The Future of Cocktails Is Already Happening in Omaha
Anna’s Place isn’t a speakeasy. It’s not a theme bar.
We’re just a cocktail bar in Omaha — and we care a lot about what’s in your glass.
When we opened Anna’s Place, the goal was simple: make unforgettable drinks using house-made ingredients, local flavor, and a little grit. Now we’re taking everything we’ve learned and flipping the script on how cocktails get served in this city.
Why the Cocktail Scene Shifted
If you were drinking (or bartending) ten years ago, you remember the era. Omaha bars were buzzing with classics, revivals, obscure spirits, and long-winded stories about ingredients. People were learning what made a Negroni tick. The culture around cocktails was booming.
Then COVID hit.
Bars closed. Industry veterans left. And a whole generation of new drinkers missed out on that transfer of knowledge — the mentorship, the vibe, the unspoken rules of what made a cocktail matter. For a while, drinks got simpler. Seltzers ruled. Vodka + fruit was back.
Now? We’re moving forward — and we’re doing it our way.
What We’re Launching at Anna’s Place
Starting in August, Anna’s Place will debut two full pages of house-made, ready-to-drink cocktails. These are carbonated, bottled drinks served just like a beer or a seltzer. Pop the cap, pour, and enjoy.
But here’s the catch — everything inside the bottle is made right here, by us.
We carbonate in-house
We make all the syrups ourselves
We infuse our own spirits
No co-packing. No gimmicks. Just solid technique, bottled
You’ll still find balance, creativity, and layered flavor — just served in a way that fits how people drink now.
Why This Matters for Omaha
We want to be the bar that shows Omaha a new lane for great drinks.
Not everything needs to be stirred for 10 minutes. Not every cocktail needs to feel like a ceremony. You can get something excellent — made by hand — in under a minute. No shortcuts, just better systems.
We’re not abandoning the old ways. We’re just translating them into something faster, smarter, and more fun.
Try Them Before Everyone Else
Our bottled cocktail menu launches in August. Come see what we’re building at Anna’s Place in downtown Omaha, inside Hotel Indigo at 1804 Dodge Street.
Want to write about it? We’re happy to share behind-the-scenes access, ingredient sourcing, or the weird nerdy stuff we’ve been doing to dial this in.
Contact: info@annasplaceomaha.com
Reading Between the Lines: A Closer Look at Tarot Tuesdays in Omaha
Documenting a weekly ritual inside Anna’s Place
On Tuesday nights, something a little quieter happens in downtown Omaha.
There’s no DJ. No stage. No QR codes promising bucket deals.
Just a small, dark room. A reader. A deck of cards. And you.
This is Tarot Tuesdays at Anna’s Place—a bar tucked inside a hotel, known more for its cocktails and calm than its crowd. From 9 p.m. to midnight, the room shifts. It doesn’t get louder—it gets deeper.
And people keep coming back.
A Different Kind of Bar
Anna’s Place isn’t a theme night. It’s not a pop-up. It’s not trying to go viral.
It’s a bar built on intentionality. That applies to the drinks—crafted with house-made ingredients and months of testing—but it also applies to the energy in the room. There’s a ritual at the door: new guests are asked to keep voices down, phones dimmed, and to wait for a staff member to let them in.
It’s not pretentious.
It’s about creating a space where people can relax without needing to perform.
And that makes it the perfect setting for something like tarot.
What Tarot Really Is
Most people still think of tarot as fortune-telling.
But anyone who’s sat with a good reader knows that’s not quite right.
Tarot isn’t about predicting your future—it’s about checking in with your present.
It’s a conversation. A moment of reflection.
For some, it’s the first time all week they’ve stopped to think about what’s actually going on in their own head.
For others, it’s a tool they’ve used for years—one that helps them name what they’re feeling when the words won’t come.
At Anna’s Place, you’ll meet readers like Knox and Madame Davina, who alternate Tuesdays. Each brings a different style, but they share the same approach: quiet connection, gentle guidance, no theatrics.
The bar doesn’t promise transformation.
But if you’re open to it, you might leave with more clarity than you came in with.
Why It Works
Something about the room makes it easier to talk.
Maybe it’s the candlelight.
Maybe it’s the fact that there’s no TV shouting over your shoulder.
Maybe it’s the drink in your hand that was mixed with more attention than you expected.
Whatever it is, people show up for it.
And unlike most spaces where spiritual practices are either hidden or hyped, here it’s just part of the rhythm.
