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Mary Brown Malouf

Mary Brown Malouf is the late Executive Editor of Salt Lake magazine and Utah's expert on local food and dining. She still does not, however, know how to make a decent cup of coffee.

2019 Dining Award Winner • London Belle Supper Club

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Harissa

The essential flavoring in Tunisian, Moroccan and much north African cuisine, the red paste has a much more complex spiciness than fresh hot peppers. you can make your own (several kinds of chilies, tomato paste, vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, etc.) But its easy to find in specialty food stores and it’s so versatile you can use it on meats, vegetables, seafood…anything that needs a little extra zing.

 

2019 Dining Award Winner London Belle Supper Club 

London Belle’s full name is London Belle Supper Club — referencing Bell London, one of Salt Lake’s most notorious madams. One in a row of this new breed of bar-cum-restaurant, London belle has the considerable advantage of Chef Matt Anderson, who has been cooking in Utah for decades and has created a menu of global snacks with a sophisticated finesse.


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2019 Dining Award Winner • Post Office Place

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Salt

We know now that all salts are not created equal. There are dozens of types of salt, each very distinctively different from the white processed table salt we grew up on. There’s still a place for that, but chefs like Tommy Nguyen use several sea salts, kosher salt, smoked salts and even other infused salts, “There is not one salt that works for everything,” Nguyen says.

 

2019 Dining Award Winner Post Office Place (POP)

Conceived as a bar to complement Salt Lake magazine Hall of Fame favorite Takashi, Post Office Place (POP) has become as well known for its food as its cocktails and many are happy to skip the inevitable wait at Takashi and nosh their way through dinner at POP.


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2019 Dining Award Winner • Silver Star

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Caramel Fish Sauce

Fish sauce is an Asian cuisine basic whose intense umami has found its way into all kinds of cuisines around the world. it has ancient origins in several cultures-the Romans used a fermented fish sauce as their main condiment. The difference here is that Chef Jeff ward makes a basic caramel by cooking together sugar and water until it coats a spoon, then stirring in bottle fish sauce with other seasonings. Its gratin roasted vegetables as well as fish and shell fish and even roast duck.

 

2019 Dining Award Winner Silver Star

A Destination in the hills above the golf course, past Park City Hotel, Silver Star is everyone’s secret favoritisms. Owners Jeff and Lisa Cilva Ward created and elevated oasis-cozy when the snow falls, cool when the sun shines. The menu has changed since Jeff took over the kitchen- he uses locally- sourced ingredients like elk and elderberries in dishes that often combine fruit with meant, he seasons brussels sprouts with caramel Vietnamese fish sauce and roasted cauliflower with pickled grapes.


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2019 Dining Award Winner • HSL

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Lemon Vinaigrette

“When we are putting the final elements on a dish at Handle or HSL the same statement reverberates: just finish it with lemon vinaigrette and Maldon sea salt,” says Handly. “That redundant phrase has become our little ongoing joke in both restaurants. The two ingredients add balance, texture and seasoning to any dish. We use a lot of local herbs and greens to garnish everything, so the lemon vin and Maldon salt brighten those up as well. The vinaigrette has just four ingredients- fresh lemon juice, olive oil, simple syrup, and salt. We zest all our lemons prior to juicing, then blanch and dry a bit. The zest is then mixed into our version of fines herbs: includes Italian parsley, chives, chervil, and cilantro.

 

2019 Dining Award Winner HSL

Repeatedly Named one of the finest chefs in Utah, HSL chef-owner Briar Handly can’t stop playing with his food. The menu changes frequently and Chef plays musical plates as often- the famous fried chicken may be the same but one visit it might be sided with “parsnip bacon,” (a vegetable we’re going to be seeing a lot more of); another time with butternut squash soubise.


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2019 Dining Award Winner • Veneto

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Eggs

Eggs are a staple in any non-vegan restaurant, but they are especially vital at Veneto. “We use organic cage-free brown eggs in almost all our desserts, as well as our egg and truffle crostini, and all fresh pasta.”

