Mary Brown Malouf

“Touch screen to begin.”

I guess that’s no worse than “Hi, I’m Kyle and I’ll be serving you tonight.”

The kiosks at Mollie and Ollie, a chic and shiny “fast casual” restaurant in the funky old Bay Leaf space on Main are just like the ones at the airport—or at the newest McDonald’s. The space is as inviting as on OR and the name was inspired by the owner’s goldfish.

So you choose from the first screen: Classic Breakfast Bowls (oatmeal, yogurt, fruit); Classic Scrambles; Classic Salads; Classic Stir Frys; Sides; Beverages; Dessert. Each time you make a choice, you’re asked to make another one until you’ve completed your dish. The screen shows your total (our stir frys were about $10 apiece.)

Then the machine asks if you want to leave a tip. Um, no.

The pitch is you get clean food from “carefully selected suppliers, growers and farmers who are environmentally responsible, humane and where possible, local.” But aside from touting organic eggs and a lot of kale, the menu doesn’t actually give any detail about sourcing—proteins are described as “slow roasted,” “honey brined” and “citrus poached” which has nothing to do with environmental responsibility, or anything, really.

We waited fifteen minutes, then a person wearing a “Be Nice” hat delivered our bowls, in much the same manner that I set down our cat’s bowl. Both stir frys emitted a distinct and unpleasant scorched aroma which worsened when we tried a bite. We postulated several reasons the food smelled the way it did—maybe the cooks hadn’t cleaned the griddle or wok sufficiently? Maybe the griddle was too dry for the fat-free proteins?

But there was no Kyle to circle back to check if we liked our food. So we left our full bowls and drove over to Tonyburger where we ordered and were served burgers and fries. There’s nothing like a raspberry milkshake to reset your tastebuds.

Note on “First Taste” reviews:

I reserve the right to write about a restaurant from the day they open—if they are charging customers full price for food and wine. I know a new restaurant has “kinks” to work out—the kitchen may still be tweaking some dishes, for instance. Tweaking never stops in a good kitchen. That takes time, but it shouldn’t happen on the paying customers’ dime.

As for “kinks” like allowing inedibly scorched food to leave the kitchen—that’s beyond the pale and argues against the experience being a “one-off.”

First Bites are followed by second visits.

Celebrate the honeybee with the Waldorf Astoria, Park City

Somehow, the two experiences don’t jibe: a sophisticated seated lunch at Powder, the restaurant in Waldorf-Astoria, Park City, and a trek up a hill through thigh-high grass and brush to a stack of beehives sheltered by some adolescent aspens.

But the first course of our lunch was honey-basted pork belly

and the last course was fresh fruit drizzled with warm honey 

and the beehives on the hill were the source of that honey.

This is the new luxury.

High thread-count sheets flat-screen TVs in the bathroom are great, but the word “luxury” implies an inimitable experience and that comes from authenticity. Powder’s Executive Chef Ryker Brown tends to the Waldorf hives and harvests the honey and honeycomb to use in the menu and even the cocktails in the restaurant.

(Honey, of course, is the least of what honeybees provide for the American table. Honeybees are responsible for pollinating many of our major food crops. To put it in the terms our culture best understands: Honeybees contribute $14.6 billion towards the American economy. Blueberries, cherries and almonds are almost completely bee-dependent.)

Chef Ryker Brown knows all this, and he understands the new direction of American cooking, too. Keep an eye on this space for more about that, later.

Meanwhile, shake up the Waldorf’s honey cocktail and raise a glass to the honeybees.

Rhubarb Bee’s Knees

5. oz. Beehive Jack Rabbit Gin

50. oz. Honey water

25. oz. Fresh lemon juice

3 dashes Fee Bros. Rhubarb bitters.

Stir and mix over ice.

Honey Water: Heat 1 cup water with 1 Tbsp. Honey in microwave. Stir to dissolve. Let cool before using in the cocktail, but sip it as is for a soothing nighttime drink.

I just received an email from Robin Kilpatrick, one of the original trio who founded Salt Lake City’s alternative masterpiece cafe, Tin Angel. Along with Jerry and Kestrel Liedtke, Kilpatrick opened the funky-chic cafe by Pioneer Park around ten years ago and it has become a mainstay of Salt Lake dining, winning a number of awards along the way.

Kilpatrick says she’ll be leaving the Angel, effective tomorrow, and with no hard feelings—at the restaurant, it will be business almost as usual. I just hope she’s not taking all the bread pudding with her. her email hinted she will still be active in the Salt Lake food scene, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, here’s good luck and bon appetit to all the angels.

• 365 W 400 S, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
• Phone: (801) 328-4155

A spectacularly disheartening graph from Downtown Alliance’s recent report on on Salt Lake City shows exactly what the “lobster trap” design of City Creek and the unbalanced liquor laws have fostered: A downtown nearly devoid of culinary excitement.

The vast majority of diners, the alliance study found, eat at Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, P.F. Chang and Blue Lemon, the latter being the only Utah-based restaurant.

This is not cause for rejoicing. These are anything but the kind of creative and idiosyncratic restaurants that will make Salt Lake a dining destination—unless you believe, like too many Utah leaders, that culinary excellence can be found in a suburban mall food court.

SLARA—Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association, tourism leaders and true food lovers in the city should be dismayed and begin the conversation on how the city can better attract and support local culinary talent.

