings in the last couple years this one was a personal favorite of mine. Sad to see it go!

This one surprised me as well. Not only is it a favorite for myself and many of my friends but whenever I went it always seemed pretty busy. I’d be curious to see what rent rates look like in Blackstone compared to other areas. Can’t imagine this is great news for Blackstone in acquiring future food and beverage tenants.

TransitOriented wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 11:35 am Wow, that's too bad. Great place.
Hopefully the streetcar and 37 West Farnam will help restaurants in the future.

Yeah Omaha is a car oriented city and the parking situation in Blackstone is sub optimal. I think the street car would help, but I can remember numerous times where I'd have considered Stirnella, but opted for somewhere "easier" with equal quality food.

I have never been to Stirnella, but based on the feedback here, it was well respected.

However, with the price point they are at, I can honestly say that I would rarely if ever visit. Sandwiches: $16-19 and entrees from $20-34. Great for a date night, but not a place I would want to go with a family of 5.

It has been a huge shock to see the increase in prices due to inflation. Obviously not going to change, but I think consumers are adjusting the spending habits finally as a result.

Mr.Nuke wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 2:20 pm Yeah Omaha is a car oriented city and the parking situation in Blackstone is sub optimal. I think the street car would help, but I can remember numerous times where I'd have considered Stirnella, but opted for somewhere "easier" with equal quality food.

Agreed. From my suburban persepective, when driving time and distance aren't the issue (and they frequently are since I live in Gretna), there's a lot of times I don't eat downtown or midtown because going there just sounds like a hassle. I realize for those that live there that is your normal and so this probably sounds silly to you, but for me the idea of parking downtown or midtown just sounds annoying.

I do wonder how much their decision to not be on any food delivery services affected business, since they specifically note that of the 7 years in business the last 2 have been slow (a period when many restaurants have had to adopt delivery).

I know for a while restaurants were losing money with delivery apps because of the app fees, but they seem to have mostly fixed this with slight price increases for app orders (some restaurants I order from regularly that price entres $16-17 in restaurant price them around $18-19 on the app). Single people who may want restaurant food on a weeknight when they don't have time to get together with friends and don't want to go to a restaurant alone, are a valuable market to tap into, especially for slower weeknights. Stirnella does offer takeout; you just have to call, and people under 40 don't like making phone calls lol.

It's possible it would have made no difference, but just a thought.

JDJase wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 3:33 pm I do wonder how much their decision to not be on any food delivery services affected business, since they specifically note that of the 7 years in business the last 2 have been slow (a period when many restaurants have had to adopt delivery).

I know for a while restaurants were losing money with delivery apps because of the app fees, but they seem to have mostly fixed this with slight price increases for app orders (some restaurants I order from regularly that price entres $16-17 in restaurant price them around $18-19 on the app). Single people who may want restaurant food on a weeknight when they don't have time to get together with friends and don't want to go to a restaurant alone, are a valuable market to tap into, especially for slower weeknights. Stirnella does offer takeout; you just have to call, and people under 40 don't like making phone calls lol.

It's possible it would have made no difference, but just a thought.

I highly doubt delivery apps would've saved Stirnella. Executing higher quality foods with delivery apps are incongruent. Stirnella is not the kind of place to rely on take out business. I suspect post covid and current inflation took a toll on Stirnella's ability to serve a quality product at a "reasonable" price. Even pre-covid the old industry adage is the higher the food quality the lower the profit margin. Why do you think you pay so much for alcohol at a restaurant? If you want to be successful you have to make money elsewhere to offset food costs. Restaurants of all calibers have had no choice but to raise prices in the last few years. So add up serving elevated gastro grub with significantly higher prices and you become a special ocassion restaurant for many people...thus not enough people are passing through the doors.


And as for restaurants who've embraced delivery apps you can generally count on the quality and consistency to go down. Sure, if you're B. Dubs or B.K. those facts can be easier to mask. However, even a quick causal restaurant's kitchen can become decimated by trying to serve both in house patrons and erratic floods of online orders. The logistics of food supply and staffing can often turn into kitchen nightmares. If you're a restaurant with any kind of integrity for you're product why would you embrace that?

nebport5 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 10:04 pm Executing higher quality foods with delivery apps are incongruent. Stirnella is not the kind of place to rely on take out business.

I remember a negative review written for Mahogany Prime before COVID where the reviewer was mad because they were staying at a nearby hotel and called Mahogany Prime for takeout and the person on the phone informed them, "We don't offer takeout orders." The closest you were going to get to takeout orders is dining-in and asking for a box.

nebport5 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 10:04 pm Why do you think you pay so much for alcohol at a restaurant? If you want to be successful you have to make money elsewhere to offset food costs.

I have noticed that the drink section on a lot of chain restaurant menus has gone from being a separate menu or being on the back of the menu and is now, in some cases, the first page of the menu. You also get an immediate upsell from the server after you're seated to try a margarite or whatever. It's safe to say there's a lot of margin on alcohol.

nebport5 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 10:04 pm And as for restaurants who've embraced delivery apps you can generally count on the quality and consistency to go down. Sure, if you're B. Dubs or B.K. those facts can be easier to mask. However, even a quick causal restaurant's kitchen can become decimated by trying to serve both in house patrons and erratic floods of online orders. The logistics of food supply and staffing can often turn into kitchen nightmares. If you're a restaurant with any kind of integrity for you're product why would you embrace that?

I've been preaching this for years. I don't know why so many people resort to takeout/delivery when it is such an inferior dining experience. You're still paying full price (sometimes you're even paying more) but you're not getting the full service or the ambiance. Though, you'll still be pressured to leave a full tip. The food is trapped in a takeout container where it will spend the next 20 minutes homogenizing and losing its texture until you finally get around to eating it. Seriously, people, let's renormalize sitting your butt down *IN* the restaurant and enjoying the hot fresh food the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Also, don't be shamed out of dining-in because you're dining alone.

I agree. I would estimate that in the 3.5 years since Covid hit my husband and I have done Take Out (we go to the restaurant and pick up the food, bring it home and eat it at home) maybe once or twice a month the first year of Covid. That was either Chinese or pizza…things we were taking out pre-Covid, so it was nothing new to us. We have ordered delivery of Chinese to our house precisely once. And I recall Pickleman’s sandwiches one time. We have not had any other meal delivered to our home. Ever.
As Chad mentioned, we are willing to pay restaurant prices when we are getting to enjoy restaurant ambiance, someone waiting on us, someone setting the table, refilling our drink glasses, and clearing the table and washing the dishes after we finish eating. That’s all built in to the prices charged by restaurants. If you aren’t getting restaurant ambiance and getting waited on and not having to worry about setting a table and washing the meal dishes, why would you still want to pay full restaurant prices (or even more than full price)? It simply makes no sense to us. So we don’t indulge in that luxury that obviously some people can afford and choose to do. To each their own.
My husband and I both enjoy cooking. We own a stove and a gas grill (actually 2 of each). And we have them because we use them all of the time. We also love dining out, but when we want someone else to cook for us we also want the full service treatment. For us, dining out is a treat.
Sorry to hear about Stirnella closing. We never ate there. The restaurant name always befuddled me. It didn’t sound like someone’s name or anything I could picture in my head. And we never eat in Blackstone because of the parking hassles. We do eat at Midtown Crossing, downtown, the Old Market and Capitol District because parking really isn’t that difficult.