Stokes Grill and Bar

With two locations in the Omaha Metro (12th and Howard in the Old Market and 13615 California Street in West Omaha) Stokes Grill & Bar focuses on southwestern Tex Mex cuisine. They have Happy Hour daily from 3-6p as well as a late night one from 9p to close. Beer, wine, margaritas and cocktails are on special ranging from $2.50 Corona bottles to $5.50 signature martinis. Selected tapas are discounted including the ceviche, tacos, wings and nachos (prices range from $3.50 to $6.95). Pretty reasonable prices for a Happy Hour that runs 7 days a week.

Although the menu didn’t specify if HH is bar area only we decided to sit there since they were pretty empty the Saturday afternoon my mother and I visited. We arrived at the tail end of the 3-6p HH and ordered pretty quickly. The restaurant is very dark, with a nice outdoor seating area as well as party rooms for special occasions. Decor matches the southwest theme at times being a little kitchy. At first our waiter/bartender was pretty prompt, taking our drink and food order. As there weren’t very many people sitting at the bar or in the restaurant in general we figured things would go relatively smoothly. There were quite a few people seated outdoors who would come in to order from the bar, something I found a little strange since there were tons of wait staff milling about the entirety of our visit. Our bartender brought our first drinks out pretty promptly but despite the small crowd our food took quite a while to come out. 

To start I ordered a strawberry margarita ($4). As far as margaritas go it was pretty standard. Couldn’t tell if they used fresh strawberries in their mix but not a lot of places do so this didn’t bother me much. The drink itself wasn’t very strong so Stokes won’t be top of mind next time I really want a marg and some chips (which is every other Tuesday honestly).

The first tapa that come out of the kitchen was the Chorizo Queso Dip ($4: white cheese topped with ground chorizo; served with tortilla chips). There are two things you need to know about me and queso: 1) I love it to death and 2) it doesn’t take much for me to like your queso (I’m a big fan of Qdoba’s). Keeping this in mind, Stokes chorizo queso dip is terrible. They literally put maybe a teaspoon of the chorizo in it. Not even enough for the dip to turn terra cotta colored when stirred. The dip came out lukewarm which is also a problem for me. Warm queso with warm chips should be like the southwestern restaurant standard I can get this right dish. My last point of contention with the dip was that it was obviously just a bowl of white Velveeta poorly heated up. Now while I hate Velveeta in theory, again I’m not a queso snob and know this is used in most quesos I like. The difference being most restaurants add other things to mask the plain white “cheese” blockness of Velveeta. 

Next I tried the wings ($5: grilled chicken wings served with Stokes’ BBQ sauce and sriracha). As I’m trying to eat a bit healthier I liked that these wings were grilled instead of fried as well as the fact that both sauces were included so you didn’t have to pick one or the other. The wings were hot when they arrived so points for Stokes. They were also well seasoned so I ate a few plain. I’d have liked them to have been grilled a bit longer to add a bit of texture or bite to them. The bbq sauce was pretty good, not too sweet or spicy. I had a problem with the sriracha though. Not with the actual sauce, which I love, but with Stokes’ decision to decorate the plate with it instead of just giving me a bowl of it. I get it, they wanted it to be plated nicely. But drawing patterns with it on my plate ends up in me not having a lot to put on my wings. What if I hated bbq sauce and wanted every wing coated in hot sauce? Logically I could have just asked for more sriracha but our waiter progressively got worse so that was out the window. Still the wings were the best thing I had at Stokes that night.

My last tapa was the taquitos ($4: black bean and corn taquitos served with spicy warmed green chili sauce). The taquitos came baked instead of fried (something healthier me liked) but the thicker tortilla used for this dish may have been better utilized fried. The black bean corn mixture was very bland almost as though they poured it straight from a can. I loved the green chili sauce (even though it wasn’t warm) but I hated the fact that I had to drown the taquitos in it for a hint of flavor. In the end I ended up leaving most of them on the plate.

While ordering my last drink my Stokes experience got worse. First the bartender decided to remind me it wasn’t HH anymore (something I had acknowledged already. We arrived at about 5:48 and I told him I wanted to make my INITIAL order before HH was over. I had no problems paying full price for my second drink as it is also on the HH menu for the purpose of the review). I got a Kentucky Derby, one of their copper cup cocktails ($5: Bulleit Bourbon, fresh lime juice, ginger beer). I love the little copper cups these are served in and am glad more restaurants are offering these for more than just gimlets as I’m not a huge gin or vodka drinker. Loved that this version used Bulleit, one of my favorite bourbons. I had very high expectations since my go to order at the bar is whiskey/bourbon and ginger ale/beer. Sadly this had way too much lime for my liking. You could barely taste the ginger beer, let alone the bourbon.

We asked for our check however our waiter/bartender decided the randoms at the bar and his co-workers at the plating area were more interesting. After waiting about 10-15 minutes to pay my bill I ended up waving down another bartender who had just arrived and gave him my money. It would be hard for me to recommend Stokes Grill and Bar to anyone from my experience. While the service may be better on other nights/visits the food and drinks weren’t the stuff dreams are made of (yes I dream about food, so what). I hate to do it but I really can’t give Stokes Grill & Bar any smiles.