 

2019 Dining Award Winner Veneto 

  • Veneto, 370 E. 900 South, 801- SLC, 801-359-0708, venetoslc.com

This Cozy Restaurant, specializing in food from owner Marco Stevanoni’s native region of Italy, has come into its own. The menu for 2019 Dining Award Winner Veneto changes often, according to collaboration between Stevanoni and rotating roster of chefs from Italy, and traditional seasonal dishes from Veneto.


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2019 Dining Award Winner • 350 Main

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Fenugreek
Fenugreek is one of the most ancient of herbs—charred fenugreek seeds have been recovered from Tell Halal, Iraq (carbon-dated to 4000 BC), and archeologists have found desiccated seeds from the tomb of Tutankhamen. Most of it is grown in Rajasthan, India and fenugreek is an essential part of the Indian five-spice powder called panch phoron, a favorite of Chef Safranek featured in his vegan and gluten free Coconut Cauliflower Soup with Panch Phoron. Of course, you want to know what the other four spices are: cumin, brown bustard, nigella and fennel.

 

2019 Dining Award Winner 350 Main

  • 350 Main, 350 Main Street, Park City, 435-649-4130, 350main.com

This Main Street star had faded a little when Chef Matthew Safranek and owner Cortney Johansen, took over. Together they have made 350 Main an exciting place to dine again. Entrees start with the basic—fried chicken, Coho salmon, bison ribeye, venison loin—then surprise with the seasonings and spices: five-spice, pickled mustard seeds, preserved lemon, kamut, curry oil. Appetizers like slow-cooked goat with chabrin cheese, shishitos with cashew yogurt, grilled octopus with yucca fries prepare the palate for what is to come.

 


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2019 Dining Award Winner • Stoneground Kitchen

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient: Central Milling OO Organic Pizza Flour
“There are three local ingredients I love and feel make a difference in our kitchen,” says Stoneground Kitchen Chef Justin Shifflet. The first is fundamental for a place made famous by its pizzas: Central Milling OO Organic Pizza Flour. “Owner Bob McCarthy, GM Joy Bradford and I went to pizza Expos in Vegas and the National Restaurant Association food show in Chicago looking for the best flour. The best pizza flour we found is made right here in Utah. We use RealSalt, mined in central Utah for our pizza dough and for finishing, and locally made Chili Beak spicy oil to give our pomodoro some backbone and the puttanesca its signature kick.”

2019 Dining Award Winner
Stoneground Kitchen

I am surprised when I run into people who still think Stoneground is a pizza place with pool tables—it’s been so much more for years now. Chef Justin Shifflet puts his soul into his cooking and it gets better all the time. I seldom get to il secondo, because the pre-meal dishes (“for the table”) and the pasta is so good. Last year, I raved about the braciole and the focaccino (well, I still rave.) This year I’m nuts about the bruschetta with fried brussels sprouts, honey yogurt, pomegranate seeds and cashews. And the pizza. Always the pizza. I love to be surprised so I order the seasonal one.


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2019 Dining Award Winner • Himalayan Kitchen

By Dining Awards, Eat & Drink

salt Lake magazine Dining Award winners pull flavors, ingredients and techniques from cuisines all over the world, becoming ever more particular in the source of their ingredients. Take a peek into the pantries of Utah’s best restaurants.

The Secret Ingredient – Timur Nepali food, like Indian food, is based on complex fragrance so the spices used must be very fresh. “These spices have to be hand-carried from Nepal,” says Bastakoti. “You can’t get them in any store around here. Whenever our chef or any member of our team visits Nepal they carry home a few pounds.” Timur, or Nepal pepper, is highly pungent, often mistaken for black or Chinese Sichuan pepper, but has an entirely different flavor and is, in fact, not related. There are two kinds of timur growing in the Himalayan Region—the rare, mouth-numbing boke timur is used in lentils, chicken chili, and Nepal’s famous momos.

