Salt Lake City

[cape chef]

I'll be in Utah 11/11-16 for training.

Never been, any insight or must see/dine spots?

 

[suzanne]

Bring your own stash of Ketel One; I think it's a dry town unless you pay a membership fee to a "private club."

 

[phatch]

What do you like to do? You'll be in my stomping grounds.

There is, of course, all the Mormon things: Temple Square and the like. Worth a visit, but maybe just a morning.

Kennecot copper mine is the world's largest open pit mine. Impressive, big ugly scar.

The lake isn't really much to look at and the weather is wrong for experiencing the high buoyancy of the salt water. On the other hand, no brine flies.

Park City is 1/2 hour away. That's where most of the best restaurants concentrate. The mountains should be wearing their winter coat of snow, but not quite enough to ski on. The Deer Valley resort is there too and the Glitterrien is renowned eating and has a top 50 in the nation wine list as I recall.

I don't eat much in Park City as I'm not up there much. If you can get to the Log Haven up Mill Creek Canyon, they have great eats. It's even closer than Park City and better location, IMHO. La Caille is popular with the French style crowd, though their reputation is slipping. Christophers is good seafood and steak at least for this far from the coast.

Robert Redford's Sundance resort is about an hour away. He's got good eatin' and a good location too. The Tree Room is the signature room at the restaurant with the trunk of a large live tree rising up through it.

Of local entrepeneurship, Gastronomy Inc, runs some good places. Baci Trattoria, New Yorker, Pierpont, Market Street Grill. Not Gastronomy, but the Metropolitan is credited highly for their game dishes. Al Fresco is good italian.

The Urban is my favorite lunch, but usually closed for dinner with other gigs. His other endeavor is a late night place Orbitz or some such. Haven't been yet.

Zagat recommends all those highly too.

If you're willing to go a bit odd and lower end, Cafe Trang is good Vietnamese. Their one mall location has gone more mainstream. Go to the one downtown. There are a number of South American joints. El Chalan (or Chalau, the sign is hard to read) has a good rep for Peruvian. Il Itzalquena does good Salvadoran. For lunch downtown, Sigfried's Delicatessen is good German food. Happy Sumo is good sushi. My favorite Indian food is the Royal India. There are lots of good Mexican dives but you want to go to the poorer sections of town for the best ones.

Let me know, perhaps we can meet up.

Phil

 

[phatch]

OK, I don't drink, get that out right up front.

But it's not hard to get a drink. Many restaurants have full bar service. And the Private Club game is easy to play. Your hosts will likely have plenty of people who are "members" there or some customer inside will often "sponsor" you sight unseen. You will have to pay a fee. Usually $5.00 I think. It's good for a weeK? There was an effort afoot by some of the clubs to create a shared visitor membership. The city council frowned on it, but I don't know the status of that effort.

Smoking is allowed in private clubs. But not in other restaurants. One of my preferred dives was a private club, but served no alcohol. They wanted to cater to their smoking clientele. If you've seen Truth or Consequences New Mexico, the movie, you've seen the place. The owner retired this year and I haven't been back since.

A common game is to have a bar section of the place and a restaurant section. Usually the dividing line is invisible to the customer, but is usually some architectural point. There are some oddball rules to what and how they can serve you in the different parts of the joint, but tell your server what you want to do and they'll usher you through the silliness.

Red Rocks is probably the best known of the above style places.

Phil

 

[w.debord]

I LOVE UTAH, it's my favorite vacation get away!! One of the neat things about it is the people like Phatch, their so friendly and polite, it's a slower nicer way of life. It's an amazingly easy city to drive around in. In 1/2 hour your in prime ski country and the airport is very easy in and out.


When we've eaten at national chain restaurants there.....you can order a drink from all of them. BUT as I understood they can't bring it up or suggest a drink, you have to ask for a drink with alchol.

The Moron tour takes about 2 hours tops. There are parts of the city that look very run down....I never understood that part....but once you get out of the imediate downtown it's very nice. It's really more suburban living and not much city living in Salt Lake.

I ADORE Deer Valley and Park City, but I go there to ski....I've never seen Sundance so that's where I'd go if I was you.

It's a real easy drive in their mountains!!!! HONEST! You can't get lost, it's not very far either.......

I hope you have a good time!

 

[cape chef]

This is great info!!

Thanks everyone.

Phil, if there is a way we could hook up that would be fun.

 

[phatch]

Oh, there's another good italian place. Part of a chain actually, but surprisingly good.

Buca di Beppo

Gastronomy's web site.

Utah travel council

SLC restaurant site includes entries for Cafe Trang and many other good ones.

My favorite barbecue: www. sugarhousebbq.com Excellent.

Citysearch has this for the Metropolitan.

Don't let them take you to any of these: http://www.jordancommons.com/food/ , especially, the Mayan and Joe's Crab Shack. Horrible. The others are nothing special either, but not abysmal.

www.dininginutah.com is very good in choosing some of the best of SLC.

Phil

 

[chiffonade]

MIL goes to SLC whenever she can to visit family (she's up in Idaho where hubby grew up). The Cummings Studio Candy owners are personal friends of DH and his family. They came to our wedding - wonderful people (the dad just died ).

I love the fact that the clothing stores advertise, "Mission Suits with TWO Pairs of Pants." It's really a wonderful city unless you're there during an "inversion" when all the smoke is trapped - gag-choke! Otherwise, it's incredibly cool.

PS we found our springer spaniel running down a highway in Utah - hence his name... Moab.

 

[kokopuffs]

I recently drove out west to see some friends in California. The route extended along I-70 and I-15 from Denver to central Utah and then thru Las Vegas.

This was my first time to Utah and people seemed relaxed. Furthermore, until I reached Arizona and Nevada, I saw NO NO ABSOLUTELY NO trash along the shoulder of the highway. Utah seems a really pristine state, well taken care of and conscious of it's image unlike some other states out west.