City Watch

The Downtown Farmers Market is proud to enter its 25th year as Salt Lake City’s most beloved summer tradition for residents and visitors.

Photography by Preston Gallacher

The Downtown Farmers Market exists to strengthen and support small local farms and businesses as they bring their products directly to the public. Our farmers and producers offer the freshest local fruits and vegetables as well as a wide variety of grass-fed meats, eggs, dairy, honey, and flora, along with the region’s best locally made sauces, spreads, baked goods and culinary accouterments.

Pioneer Park, 350 W. 300 S., Salt Lake City, Utah

This is the sixth year of Salt Lake magazine’s Farm to Glass cocktail contest and some establishments really know how to do it. We dreamed up this contest to encourage traffic to bars—we didn’t want just one big night of competitive drinking in a ballroom somewhere. The month-long contest encourages customers to actually go to the restaurants and bars, experience the atmosphere, taste some food along with their drinks.

(I hear that our friends up the hill in PC have adopted this model too and you know what they say about imitation so we’re flattered.)

Alamexo does it right. We were handed this flyer along with our menus:

We sat at the unfortunately little-used bar in the front of the restaurant, ordered drinks along with the famous guacamole and duck tacos and sipped our Melocoton y Mora—peach and blackberry and bourbon, like a fruity old fashion.

Get out, sip and vote!

Another former DABC employee has stepped forward to link a recent 3rd District Court verdict that Utah Commerce Director Francine Giani wrongfully fired her assistant and the decline of quality and service at the state’s Alcohol Beverage Department resulting from Giani’s brief reign of terror there.

Gary K. Clark, who resigned in protest in 2015 as the downtown wine store’s assistant manager, wrote a letter to the Trib arguing Giani’s treatment of her assistant “pales in comparison” to her legacy at the DABC where she cut a third of the staff. Clark says:

“Draconian new policies resulted in continual product shortages and stores were denied the ability to control our orders. Store staffing was cut while sales continued to climb and customer service was no longer a priority.”

Giani does have her defenders, including many in the Legislature and the Governor’s Office. And, of course, her feud with disgraced former AG Mark Shurtleff may outweigh any heavy handedness at the DABC.

Clark hopes the court ruling ordering Giani and the state pay $250,000 will bring former DABC employees some sense of vindication. “But it won’t begin to repair the damage done.”

Overstock.com’s outspoken CEO recently returned from staring into the abyss—this time due to stage 4 Hepatitis C. Byrne was feeling frisky and healthy, he says, for the first time in 30 years, when he spoke to SLmag.com. Figuring his recent hokey pokey with the Grime Reaper gave him clarity of mind, we gave extra weight to Byrne’s advice on the presidential race:

“Trump is a disgrace to America and Hillary Clinton belongs in an orange jumpsuit.”

Byrne who has fought Wall Street corruption for as long as we can remember, says we should all vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson. You won’t be throwing your vote away symbolically, Byrne says. Here’s the plan: If Johnson could steal enough votes from Don and Hilary, the election would bounce into the notoriously thoughtful U.S. House of Representatives who will make a wise and politics-free pick. Byrne thinks they’ll go for Johnson.

The last time American left it up to the House, we got studmuffin John Quincy Adams—who coincidentally was a secretary of state before becoming president. He was succeeded by Andrew Jackson, whose common-man rhetoric, coif and tan is uncannily similar to Donald Trump’s. (I think we’ve got a conspiracy theory rolling here!)

Byrne repeated his election advice and also warned of an coming economic meltdown on Fox News later Wednesday.

Sugar House Distillery has added a new whiskey to their lineup: A 100-percent rye made from a 100 percent regionally sourced grain mash. Law only requires half the mash to be rye grain for a whiskey to be classified a rye whiskey and, of course, locally sourcing grain is a part of Sugar House Distillery’s own ethos.

It’s also totally distilled in Salt Lake.

We appreciate that Sugar House has avoided giving this classic American hooch a precious hipster name: They call it Rye Whiskey.

The new whiskey is a “young” rye—not aged long-term—but it makes up for any lack of barrel complexity with a clean, dry, peppery flavor.

Note to non-geeks: You’d never mistake it for bourbon.

Details for whiskey geeks: It’s 86 proof, not chill filtered and barreled in lightly charred new American oak.

You won’t see it in liquor stores until, at best, Christmas. But the first batch is available at the SHD distillery store: 2212 S. West Temple Unit #14, Salt Lake City.

Note to self: There’s not much left.