2019 Dining Award Winner Himalayan Kitchen

The first Nepali restaurant in Salt Lake City, 2019 Dining Award Winner Himalayan Kitchen spawned a lot more. They all serve momos and goat curry, but HK’s is still the most charming and flavorful. Now Surya Bastakoti, a para-glider and the owner of Mt. Pumori Trekking and Expeditions before he settled in SLC, has a second location in South Jordan, an event center and a bar, Chakra Lounge. Himalayan Kitchen’s cuisine is required to be authentic because it’s a gathering place for the Salt Lake City Nepali and the local climbing community. They know Nepal.

 


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What Do Utah’s New DUI Laws Mean for You?

By City Watch

At midnight on December 30, 2018, Utah became the first state in the country to consider a person with a blood alcohol level of .05 as drunk. The reasoning behind this strict law and how it came to be passed are part of an illogical, convoluted story—typical of the Utah legislature.

Utah's New DUI Laws

Kate Conyers and Jesse Nix.

What will its enforcement mean for local businesses and visitors? Well, in the words of criminal defense attorney Kate Conyers who handles DUI cases, “We just don’t know.”

Conyers and her law partner Jesse Nix each have ten years of experience in defending Utah DUI cases—they have worked with hundreds. I met with them at—where else—The Green Pig Pub to discuss possible consequences of the .05 law going into effect.

A Truly Unscientific Study

It’s usually obvious when a person is dangerously intoxicated—a drunk’s slurring and staggering have been the basis for generations of pratfall comedy. But when you get down to blood alcohol levels like .08 or .05, it can be hard to discern drunkenness. That’s where the Breathalyzer comes in. By the way, both Jarom and Maddy went home with designated drivers.

Drink: A Utah pour, 1.5 oz., of rum mixed with an equal amount with pineapple juice

Test: Walk a 9-foot line, Walk-and-turn / Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) / Stand on one leg

Utah's New DUI Laws

We had one of SLMags own, Jarom, be our first test subject.

  • Jarom West
  • Height: 6’
  • Weight: 160 lbs.
  • Pre-drink BAC number: .000
  • Post-one drink BAC number: .012, Smooth walker.
  • Post-two drink BAC number: .025, Smooth walker.
  • Post-three-drink BAC number: .042, Smooth walker.
  • Post-four-drink BAC number: .065, Walked the line well. Pivot: gracefully.
Utah's New DUI Laws

Madeline Slack was nice enough to volunteer for our very unscientific experiment.

  • Madeline Slack
  • Height: 5’8”
  • Weight: 118 lbs.
  • Pre-drink BAC number: .000
  • Post-one drink BAC number: .028, Stepped off line at least twice and stumbled a couple times on the pivot.
  • Post-two drink BAC number: .061, HGN: lack of smooth pursuit; not nystagmus.

“We don’t know if the police are planning to increase the number of DUI officers,” says Conyers. “There’s no special funding for it right now.”

It takes a lot of time to process a suspected DUI, according to Nix. In order to pull over a driver, an officer has to have probable cause—that could be anything from not stopping a full three seconds at a stop sign to weaving in and out of lanes. There’s a chart listing suspicious behaviors, driving at varying speeds, failure to signal, driving 10 miles per hour under the speed limit—all things many drivers do stone-cold sober. If he suspects the driver has been drinking, the officer can request a field sobriety test, designed to evaluate an individual’s divided attention—driving demands multiple kinds of attentiveness.

Tests may include walking a nine-foot straight line heel-to-toe, the Rhomberg Modified Test (keeping your balance with your eyes closed), the walk-and-turn test, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) test (tracking an object horizontally), the one-leg stand test, the finger-to-nose and the finger count test. Each field sobriety test has specific cues that an officer looks for while monitoring a suspect’s performance. But the defining test is the Intoxilyzer, which most of us call a breathalyzer.

Until then it’s all still suspicion, especially if the subject’s blood alcohol content is .08. Will .05 make a difference? Many Utah DUI attorneys agree that it’s best to refuse the personal breathalyzer test, called a PBT test, which is usually the equipment available to regular cops. Designated DUI officers carry a large, more sophisticated Intoxilyzer in the trunks of their cars; they set it on the hood, so the car’s camera can record the testing procedure. These machines must be recalibrated every 40 days and before and after each arrest. Plus, the officers must observe the Baker Period—the 15 minutes of observation required before administering the test.

