Steak Town USA: Buffett’s fave steakhouse, Omaha legend Gorat’s, is reinvesting in its own future

If you, like me, haven’t made your way into Gorat’s Steakhouse in years, I have a surprise for you: It’s time to go back.

Gorat’s is good again. 

I went into this fourth installment of Steak Town USA not knowing exactly what I was going to find on the menu, but hoping to lean into the legend of Gorat’s and its most famous diner, the soon-to-be retiree Warren Buffett. 

What I found was a blend of the staples I remembered from the past — including the Omaha billionaire’s favorite T-bone with a side of hash browns  — next to several new dishes, higher-quality beef and an altogether updated experience. 

It was refreshing. And tasty. 

Gorat’s has changed owners several times in its 81-year history at 49th and Center streets.

Louis S. Gorat and his wife, Nettie, opened the restaurant in 1944. Their son, Louis N. “Pal” Gorat, and his wife, Shirley, took it over in 1960. 

In 2012, the Gorat family sold the restaurant to longtime restaurateur Gene Dunn, who remodeled it, restored its historic sign and updated its menu. Then Dunn sold the steakhouse in 2019 to current owners Jimmy and Tammy Chen, who recently changed management in both the front of the house and in the kitchen. 

Chef Josh Saligheh is now running the kitchen, and his mother, Cathy, along with his partner Ashley Blodgett, are running the front of the house. Cathy spent 24 years working at Little Italy’s Lo Sole Mio before it closed; her son worked there with her for 10.

Josh Saligheh and Blodgett both started working at Gorat’s in 2019. A few years later, he became head chef. This is where the narrative we all know takes a turn toward a true reimagining of Gorat’s. 

“We are really focused on reviving the place,” he said. “The old-school Italian steakhouse business model is kind of dying out in this economy. We wanted to keep the Italian steakhouse vibe, but try to modernize it, refresh everything, and focus on more creative things, more exciting things, really.”

The trio has started to rethink the dining rooms, changing artwork, replacing furniture and dimming the lights. There’s new lighting in the bar, with more to come, and smaller touches, like fresh napkins and higher-end steak knives at each seat that improve the experience. They’ve upgraded the food quality, the presentation and the service. People, Josh said, are starting to notice.

I think there are several dishes any returning Gorat’s diner should consider, but if you’d rather follow in the footsteps of the world’s fourth-richest person, here’s the intel. Though Warren has ordered the T-bone, hash browns and Cherry Coke he’s mentioned many times on television, his more recent order includes a chicken fried chicken with extra white gravy. The Oracle of Omaha also loved a sandwich, the Custer, that’s no longer on the menu but that Josh described this way: “An open face piece of marble rye, Swiss cheese, red onion, shaved turkey breast, an insane amount of shredded iceberg lettuce, an even more insane amount of Thousand Island dressing, and then, like, 13 pieces of bacon,” he said. “And he would just devour this thing.”

Our steaktown lineup doesn’t include any of Warren’s favorites, and though we stuck to our plan it took some surprising turns during the course of one dinner.

We started off strong with the best set of cocktails we have had at any of the steakhouses thus far aside from the Committee Chophouse: a well-balanced Negroni garnished with a slice of blood orange, and a nicely executed Manhattan (no floating ice chips in sight.) 

I have memories of the flaky, savory Gorat’s onion rings; they’ve been given a modern, spicier makeover. Josh said the previous recipe was time consuming and messy. The kitchen now dips the rings in a wet batter versus the previous double dip they used to get in a thin wash and flour. The new rings are super crispy and flavorful. They’re not what you remember, but they’re good in a different way, served with a side of smoky chipotle ranch for dipping. 

Our usual steak orders both arrived a tad overcooked. My medium rare filet was close to medium. Matthew’s ribeye, ordered medium, was a touch too close to medium-well. 

But a new addition to the menu ended up saving both steaks: God’s butter. Part of a shortlist of whipped compound butters you can add to your dish for a few dollars extra, the God’s butter is surely the Cadillac of the list, featuring foie gras, truffle oil, honey and parsley. It’s deeply savory with a hint of sweetness, and absolutely delicious added to just about anything, I’d imagine, but in particular on beef. 

I remember the Gorat’s baked potato’s heavy hand with both sour cream and whipped butter, and that has stayed the same: two big dollops of each top the spud, and the butter slowly melts into its center, where there’s a hefty bit of shredded cheese and bacon. The whole thing is finished with finely diced chives. It’s crisp and tender, with varied texture and plenty of flavor. 

We ended up ordering a few specialty items — several dishes on the new menu looked good enough to try, and all three turned out to be winners. 

As soon as I eyeballed the O.G. meat sauce on the menu, based on a Gorat’s family recipe from the 1940s, I knew I was ordering a plate.

Josh said the meat sauce is indeed based on an old family recipe that was once printed in a community cookbook. He jazzed it up, using house-ground steak, beef tenderloin and a tomato sauce seasoned with red pepper flakes and cooked with a house-made beef stock. 

It is rich and deeply savory, with nice textural interest that comes from the blend of ground meat and hunks of juicy tenderloin. I recommend ordering it without hesitation. 

The same goes for the lobster macaroni and cheese, sized for sharing. Josh said the restaurant is slowly moving from a menu where bread and salad are included — that is no more at Gorat’s — to a more modern, a-la carte steakhouse experience. Plenty of seafood is nestled inside al dente shell shaped pasta, then wrapped in a thick, truffle-spiked creamy cheese sauce. The bowl is finished with crispy gremolata bread crumbs flavored with parsley, garlic, and lemon zest.

Cathy noted during our interview that the restaurant isn’t using any premade or frozen food on its menu, and that Josh is making everything from scratch in the kitchen, including the salad dressings, seasoning, grill salt for the steaks and the desserts.

This brings me to the carrot cake. 

A slice is enormous, with three thick layers of spiced, moist cake sandwiched between thick layers of homemade cream cheese frosting, the top finished with a pretty piped design. This dessert isn’t reinventing anything at all. It’s simply and undeniably good. 

Once a restaurant has been around as long as Gorat’s has, it’s easy to settle into complacency. It’s why this reinvention, a mix of modernizing some things while simultaneously returning to the restaurant’s roots, is so smart and so needed. The Sunday gravy is one example. So is Josh’s plan to return to a legendary Gorat’s practice of aging meat on site in the restaurant’s basement. Live music on weekends is another look back, but new bands and musicians are now filling the bar space, taking the tradition forward for new audiences.

I agree that the Omaha old-school Italian steakhouse is a dying breed, but I think we can officially remove Gorat’s from the list of steakhouses on the way out. It’s on a new path now, one of, hopefully, a bright future that will appeal to a whole new generation of diners and welcome in Warren, who, after announcing his early retirement last week at age 94, might have a bit more free time to stop by.