Ask someone who has lived in Gretna for the last few years where they are grabbing dinner tonight, and you will notice something. They probably will not say downtown.
That is not a knock on downtown Gretna. The historic core along McKenna Avenue is doing exactly what it has always done: hosting the Saturday farmers market, running Chamber events, keeping the Legion hall busy on weekend nights. What it is not doing is where the town's new restaurants are choosing to open. Almost every notable addition to Gretna's food scene over the past year and a half has landed somewhere along the Highway 370 corridor, in the stretch of commercial development that runs roughly from 168th Street out to 192nd. Downtown has stayed the town's civic center. The corridor has become its dining room. If you live here, that split already shapes your week more than you might realize.
The corridor got the restaurants
Start with what has actually opened. Basil's Italian & Ice Cream sits at 16918 Morgan Avenue, near the southwest corner of 168th and Highway 370, serving scratch-made sauces and build-your-own pizzas finished with a drizzle of Nebraska cream cheese. Hawaiian Bros Island Grill claimed its first Omaha-metro location southwest of Interstate 80 and Highway 370, bringing plate lunches to a corner of Sarpy County that used to run almost entirely on drive-thru lanes. Both sit within a few minutes of each other, and both sit within a few minutes of Gretna's Hy-Vee.
Now add what is coming. Construction went vertical as of August 31, 2026, on a retail building northeast of 192nd and Highway 370, immediately west of that same Hy-Vee. It will house Red Door Woodfired Grill's first Gretna location, with an opening penciled in for February. Red Door is a Kansas City-based chain with seven locations across that metro, and its first Nebraska outpost opened June 2, 2026, at Aksarben Village in Omaha. Gretna will be its second Nebraska stop, and the building sits on 192nd Street between Culver's and Citizens Bank, a few hundred feet from a grocery store most residents already visit weekly.
None of this is accidental. Every one of these openings has anchored itself to the same half-mile of highway frontage, the part of town that grew up around convenience and rooftops rather than history. That corridor did not get restaurants because it is charming. It got them because it is where the traffic already is.
Here is the current lineup along that stretch, for anyone keeping a running list:
- Basil's Italian & Ice Cream, 16918 Morgan Avenue, near 168th and Highway 370
- Hawaiian Bros Island Grill, southwest of I-80 and Highway 370
- Red Door Woodfired Grill, under construction on 192nd Street between Culver's and Citizens Bank, opening targeted for February
Marrow broke the pattern
There is one significant exception, and it did not follow the highway logic at all. Marrow opened in September 2025 at 17870 Oakmont Drive, Suite 6, tucked near Tiburon Golf Club on the opposite side of town from the Hy-Vee cluster. It comes from the same ownership group behind Railcar Modern American Kitchen, Timber Wood-Fired Grill, and Pasta Amore, and it has built a following fast, with regulars returning specifically for prime rib nights and a flat iron steak finished in balsamic bone marrow butter.
Marrow matters here because it proves the corridor pattern is a choice, not a geographic requirement. A fine-dining concept can succeed near a golf course just as easily as a fast-casual chain can succeed next to a grocery store. What that tells you is that Gretna now has room for more than one kind of dining node, and the town's growth is spreading in more than one direction at once. If you live near Tiburon, your version of "what's new to eat in Gretna" already looks different from your neighbor's three miles up 370.
McKenna Avenue is still doing its own thing
Meanwhile, downtown has not tried to compete on restaurants at all. It has kept doing what it has always done, on its own calendar. The Farmers Market of Gretna runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon on McKenna Avenue, and the 2026 season closes out on September 12, which is this coming Saturday. If you have been meaning to make it downtown for produce, honey, or a coffee from a local vendor, this weekend is your last chance until the market comes back next June.
The Chamber calendar around it tells the same story. Late August alone brought a ribbon cutting for Spirit Horse Ranch, a Dayspring Bank anniversary open house, and a Legion hall show billed as Live Music at the Legion. None of that is restaurant news. It is civic and small-business news, the kind that keeps showing up on the Gretna Chamber's events calendar regardless of what is happening seven minutes away on Highway 370. Downtown Gretna is not trying to be the corridor. It is running its own separate season, on its own separate street.
Why this matters if you live here
The useful takeaway is not that Gretna got a few new restaurants. It is that the town is currently building two distinct centers of gravity at the same time, and they serve different purposes. The 370 corridor is where Gretna eats. Downtown is where Gretna gathers. A resident near the Hy-Vee end of town will plan a Tuesday dinner around Basil's or a soon-to-open Red Door without ever thinking about McKenna Avenue. A resident near Tiburon might treat Marrow as their neighborhood spot and only see downtown on a Saturday morning for the market. Both are living in the same city and experiencing two fairly different versions of it.
That split is worth knowing if you are choosing where in Gretna to spend more of your time, or if you are trying to explain to a friend why "what's the food scene like in Gretna" does not have one clean answer. It also says something about where the town is headed. A city does not usually build two separate commercial identities unless both are growing fast enough to support themselves. Right now, Gretna is doing exactly that.
If you are already living the corridor-versus-downtown split every week, you probably did not need convincing. If you are new to town, or thinking about which pocket of Gretna fits how you actually want to spend your Saturdays, that is the kind of local detail that does not show up on a map. Connie Reddish works this market block by block, corridor and downtown alike, and is happy to walk through what each part of Gretna actually feels like to live in day to day. Schedule a free consultation whenever you are ready to talk specifics.
