Nosh Restaurant
One glance at the menu at Nosh Restaurant on 1006 Dodge St., and it’s obvious the new owner, Jamie Costine, has a wicked sense of humor. Dishes like Hatch Me If You Can, What the Duck? and Broc It Like It’s Hot—and the latest cocktail, Citrus Got Real—jump off the page and invite diners to a taste of Costine’s eclectic palate.
“Food is supposed to be fun,” Costine said. “It’s not supposed to be so stuffy. I want it to have that elevated feel, but I don’t want it to be that stuffy that people come in here and say, ‘Oh my gosh, am I dressed appropriately for this?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, you can come in your pajamas if you want!’ I try to keep it light-hearted.”
Costine, who was born in Arizona and raised in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, grew up learning to cook dishes like lumpia (Filipino spring rolls) through frequent visits with her feisty Filipino grandmother. Since taking ownership of Nosh in April 2025, Costine has sprinkled the menu with her family’s influences, even naming one of the dishes after her grandmother, Lola Lee’s Lumpia.
Owning her own restaurant has been a lifelong dream, but Costine has always had an entrepreneurial spirit—from owning her own hot dog cart to stocking car washes with gum-ball machines. After moving to Omaha in 2016, the opportunity presented itself in the midst of an illness. From 2024-2025, Costine said, she got “really sick” and was on disability.
“I was working in finance for nine years and all of a sudden I couldn’t go to work,” she said. “I had been bothering my husband about it for years and I’ve always wanted to own a restaurant. I’d pitched a couple other locations to him in the past, and he was like, ‘No, it’s not the right time. It’s not the right location.’ But when I was on disability, I cooked all the time. He saw how it calmed me down and made me really happy.”
While on disability, Costine found herself cooking constantly, reigniting her passion for food. When the opportunity to purchase Nosh from previous owner Erick Niemeier arose, the timing felt serendipitous.
“On a Friday, we came and looked at it,” she explained. “Monday, we put an offer in, and on Tuesday he accepted it. Everything just lined up perfectly and they wanted to close right away. It was a whirlwind.”
For the first six months, Costine experimented with the menu as she tried to determine which dishes she should keep or eliminate.
“It was a lot of trial and error,” she said. “We liked some of the dishes that they had on the original Nosh menu, and we have quite a following with a lot of the residents who live in the building, so we wanted to pick the most popular things. Then, I chose personally what I liked and what I liked to cook, and we would run specials to see what were the most popular. If something really wasn’t selling, we got rid of it.”
Though Costine is satisfied with the current menu, she still runs specials on the weekends to flex her creativity, and she’s figured out why her customers keep returning in droves.
“Lola Lee’s Lumpia has become really popular and so have our bruschetta flights,” she said. “People love to mix and match different flavors. The bao buns are really popular, too. We do the open-faced ones, so ours are a little heavier on the breading and a bit thicker, but they’re stuffed full with all of the toppings. They’re really pretty and made with vibrant colors. They’re something you really can’t find anywhere else in Omaha.”
Costine has faced some challenges over the past year, mainly the ongoing streetcar construction in downtown Omaha.
“They blocked off all our parking during the holidays, which is our busiest season. They put a dumpster and a porta-potty right in front of our window. That is the last thing somebody wants to be looking at when they’re trying to enjoy a nice glass of wine and a meal,” she recalled with a laugh.
Despite the two-month inconvenience, Nosh is thriving and Costine is optimistic about the restaurant’s future, which includes dropping the previous “Wine Lounge” part of the name and going solely by Nosh Restaurant.
“We still have the wine wall and the lounge area with couches and smaller tables, but we are making a huge push for our main dining room and corporate and private events,” she said. “Our cocktail list and beer list has also grown. We sell almost as many cocktails as we do wine now.”
Costine was also mindful of vegans and vegetarians, especially in the wake of vegan restaurants like Modern Love permanently closing. Non-meat options include Olive the Rave, Mack Attack & Cheese, I’m the Fungi, and the veggie lumpia.
“We are looking to eventually open up a second location probably out west,” she said. “We just started opening for lunch, too, and we can get people in and out in 30 minutes.
We’re really just focused on creating our own identity. As time goes on, people are seeing it as a completely different place, and that’s really cool.”
