Yes, you sometimes have to go stand in another part of the restaurant, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, looming over someone else's table while you consider your options. Also, you feel like you want to take notes sometimes, so you can bring it all back to your table to ponder over. Inevitably, someone has brushed up against the chalkboard at some point during the day/night and one of the sides is smudged so you can't tell if ____ed Potatoes was supposed to say Mashed or Roasted. 

Regardless, there is an undeniable charm and virtue to the hand written chalkboard menu. It almost always changes daily. It changes because the best and the freshest of ingredients found in a Farmer's Market on a Tuesday aren't the same as those found on a Saturday. It changes because the mood, temper and whim of the chef changed. It changes because we love variety in what we eat as much as any true chef loves variety in what they make. It changes because someone loves what they do enough to make the effort to change it every day. 

Dixie Quicks Magnolia Room on Levenworth Street near downtown Omaha, NE is one of those places. What had been a quiet brunch, lunch and dinner spot, popular with locals in the know, lept into the Omaha food limelight with a visit from Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. With that kind of exposure, the rest of Omaha found out what the lucky few already knew, Dixie Quicks serves up great food. 

Now, as their website will tell you, don't consider going without reservations. It's a small place, with a small staff, just a few tables and a managable flow of people in and out the door, made managable by the fact that almost everyone has their reservation. 

The chalkboard menu, as covered above, varies daily. If you go in for lunch at 11am (or brunch on a weekend), you'll find a nice selection of breakfast items on the menu along with lunch entrees, salads and sandwiches. 

For our trips to Dixie Quicks, my lovely fiancee and I enjoyed an early lunch and a morning brunch there. The first trip, we were both hungry. I went with their blackened salmon patties served with a tomato butter, rice, cornbread and black eyed peas. The salmon was perfectly blackened with a bit of spice which emphasized the taste of the salmon, instead of hiding it. The tomato butter is butter and tomatoes, with spices, melted together into a dipping or pouring sauce that went great with the salmon and the rice. 

That same meal Julia had an Apple Brie Omelette. A very large, fluffy omelette stuffed to exploding with melted brie and thinly slivered al dente apple slices. It was fluffy, with texture from the apples, sweet, salty and outstanding. 

Our second trip...well, there's no delicate way to put it, I was a bit hung over. I just went with an order of their biscuits and gravy, but I was impressed. Growing up in a household with genuine, down home, southern cooking, I grew up with fantastic biscuits and gravy...world class. So, I am very reluctant to order it in a restaurant, it's almost always disappointing. 

Well, Dixie Quicks impressed me. They had drop biscuits, tender and flaky, but dense and hearty covered in a thick, salty black pepper sausage gravy with chunks of sausage in it. For a hangover, it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Some stick to your ribs food. 

Meanwhile, Julia enjoyed their Dixie Quicks Breakfast Quesadilla. A large flour tortilla was stuffed with cheese, eggs, some veggies and other goodies, turned over into a half moon and melted down, then sliced into triangles. All of the great flavors of breakfast and all of the great fun of a Quesadilla together in one dish. 

Though I only had two opportunities to eat at Dixie Quicks during my time in Omaha, I will definitely list it as one of the places I miss. And you know what, don't be bashful about standing there in the middle of the dining room, looming over someone's table, while you read the chalkboard menu. At one time or another, chances are everyone else there has had a table off to the side and has been in your shoes, having to stand and read the menu for themselves. They'll understand. 

Make your reservations, ready your appetite and enjoy one of the true culinary gems of the midwest.