Nebraska’s restaurant scene is losing familiar names this month, including an Omaha barbecue destination that is preparing to leave its longtime Aksarben Village home. The closings arrive as restaurant closures across America continue affecting everything from independent dining rooms to recognizable regional chains.
Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ in Omaha
Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ is expected to leave its restaurant at 1912 South 67th Street in Omaha’s Aksarben Village when its lease expires this July.
The restaurant decided not to renew the lease, and the building’s owner, Noddle Companies, has already begun looking for another restaurant to take over the space.
Oklahoma Joe’s was a personal project of the late Omaha restaurant executive Greg Cutchall, founder of Cutchall Management Co., who died in 2022. Its location in Aksarben placed the barbecue restaurant in the middle of one of Omaha’s busiest dining and entertainment districts after it opened there in November 2018.
One point of frequent confusion is worth clearing up: despite the name, this Oklahoma Joe’s is not the Kansas City barbecue institution many Omahans know. That restaurant, once also called Oklahoma Joe’s, rebranded as Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que in 2014 and has no connection to this chain. The Oklahoma Joe’s closing in Omaha is a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based operation owned by pitmaster Joe Davidson, best known as the man who originally built Oklahoma Joe’s smokers.
The closure will not be the first recent change for Oklahoma Joe’s in the area. The chain’s west Omaha location at 1405 South 204th Street in Elkhorn closed permanently on December 31, 2024 (a Qdoba is planned for that space), leaving the Aksarben location as the last Oklahoma Joe’s in Nebraska. An earlier Lincoln location in the Haymarket district opened in mid-2017 and closed after just six months.
For regulars, July represents the end of that connection at a location where customers could gather for burnt ends, ribs and pulled pork without making the trip south to Kansas City or Oklahoma.
China Garden in Lincoln
Reports surfaced in early July that a China Garden location in Lincoln had closed, appearing in a roundup of local business changes.
The status of this closure is difficult to confirm. Lincoln has more than one restaurant operating under the China Garden name, and the best-known location, at 2901 S. 84th Street, appears to remain open with current business hours as of this writing. If a separate China Garden location has closed, few details about which one or what prompted the shutdown were immediately available.
Neighborhood Chinese restaurants often become part of a community’s routine in a way that is difficult to replace. They are the dependable places people call for a weeknight dinner, a familiar takeout order or a meal that does not require much planning. When one closes, regular customers lose a familiar menu and the comfort of knowing exactly where to go when they want their usual order.
Readers hoping to visit a specific China Garden location may want to call ahead to confirm it is still operating.
Nebraska’s list is short, but the losses still matter
Nebraska did not experience the long list of restaurant shutdowns reported in some neighboring states during the same period.
Still, the expected departure of Oklahoma Joe’s affects a meaningful group of customers — a prominent regional barbecue name leaving one of Omaha’s most active developments after nearly seven years.
Whether a restaurant is independent or part of a recognizable brand, every closure leaves regular customers searching for a new place to fill the gap.
Links on this page may be affiliate links, for which the site earns a small commission, but the price for you is the same
Leave a Comment