What do you think?

Besides that I’m a snob. I already know that.

More good news from the Salt Lake City restaurant scene:

I had already kicked off my shoes and taken off my earrings—for me, that means the day is done. Then I received a text from a friend who’s a friend of one of the owners of Pub Group (Desert Edge, Stella’s, Red Butte Cafe, etc.) ‘Do you want to have dinner tonight at Martine? They have a new chef and want people there.’

All I can say is, it took us longer to find a parking place than it did to drive downtown. I put my earrings back on in the car.

Poor Martine’s has been under siege for years now—the construction around it seems never-ending. This time, we had to park in the old high-rise lot on Regent Street, walk down the stairs to a locked door, walk back up and down another flight of stairs, exit onto Regent Street, over some heavy cables and boards and down the alley. Whew.

Tom Grant was chef at Martine for decades; his departure opened a door to the future for this beloved restaurant. After some shuffling, Utah native Ed Heath, a graduate of CIA Greystone in St. Helena, has joined the Pub Group and is heading the kitchen at Martine. He is co-owner of Cleveland-Heath restaurant in Edwardsville, Illinois and was a Best Chef semifinalist in the 26th annual James Beard Foundation Awards.

Heath has rewritten Martine menu but stayed with the restaurant’s spirit—falling between cutting-edge and classic, dishes don’t seem to be geared towards the latest trends or tied to a specific heritage cuisine. Instead, like a true chef-driven menu, they come from an educated taste imagination. (The same approach applies to cocktails, an icy gin martini and an honest-to-goodness daiquiri, aged rum and lime chilled and served up in a small stemmed glass.)

If you’re hungry, the prix-fixe four-course dinner is the way to go. Chef offers two choices for each course; because I had guests, we were able to sample everything on the menu: the judiciously thickened corn soup (not too gloppy) and the hefty “Israeli Mixed Green Salad” with toasted orzo, feta bits, almonds and grapes in a red pepper vinaigrette. Second course: mushrooms on toast topped with an egg …

or a sweet and sour version of our friend pork belly, here called slab bacon, with watermelon lime dressing. As tricky as the latter dish sounds, the balance was precise; as weary as we all must be of pork belly, this was a refreshing, even intriguing, plate of food. Half a crispy-skinned chicken came with savory Asiago bread pudding and the seafood risotto with uni butter.

You’ve got the picture by now that Heath has moved the restaurant from its slightly moldy tapas format to encourage a full-meal deal. But there is still a list of small plates—chilled asparagus “Oscar,” with sauce gribiche. I have to admit I was a little bit thrilled to see old-fashioned notions like “Oscar” and “gribiche” on a modern American menu. Named after King Oscar II of Sweden, the classic dish is veal Oscar—a veal cutlet topped with asparagus, crabmeat and bearnaise. Heath piles crabmeat over asparagus and serves with gribiche, a sauce similar to bearnaise, but made with hard-cooked egg yolks and served cold. This would be a perfect summer lunch.

Another small plate, crispy but still rare quail, came on a bed of succotash made with lots of caramelized onion strings and merquen. (I was stumped, but it turns out this is a Chilean pepper mixture.)

I have no idea whether the menu we tasted is going to be the permanent summer menu at Martine or how it will change, as it surely must once Heath and his regular diners get to know each other. Obviously, this was a honeymoon meal and I was a recognized guest. I’ll go back in a few months more surreptitiously and see how it’s going.       

It’s a testament to Martine’s charm that it remains open despite the city’s apparent efforts to kill it. But it won’t be long now. We were reassured that an end is in sight for the construction and when it’s over and the crowds come back, Martine will be ready.

P.S. Of course, after declaring we could not eat dessert, we agreed to split one and ended up ordering three. That’s how the sweet slippery slope often starts. at any rate, couldn’t be happier to see that a version of the former Martine’s star dessert, grilled gingerbread, is still on the menu, alongside newer treats.

22 E. 100 South ,  SLC, 801-363-9328 (It’s a local option just across the street from Cheesecake Factory!)

I’ll probably never shop at Harmons new store at Traverse Mountain in Lehi. I live near downtown SLC and I prefer to shop at small, locally-owned businesses, so I spend a lot of our so-called food budget at Caputo’s, at Salt & Smoke, at Liberty Heights, etc. But I also shop often at City Creek Harmons.

Yes, it’s a mainstream grocery stores. But it’s convenient and convenience has traditionally been the main reason American shoppers are loyal to a grocery store. Well, convenience and price. Fortunately things are changing and driving across town because bananas are four cents cheaper no longer makes sense.

Smart American grocers are now banking more on quality and less on price wars—in the Utah market, Harmons has led this trend.

The new store in Lehi, like other new Harmons, is more than a grocery store—it houses a cooking school, a 9,000 square foot mezzanine, outdoor balcony seating and conference rooms. Like other Harmons, this one is a Certified Organic provider, Has an onsite artisan bakery, employs certified cheese mongers to help customers with a large selection of cheeses, several chefs to oversee freshly prepared deli foods, has a coffee shop serving brews by local coffee roaster Caffe Ibis.

The point is that the local, sustainable, organic food movement is now mainstream which is good news not just for eaters everywhere but also for the planet.

That’s how I can get excited about a new grocery store. Even though I may never shop there.