Tag: Utah

BakeryDonutsRating: ExcellentUnited StatesUtah

Banbury Cross Donuts – Salt Lake City, Utah

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

“Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady upon a white horse; Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, She shall have music wherever she goes.” ~The Dorling Kindersley Book of Nursery Rhymes While planning our culinary exploration of the Salt Lake City restaurant scene, there were a number of restaurants we categorized as “must visit.”  Among those in that rarefied air were restaurants with a national profile such as Tony Caputo’s Market & Deli and Freshie’s Lobster Co.  Another made our must visit solely on the basis of its name.  The name Banbury Cross probably doesn’t resonate with you if you’re not a bona fide Anglophile or if haven’t lived in the Cotswolds.  Having lived in the Cotswolds for three years, My Kim and I are passionate Anglophiles (but not necessarily royalists).  We were thrilled at the prospect of visiting with the proprietors whom we assumed were from Banbury, a scant 24 miles from our English home in Little Rissington. Alas, for the second time in two days we were to learn that the education system in Utah may be lacking, at least in the area of geography.  Yesterday a clerk at a shop…

Dog FriendlyPizzaRating: N/R (Not Rated)United StatesUtah

Nomad East – Salt Lake City, Utah

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

A-Team leader “Hannibal” Smith (George Peppard) used to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  We learned during our trip to Salt Lake City that sometimes baking in a little flexibility into a well thought-out plan can produce results even better than expected.  Such was the case with our trip to Salt Lake City.   Capably assisted by my dear friend Becky Mercuri,  I did a lot of research on the Salt Lake City area restaurant scene, compiling a list of dozens of prospective restaurants.  We literally didn’t even begin winnowing down that list until just before setting out each day. Predictably, some of the critically acclaimed restaurants on our list were as good as expected.  More often they were even better.  Undoubtedly the biggest surprise of our week-long vacation was a restaurant which hadn’t even been on our list.  After the Female Foodies steered us to Sweet Lake Biscuits & Limeade and Freshies Lobster Co. we began looking even more critically at their “15 Best Restaurants in Salt Lake City (2021)” compilation.  Ranking tenth and listed as “the best new restaurant” in the city was Nomad East, an eatery with a special emphasis on artisan pizza. We expected…

Dog FriendlyFusionUnited StatesUtah

Harvest – Park City, Utah

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

Park City consistently ranks as Utah’s most expensive place to live with a $1.4 million median home price (as of July, 2021).   Not bad for an old mining settlement which was in danger of becoming a ghost town until a group of miners pitched the idea of a ski resort in an effort to save their town.  That was the start of the world-class mountain resort town Park City has become.  In 2002, Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort, both in the immediate area, were official venues for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.  For amateurs and professionals alike, Park City is a skier’s mecca, home to the largest ski resort in the United States.   Park City may well be known just as much for the Sundance Film Festival as it is for winter sports.  Every January, the town hosts the largest film festival in the United States with more than 50,000 celebrities, moviemakers and film enthusiasts descending on Park City.  Thanks to the Cabrona Virus, the 2022 Festival will take place both in person and online. If you’re wondering what contributions the Festival has made to cinematic history, check out the compilation of the 25 best Sundance…

Dog FriendlyRating: N/R (Not Rated)SandwichSeafoodUnited StatesUtah

Freshie’s Lobster Co. – Salt Lake City, Utah

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

The best lobster in the world?  In Salt Lake City?  That’s as improbable as the Detroit Lions winning a Super Bowl, as unlikely as drivers in New Mexico developing the motor skills to use turn signals, as far-fetched as a conservative NRA member driving a Subaru in Santa Fe.  As a landlocked state some two-thousand miles from the cold New England waters that produce the world’s most delicious lobsters, the notion that a Salt Lake City restaurant would be acclaimed as home of the “world’s best lobster roll” seems quite implausible indeed.  Even the concept that a lobster restaurant (other than Red Lobster) would experience wild success in Salt Lake City could be construed as rather fantastical.  Utah isn’t exactly known for lobster.   Fry sauce, funeral potatoes, Jell-O salad yes, but not lobster. Earning the distinction of the “world’s best lobster roll” is precisely what Freshie’s Lobster Co. in downtown Salt Lake City did.  In 2017, Freshie’s owners Lorin and Ben Smaha competed against twelve other contenders for “World’s Best Lobster Roll” at the “Down East Lobster Roll Festival“ competition in Portland, Maine.  Most of the other competitors were from Maine.  A panel of professional judges voted Freshie’s version…

AmericanDog FriendlyRating: N/R (Not Rated)SouthernUnited StatesUtah

Sweet Lake Biscuits & Limeaid

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In 2008, Natchez, Mississippi, was officially named the Biscuit Capital of the World, a process which took three years of research by Chef Regina Charboneau.  Just our luck, the Natchez native and French-trained chef began serving her famous biscuits at her Twin Oaks Bed & Breakfast in Natchez a decade after our last visit to the “Antebellum Capital of the World.”  While we didn’t get to partake of Chef Charboneau’s celebrated biscuits (revered by the Rolling Stones), our breakfasts in Natchez were memorable because biscuits in the Mississippi River town are truly “biscuit capital” worthy. In the quarter-century plus since we lived in Mississippi, we haven’t missed the oppressive humidity or the politics (on par with New Mexico and let’s just leave it at that), but we’ve missed the patriotism, people and…maybe especially the biscuits.  Yes, I know biscuits are made everywhere across the country, but only in the South are biscuits a transformative flaky, buttery and ethereal experience.   Everywhere else most biscuits are floury hockey pucks–dry, tasteless disappointments not worthy of the butter, jam or gravy with which they’re slathered. Not surprisingly, the last truly life-altering biscuit to cross my lips was in Charleston, South Carolina at the James Beard…