Like everything else, it’s approached with care.
No Gimmicks. No Flash. Just Time to Think.
If you’re someone who prefers meaning to noise…
If you’ve been feeling a little too full and a little too disconnected…
If you’re just looking for something in Omaha that feels real—
You’ll find something worth sitting with at Tarot Tuesday.
Tarot Tuesdays | 9 p.m. to Midnight
Anna’s Place — annasplaceomaha.com
Follow @annasplaceomaha for weekly updates.
What It Really Takes to Make a Cocktail Completely From Scratch
In the age of Google search, every bar is battling to get to the top. To do it, they load their sites with certain key terms: craft cocktail, speakeasy, best bar in Omaha. The problem is, a lot of programs using those words aren’t actually delivering on them.
House-made tequila and tonic, crafted from scratch at Anna’s Place in downtown Omaha.
Take “speakeasy,” for example. There’s a bar in town that claims to be one — but it’s only a speakeasy one or two nights a week, and it doesn’t even have a roof. I’m sorry, but that’s not a speakeasy.
Same goes for “craft cocktails.” You can have a cocktail program, but that doesn’t mean you’re craft. You can be pulling bottles off the shelf all night long, but that doesn’t make it craft. We’ve run that word into the ground so hard it’s practically lost meaning.
That’s why Anna’s Place has started referring to ourselves as a from scratch bar program.
From Scratch Means Intentional
We make as much as we can in-house. Not for show, not for Instagram, but because it changes the drink. We don’t have a soda gun behind the bar — on purpose. That doesn’t mean we don’t have cola. We make it, bottle it, and have it ready.
We infuse spirits for specific drinks, not as a generic replacement for something mass-produced. A good example is our coconut rum. It’s infused with a certain cocktail in mind, and we only make enough to support that drink. So no, you can’t get it with our cola just to make a Malibu and Coke — because if we served what everyone else serves, we’d stop being different.
We’re here for people looking for something new. Something they can’t get anywhere else.
Some Good Things Just Take Time
Restaurants know some things can’t be rushed. You don’t marinate chicken for five minutes and expect flavor. Cocktails are the same way.
Recently, I was making a house amaro. I had a great blend of herbs and spices, balanced like perfume. But on day one, it tasted flat. The alcohol was too sharp, and the subtle notes were buried. So I walked away.
The next day, those harsh ethanol vapors had mellowed, and the beauty of the herbs and spices came forward.
This is the part people never see. Bartending is what happens in front of the guest. The so-called “mixology” — a word that actually started as an insult in the 1800s — happens in the back room, with scales, calculators, and metric units. Up front I work in ounces; in the back, it’s grams.
That’s the difference between a drink made for speed and a drink built from the ground up.
The Vibe Is Part of the Recipe
I love the drinks — they’re why I’m in this industry — but the room itself changes the experience.
When people ask where else to go, I don’t just tell them who has a good drink. I ask what vibe they want: dark nightclub? Dance floor? Hipster brunch?
Anna’s Place is intentional. Low lights, mostly red. Bass-heavy music you feel more than hear. It’s a conversational space, where you can actually talk to the person across from you. Some of history’s best ideas were born in a bar conversation, and we’d love to be part of that.
We have rules so people can enjoy the room the way it was meant to be enjoyed. It’s not to be boring — it’s so your evening doesn’t get hijacked by someone else’s bad night.
Heat With Restraint
One of the newer spices I’ve been working with is long pepper, part of the black peppercorn family. We put a drink on the menu called Spicy Lemon. It’s basically a 7UP with a slow-building heat — no jalapeños, no gimmicks. The only way to cool it is to take another drink, so you end up in a loop.
It’s refreshing like a Moscow Mule without being one. We don’t make ginger beer because we’re not here to push Mules. We want to give people a different experience.
People like it enough to take it home — Nebraska allows cocktails to go, so I seal them in bottles. It’s satisfying knowing a drink connects enough for someone to carry it out with them.
Why the Parties Matter
If this sounds like your kind of thing, come to one of our cocktail parties at the end of the month. That’s when we introduce new drinks, explain the inspiration, tell the ingredient stories, and you get to talk to the person who designed it.
That’s not something you can get on just any Friday or Saturday night at most bars in downtown Omaha.
From scratch isn’t a tagline here — it’s how we work. And if you’re looking for the best cocktails in Omaha, the ones you can’t find anywhere else, you’ll find them in our hidden speakeasy.