Dammi Dammi Sets Up Shop in the University Towers Building
Father-son duo Pat and Andy Lane opened Dammi Dammi on the corner of 13th and P on July 26 with one mission and one mission alone: to serve the best Mediterranean food to Lincoln. Their variety of food ranges from Greece to Croatia.
“You go to pretty much any place that advertises as Mediterranean, and it’s really a Middle Eastern restaurant,” Andy said. “You have your beef shawarma, your falafel or hummus, but you don’t get stuff from Spain, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, or Lebanon. You don’t even get anything from Italy or Greece, and that’s where it all started!”
“We’ve looked at probably a couple of thousand recipes from 30 or 40 different cultures,” Andy said. “The Mediterranean diet has been towards the top of the list for over a decade. It’s all lean cuts of meat and lots of fresh veggies. It’s high in protein, but it’s not excluding flavor in order to get there. Nothing here is fried, it’s all oven-baked, and we use a convection oven as kind of a substitute for a fryer.”
Andy’s great grandfather on his mom’s side came over from Sicily in 1913 to the United States. He was fleeing from the Italian mob and tried to gain his citizenship in America only to get drafted in the Italian Army, forcing him to go back to Sicily. After World War I, he came back to America and found his way to Lincoln to open a restaurant. It was a breakfast nook located where Licorice International resides today.
Fastforward about 60 years and Andy is here with the same ambitions. He earned his degree from the University of Wyoming and tried out a few restaurant concepts before landing on Dammi Dammi.
Pat Lane, Andy’s father who has always supported him, noted that Andy’s passion for owning a restaurant goes way back to his boyhood.
“When Andy was in seventh grade, he wanted to start a seafood restaurant,” Pat said. “He doesn’t even like seafood, he doesn’t like fish, nothing…so I’m like, why seafood?”
Eventually, Andy decided against seafood. He contemplated a distillery or cafe, but those things don’t cater at the same time. This is when he started getting into Mediterranean food.
Dammi Dammi offers many options including protein bowls, salads, a soup of the day, and 109 flavors of a rotating gelato menu. Pat is the gelato expert of the duo. He has crafted all 109 flavors of gelato, from lime basil and dutch chocolate habanero to black licorice.
“Gelato has 20% less sugar than ice cream, and it’s packed with flavor,” Pat said. “Ice cream has a lot of fat in it, so it coats your mouth. With gelato, that’s not the case.”
Eventually, Dammi Dammi will have alcohol to pair with their dishes, but right now they’re focused on the customer experience. Their hours are 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday – Saturday.