★★★★★
"Best biscuits and gravy in southeast Nebraska. I drive past two other cafes to come here. Brenda knows my order before I sit down."
Don R. · Tuesday regular
Twelve years on Pioneers Boulevard. Brenda Failor in the kitchen most mornings, working from recipes she's been refining since she ran the breakfast counter in Palmyra. Open from seven until we sell out — usually around two.
Brenda writes the board fresh every morning. When the kitchen runs out, the line gets a red slash through it — that's how you know it's the real menu.
Brenda Failor ran the breakfast counter at the Palmyra Cafe for fourteen years before selling it in 2013. She opened Penelope's the following January in a corner storefront on Pioneers Boulevard. The cinnamon-roll recipe is older than the cafe; the booths are second-hand from a diner in Crete, Nebraska, that closed the year before.
The cafe is small. The portions aren't. The same six regulars sit at the counter every Tuesday morning. Sundays we're closed because Brenda still goes to church.
"Best biscuits and gravy in southeast Nebraska. I drive past two other cafes to come here. Brenda knows my order before I sit down."
"The cinnamon roll alone is worth the trip. My grandkids ask to go to 'the cafe with the red booths.' That's the only place in Lincoln they mean."
"Penelope's is what every small-town breakfast spot wishes it were. Coffee refilled before I ask, food on the table in eight minutes, paid less than fifteen dollars."
Walk-ins always welcome. Groups of six or more, give us a call so we can pull a table together. We don't take reservations otherwise — it's a small cafe and the line moves.