Like we said, it’s complicated and time-consuming.

It’s possible after .05 goes into effect, the police may be more vigilant about minor traffic violations, finding cause to find pull people over.

“It’s not hard to get that .05 level,” says Tanner Lenart, an attorney who works with establishments that serve liquor. “But,” she adds, “It’s also not-hard to not get to that level. If you’re having wine with a multi-course dinner each course over time, the results can be very different than if you’re out on the town doing shots. And of course, the BAC in a woman who drank the same amount as a large man will differ considerably.” (See pp. 87 for Salt Lake magazine’s unscientific experiment.)

The real question is, will the new .05 law make Utahns any safer on the road? Conyers  and Nix doubt it.

“If they’re looking for low-hanging fruit, will they be giving the really dangerous offenders less attention?” questions Conyers.

“Utah already has one of the lowest drunk driver rates in the country,” Lenart points out. “The difference is actually very slight between .05 and .08. We know the risk isn’t at this level. So what is the point of the legislation? There are many more accidents involving distracted drivers—the cellphone is more a of a problem. Why not address that instead of criminalizing behavior that’s legal in the rest of the country? This is a solution to a problem we don’t have.”

There is no provision for differentiating between degrees of intoxication in the new law. Someone who is arrested for a BAC of .05 could face the same set of consequences as a person with a BAC of .08. We differentiate types of murder, but not alcohol level?

There are, everyone I talked to agreed, a lot of holes in this law and a lot of unanswered questions.

“At the time the .05 law was passed, public attention was focused on the Zion Curtain controversy,” says Michele Corigliano, former director of the Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association. “No one thought the .05 would really go through.” It was passed through committee without a lot of scrutiny. And almost immediately it drew fire—Rep. Karen Kwan (D-Murray) sponsored a bill to delay the start date of the law, arguing that the issue needed more study. “This is a bad policy and we need to fix it,” Kwan said.

Ever-dramatic Sen. Jim Dabakis (D-Salt Lake City), said he had two mimosas before attending the 8 a.m. legislative hearing to vote on Kwan’s proposal, just to prove his lack of impairment. The .05 law prevailed.

BACtrack Mobile Smartphone BreathalyzerAbout $100 at Best Buy, it connects to your Smartphone via Bluetooth and the box claims “police-grade accuracy.” But—grain of salt.

Because it’s legislation passed by the Latter-day Saints-majority legislature, Lenart feels these are laws made for drinkers by non-drinkers—people making laws about something they don’t understand without scientific rationale or data. It’s also elitist, she says, to create laws that affect a certain population.

Finally, the economic repercussions should be considered. The annual retail liquor sales in Utah reached $427.6 million in 2016-17. At that time, there were 27 local distilleries, dozens of craft breweries and a booming cocktail business, all giving the lie to the tourist-inhibiting impression that “You can’t get a drink in Utah.”

How the new law will affect this sector of Utah’s important tourism business remains to be seen. Some bars are already installing breathalyzers.

Until then, Happy New Year. Be careful. And don’t hesitate to use the businesses that will certainly boom because of the new law: Uber and Lyft.


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Bollywood Boulevard: An evening of Indian food and cinema

By Arts & Culture, Eat & Drink

Cinema these days seems to have abandoned the visual for the visceral—going to the movies can be more of an amusement park ride than a feast for the eyes.
Never in Bollywood. In Hindi films, the color alone blows you away and makes you happy, just like the fragrance of Indian food.

Friday night, February 15, you can experience both: Saffron Valley is partnering with this season’s Utah Presents: after a 6 p.m. dinner—chaat, curries, kebabs, vegetarian or not—at the Sugar House restaurant, the show, Bollywood Boulevard, commissioned by Lincoln Center and portraying a history of Hindi cinema, starts at Kingsbury Hall. Expect live music, dance and film. And lots of color.

Performance tickets start at $20; dinner is $20 per person. Tickets for both the performance and the dinner are available at 801-581-7100 or utahpresents.org.

See all of our food coverage here.