25 Minutes from Lincoln

Worth leaving town for.

Name: Old Main Restaurant + Bar
Address: 1103 Main Street, Crete, NE, 68333, US
Telephone: +1-402-418-7101
Price range: $31-50

We are not in Lincoln, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. We are twenty-five minutes southwest of it — and here is what is waiting at the end of the drive.

Straight Talk

We are not in Lincoln.

Old Main is on Main Street in Crete — roughly twenty-five minutes southwest of Lincoln, most of it a straight run on NE-33. That is a real drive, and we are not going to dress it up as a neighborhood option.

What we will say is that people make it on purpose, on a Tuesday, in February. Below is why.

Six reasons people make the drive

A member of the Old Main team by the dry-aging cabinet just inside the front door, holding a dessert and a specialty coffee

Beef you cannot get in town

Dry-aged Angus from the owners’ own herd, hanging in a cabinet by the front door. Not sourced, not distributed — raised a few miles from the table you are sitting at.

The beef program

Two floors, two completely different nights

A quiet fine-dining room downstairs and a social floor above it with twenty self-pour taps, golf simulators, and pool. Start formal, end loud, never move the car.

The upstairs floor

Pour detail

Pour your own beer

Twenty taps on a self-pour wall, charged by the ounce. Try six things you have never heard of for the price of one pint, without flagging anybody down.

The beer wall

Golf in February

Two simulator bays upstairs with real courses and real ball data, open through a Nebraska winter. Food and twenty taps within putting distance.

The simulators

Swing in the bay

A band playing the beer garden stage at sunset, string lights strung over full picnic tables

Live music with room to stand

Four thousand square feet of beer garden behind the building, and bands in it all summer. Outdoor live music is thin on the ground closer in.

What’s coming up

A building with an actual story

Standing since 1910, gutted by fire in 2024, rebuilt over twenty-two months with woodwork the owners milled themselves. You can see the work from your seat.

The rebuild

Crete history wall

The hanging Old Main Restaurant + Bar sign against the brick facade on Main Street in Crete, Nebraska

Getting Here

Twenty-five minutes, one turn to remember.

From Lincoln, take NE-33 southwest through Denton and Pleasant Dale into Crete. The highway becomes Main Street; we are at 1103, on the corner, with the hanging sign.

Parking is on the street and free, which is its own small argument for leaving town.

1103 Main Street, Crete, NE 68333

Get driving directions