Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.

A new restaurant is opening in Omaha's Little Italy neighborhood in the space previously occupied by Q Consumables.

Owner Jeff Camp, who used to own Trovato's Restaurant in Dundee, said the restaurant will be called Italian Gardens, and is named after the restaurant that occupied the space at 1228 S. Sixth St. before Cafe de Paris, the tenant before Q. The restaurant should open the second week of February.

Camp said the restaurant will serve rustic Italian food for relatively inexpensive prices.

"We're going to be using some older recipes, including some of the successful ones from Trovato's," Camp said. He said the marinara sauce at Italian Gardens is the same recipe from Trovato's.

Clarification on our 2011 favorites

Many World-Herald readers have asked some questions about our year-end story that named the top eight restaurants we'd reviewed in 2011. The main question: Why wasn't (insert restaurant name) included? We didn't make our criteria clear enough: The only restaurants eligible for the story were ones we'd reviewed from January 2011 to December 2011.

We chose our top eight and our runners up based on the reviews by all of our critics, including freelancers, that ran in the paper last year. Many of the city's great restaurants weren't reviewed in 2011 — in many cases, they'd been reviewed in 2009 or 2010 — so that's why they weren't on the list. In general, we don't review the same restaurant in consecutive years to give our regular readers more variety.

If there's something we overlooked, let us know. And if there's a place you think we should review in 2012, let us know that, too. Email our food reporter, Sarah Baker Hansen, at sarah.bakerhansen@owh.com.

Lot 2 opening date set

Benson's newest fine dining spot has an opening date.

Owner Brad Marr said Lot 2 Restaurant and Wine Bar will open for business Feb. 9.

"It has been a great process," Marr said in an email, "and it will be nice to finally be able to provide a great dining experience."

Marr and his wife, Johanna, are trained sommeliers and the restaurant's wine list will include wines from around the world. The restaurant's Facebook page says the menu will be approachable and focused on "innovative" food with ingredients from local farmers and ranchers. The restaurant is at 6205½ Maple St. in Benson.

Blue Sushi in Denver

Blue Sushi is opening a location in Denver this summer.

The Denver location follows the restaurant's September 2010 opening of Blue Sushi Sake Grill in Fort Worth, Texas. It will make the fifth Blue location and seventh restaurant for Flagship Restaurant Group.

The location in Denver's LoDo neighborhood will resemble the Omaha Old Market location, with a Blue Sushi dining room and a Sake Bombers Lounge in a building that's more than 100 years old.

Wine and dine

Two restaurants have wine dinners on the calendar.

The Woodcliff Restaurant in Fremont, Neb., has a dinner slated for Sunday. The dinner, featuring Viader wines, will include five courses. Seating is limited. For a reservation, call the restaurant at 402-721-2922. The restaurant is at 980 County Road W in Fremont. Tanduri Fusion will have a wine dinner on Thursday at 6 p.m. The dinner will feature five wines and appetizers, dinner and dessert. The cost is $85 per couple. The restaurant is at 2537 S. 174th Plaza, and the phone number is 402-505-9209.

Guide to restaurants

Sarah Baker Hansen's first book, "The Insider's Guide to Omaha and Lincoln," includes her take on more than 150 restaurants. Buy it online at owhstore.com or in the lobby of the Omaha World-Herald building at 13th and Douglas Streets.