Vegan Restaurant Fifth House Redefines Comfort Food
Fifth House Executive Chef Liam Smith needed to know one thing when Mark Gregory approached him about opening a vegan restaurant. “Why are you doing this?” Smith recalled asking over coffee. “Because you have to be a little crazy to open a restaurant—but it’s like a good kind of crazy.”
It turns out Gregory and Smith had just the right blend of adventure for a no-meat-or-dairy match made in heaven. Gregory, an IT professional by day and serial entrepreneur by night, worked his way through several Omaha restaurants beginning in high school and had been looking for a vegetarian/vegan chef partner for a few years.
Meanwhile, Smith was stacking credentials over five years at Omaha institution Modern Love, his favorite Omaha restaurant where he’d risen to executive chef under cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz—the same chef whose recipes Smith started cooking at home when he first went vegan at 21. “I was totally fan-girling to get to be around Isa and learn from her,” Smith said of the vegan chef who eventually shut down Modern Love in Omaha.
After that coffee meeting, the duo spent six months searching for the right space and countless hours testing and perfecting homestyle, from-scratch recipes. Fifth House eventually landed on the corner of 39th and Farnam in the Blackstone District, where a planned streetcar stop will eventually deliver diners to Fifth House’s front door ready to discover their new favorite spot. “We’re just a couple of middle-class people who didn’t really have any money trying to make a dream happen,” Gregory said.
Since opening on Halloween in 2025, Fifth House has been proving that vegan comfort food can win over more than just the already converted. The fried chicken delivers a crunch and texture like the real thing. The vegan burgers are unapologetically indulgent. Fifth House doesn’t buy cheese—Smith crafts his own in-house to replicate the texture and flavor of blue cheese. “I’ve viewed food for a long time through a vegetarian or vegan lens, and that’s an exciting way to view food,” Smith said. “But first and foremost, we just want to make good food.”
Smith drained every ounce of inspiration he could from home flavors that his “meat and potatoes” parents used to enjoy, and layered in ideas from his own experimental cooking early in his vegan journey. He then absorbed everything he could from Moskowitz to craft a menu that will surprise and delight. “People may come in skeptical,” Smith said. “They leave planning their next visit.”
Most patrons aren’t vegan—they’re just hungry for food that satisfies without the afternoon slump. This is vegan food that doesn’t whisper its virtues or hide its pleasures. For people with dairy or egg allergies, Fifth House offers something rarer than a plant-based menu—a kitchen that produces food with no fear of those substances even being in the same building. The restaurant operates a dedicated gluten-free fryer. Everything gets made from scratch.
Local oyster mushrooms are battered and fried until they pull apart like actual fried chicken for the most popular Antiestablishmentucky Fried Chicken. Seitan—wheat meat pounded, simmered, and shaped into wings, burgers, pork chops, and meatballs—anchors a menu built on approachable classics like Spaghetti and Beetballs and Not-Your-Mom’s Meatloaf. Add a brown onion gravy with creamy mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and flaky, layered biscuits and butter that are made in-house (coconut oil, olive oil, oat milk, and salt), and you’ll have to check your location to remember you’re not sitting in a deep-fried Southern establishment with all the fixins.
Sichuan Hot Honee Wings—your choice of herb-crusted seitan or crispy cauliflower—are slathered in the unique sauce that is bolstered by Fifth House’s in-house honey. Not a natural vegan product, Smith has perfected his honey creation by cooking down apple juice with chicory root, licorice root, and chamomile. “It literally tastes just like honey,” Smith said. “It’s wild.” Fresh ginger, garlic, and dried chiles give the hot honey sauce its kick.
The Americana, down-home fare continues with a Miniature Pot Pie that’s mom-approved (Smith’s mother frequents Fifth House and is a big fan) and captures the flavors of Smith’s childhood. The mini version creates even more of the “best part of a pot pie”—the crusty, flaky bits of pastry that surround a mixture of seitan chicken, peas, carrots, and a cashew bechamel cream sauce that would have your own mom questioning if somebody raided her recipe box.
The best part of the lighter vegan fare is that you have room for dessert. The Almond Boy Brownie arrives in three decadent layers—coconut candy, chocolate ganache, and a thick brownie base. As for the ice cream, Smith said, “It’s the creamiest ice cream I’ve ever tasted,” and he hasn’t turned back to dairy varieties for over a decade after enjoying his vegan version. Shakes and sundaes are the beneficiary of cashews that are blended until super-creamy. Olive oil provides the fat content, and sugar and vanilla bean paste scraped from actual vanilla pods give the ice cream a pop that will make it your “favorite ice cream,” vegan or otherwise.
Fifth House’s early success has Gregory and Smith already looking ahead to a rotating seasonal menu, an open patio for spring, craft cocktails, and DJed evenings that let diners spill into Blackstone’s nightlife to go with the restaurant’s lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch. For two guys who bonded over the right kind of crazy, things are going exactly according to plan—serving comfort food that tastes like home cooking.
