Home cooking

Gretna couple cooks up new cafe

LAUREL — After raising their four children in their 3,600 square foot five-bedroom Gretna home, Don and Penny Nielsen decided it was time to downsize.

So they packed everything up and traded their long-time family home for a two-story corner cafe and a 1,200-foot apartment in downtown Laurel.

They opened Nielsen’s Coffee and Fresh Eats in September, in the old Friendly Corner building.

“All of our kids are grown and gone. Now it was just the two of us in this big house. We had no pets, no nothing. We just decided it was time,” John said, while sitting in the dining area of their downtown eatery.

Since Penny is originally from Wakefield and her mom still lives there, they started looking in Northeast Nebraska.

“We just happened to stumble upon this building and thought it’s never too late in life for a change,” he said. “It was just one of those things. We decided, ‘hey, let’s try it and see what happens.”

So far, they like what’s been happening.

They purchased the building last October. Penny moved in after their house sold in April, and John moved in a month later, after giving notice at work that he had decided to retire and move on.

This hasn’t exactly been retirement, he said, but the commute to work is now a lot shorter.

John said it’s been quite a change from their former lives, where he worked as a radio engineer for 45 years and she worked in the healthcare field.

Now, instead of a long drive into work each morning, they take a 22-step walk from their second-floor apartment down to work in their restaurant.

Getting the restaurant up and running took some time, as the kitchen had been stripped out and had to be totally redone, John said. Once that was done, and a few other updates were completed, they were ready to open for business.

The transition has been easier for Penny, since she has been in a job dealing with customers on a daily basis.

“Penny’s done a lot of customer service work,” he said, which is something he’s slowly learning. He’s more comfortable back in the kitchen. “We’d have big family gatherings like for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I’d do all the cooking.”

They opened with a pretty simple menu, but things have slowly evolved since then as they’ve learned people’s tastes.

The name of the business, “Neilsen’s Fresh Eats,” describes their menu choices perfectly, he said.

“We don’t have french fries and hamburgers and that kind of stuff. That’s not going to happen,“ he said.

They do, however, offer a variety of traditional breakfasts and big selection of sandwhiches, soups and salads.