Dino's Eastside Grille Lincoln, NE

Ever heard of this place? Today, we tried to find it so we could try it out.  It began as an uphill battle to try something new.  Ever have a difficult time attempting to introduce some thing, place, or idea new to your family?  It can be an all out war can't it? 

So it started with "Let's try something new for lunch today."  Every Sunday we go out to lunch after church as a family including my niece and nephew as well at most.  Sometimes just the niece or just the nephew joins us.  Like today, we had only our nephew along and I am glad he was with us by the end of our adventure.  He was game for anything being a starving college student so it being my pick (we take turns who gets to pick which restaurant), I decided on something new.  A place I had only driven past and vaguely remembered the vicinity in which it might be located.  I did not know the name either.  Imagine how this went with a car full of right brained Type B personality men?

We ended up finding the place thanks to my great sense of visual direction.  As we pulled into the strip mall there was a chorus of groans "I was looking forward to an actual restaurant not a place to eat in a strip mall."  "Yeah, me either." "Great, this is going to be good." (Me: I'm picking up on your sarcasm. Jon: Good, cuz I'm laying it on pretty thick.)  "Let's give it a try" I cojoled.   They agreed to at least check out the menu before calling it quits.  Much to everyone's surprise (and my sheer joy) it looked like a nice restaurant inside, not a strip mall eatery at all!  I thought this would for sure get me acquiensence if not praise to my brilliant restaurant idea.  Nope.  They complained about the brunch menu.  "Can't we get lunch?" as we walked to the table, "I was looking forward to lunch."  "Aren't there any real menus in this place?"  Well, by the time we sat down I was beginning to lose my cool.  I kept a front going that fooled them all.  Until, my oldest ordered a Mountain Dew and they actually had Pepsi products.  I jumped all over that "Oh, look, the horrible new restaurant with a brunch menu has your favorite pop. Weren't you just saying there were no restaurants anymore serving Pepsi products.  Low and behold when you try something new you just might find you like it and may even love it!"  My nephew came to my rescue and the salvation of our family's lunch by warning me "That might just be a little much.  You might want to tone it down." Knowing my intention really was to shout "I told you all so!"  Fun, light conversation ensued and we have oru nephew to thank for that!

So...the menus.  Lunch menus were available so we ordered our staple beef nacho as an appetizer, then your general bar food: burgers, reuben, pizza.  You could also order entrees so I had a cedar plank salmon with mango salsa salad.  All were quite happy with their food selection.  Evidently the BBQ Bacon Burger was the best my nephew's ever had.  I enjoyed the salad dressing and salmon/mango salsa combination on my salad and Jon enjoyed the reuben.  "It wasn't the best he'd ever had but it was quite good."  At any rate, although it looked like the beginning of World War three, I did get a high five and good job from the group set on "trying something new for lunch this time."