Eat & Drink

It’s completely un-PC, ungentlemanly and unladylike to use the term “hot tomato” to refer to an attractive female, but we can all see how the metaphorical phrase originated and it has nothing to do with the mass-produced, pink and stiff fruit sold all year long in grocery stores. If you don’t remember vividly how completely a ripe, red, never-seen-a-fridge tomato engages your senses, Wasatch Community Gardens‘ Tomato Days Dine-Around will remind you.

A group of great local restaurants (3 Cups, Avenues Bistro on Third, Eva Restaurant, Even Stevens, Les Madeleines, Meditrina, Roots Cafe and Tin Angel Cafe) will be serving special, tomato-centric dishes for ten days—August 15—September 15) with a portion of the proceeds going to Wasatch Community Gardens.

Yes, finally, it’s tomato season in Utah.

WCG’s Grateful Tomato Garden (800 S. 600 East) celebrates by inviting everyone to a free feast of heirloom tomato and pesto sandwiches on Saturday, September 10, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. They claim they’re saying “thanks” for community support with their Annual Tomato Sandwich Party. We’re the ones who should thank them, but our mouths are too full.

Click on any of the links for details.

A highly scientific study, as they say on morning teevee shows, has found that Margaritas are the most popular cocktail in America—according to six out of ten bar flies. And, not surprising, top-shelf tequila sales are up 15.5 percent—all tequilas almost 10 percent.

To celebrate this milestone in mixology, we’re going to share SLmagazine‘s take on the classic Margarita:

Ingredients:

3 parts silver tequila (Yes, 3 shots! And silver because you want that cactus flavor. Use a good Tequila, like Utah-owned Vida.)

1 part fresh-squeezed lime juice (If you can’t squeeze some limes, step away from the cocktail shaker!)

3/4 part of Cointreau (or a similar non-horrible orange liqueur)

A shaker full of ice

Directions: Pour the booze over the ice. Shake it like an insane monkey.

Pour it out, neat, into the smallest stemmed cocktail glasses you can find (pre-chilled, of course, and salt rimmed).

Why the puny cocktail glasses?

First, the Margarita remains icy cold to the bottom of the glass. Then, you pour another icy cold one. Second, these are NOT Utah restaurant limeade Slurpees, you fool! In fact, the DABC has ruled that serving them in large quantities is a war crime. If you use the humungous so-called “Margarita” glasses, you’re party will soon end, with your guests on the floor barking.

Remember: No matter what sized glasses, keep Uber on standby.

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. This has been my stance since I first started writing about restaurants 32 years ago.

I know a new restaurant has “kinks” to work out—the kitchen may still be tweaking some dishes, for instance. But actually, tweaking never stops in a good kitchen, and paying customers should not have to perform as the chef’s involuntary guinea pigs for a new menu. I know servers must be fully educated about the food they’re serving to sell it effectively to the customer. That takes time, but it shouldn’t happen on the paying customers’ dime.

Bottom line: Restaurateurs: open when you’re ready and not before—or own the consequences.

I do have a reason to restate this philosophy right now—my first visit to Trestle Tavern, Scott Evans’ new restaurant in the old Fresco space next to King’s English Bookshop—and the “rye dumplings” I was served that turned out to be “crackers.”

Evans has opened several successful restaurants in Salt Lake City: Pago, Finca, East Liberty Tap House and Hub & Spoke, the last few in a fairly short-time period. Trestle Tavern is housed in one of the prize restaurant locations in Salt Lake. The tiny restaurant and the trellised patio have the kind of organically quirky charm that can’t be planned by an architect or “concepted” by a designer. No one would make a dining room this small, inconvenient and inaccessible if they had a reasonable choice, but what ought to be drawbacks are advantages here, creating the authentic and endearing eccentricity Americans love in European restaurants but consistently fail in counterfeiting at home. Evans jumped on it when previous tenant Mikel Trapp decided to close Fresco and I don’t blame him. This is the kind of space Evans does best with.

I’m not sure why he settled on Eastern Europe as the culinary inspiration, though. I know that national food magazines, consumer and trade, have trumpeted Eastern Europe as the next big food trend. I’ve eaten at Kachka in Portland. And there are no chic Eastern European restaurants in Utah. When pierogies and cabbage rolls sweep the nation, Trestle Tavern is poised at the head of the pack.

I’m just not sure that Eastern European is a cuisine Utahns, who are still leery of eating rabbit, are hungering for yet.

Smoked trout cakes are exactly what they sound like, though—like crab cakes but made with smoked trout, and chicken paprikash made with Mary’s chicken had a delightfully light and spicy paprika sauce. Cabbage rolls made with red cabbage—pretty or uncomfortably anatomical-looking, we couldn’t quite decide—were filled with mushrooms or braised oxtail and short grain rice. Since our first visit that’s been changed to “braised beef” on the menu and I hope there’s therefore more of it and that the rolls are cooked until the cabbage ribs are tenderer.

Like a lot of TT’s food, this would have been better appreciated with a nip in the air, which is why I ordered the grilled Utah trout which leads me back to the rye dumpling/crackers. In an email, Evans explained that the Tavern’s chef makes rye dumplings sort of like you make matzoh balls, only using rye bread instead of matzoh. The crisp, dry crackers I was served with my trout were slices of dumpling that had been toasted and looked similar to pita chips. The menu now calls these, properly, crackers.

So, things are evolving. Another bafflement for us was the impressive list of spirits which our server told us were only available as a shot or over ice or with a little water—there was no menu of mixed drinks. Again, Evans says this will change in the near future.

In the meantime, we were happy to start with a glass of Gruet sparkling in lieu of a cocktail, and go on to Schloss Gobelberg, one of the two Gruner Veltliners on the list.

We finished with the only dessert offered—some kind of chocolate pudding—which our waiter strongly advised us against. He told us the kitchen was still “working” on it.

Clearly, although Trestle Tavern is open, it’s not finished. We left feeling like we’d only half-finished reading a book. But we’ll be back for the next chapter.

`1513 S. 1500 East, SLC, 801-532-3372

This year, Taste of the Wasatch, the annual fundraiser for ending hunger in Utah, will be better than ever. Francis Fecteau, owner of Libation, Inc., has gathered a stellar group of wineries to share their wine at the Sunday event at Solitude. Reserved ticket holders are invited to gather early—at 11 a.m.—for a one hour meet and greet with some of California’s top wine makers and wine reps.

This event focuses on small wineries, not just the big Napa tourist attractions (although Caymus will be there): Zotovich, Honig, Inizi, Donkey & Goat, Carol Shelton, Caymus, Colter’s Creek, Ransom, Jeff Cohn Cellars, Orrin Swift, Sean Miner and other boutique operations will be there.

So eat great food, enjoy the sun, sip some great wine and feel good about helping to end hunger in Utah. It’s a win for everyone.

Buy tickets for Taste of the Wasatch here.

Everyone’s talking about it. Sicilia Mia (no website) is, apparently, the Italian restaurant most of Salt Lake has been waiting for and I’m late to the party.

Distinctly unspectacular from the outside—Sicilia Mia is a bland storefront in an unattractive strip shopping mall—the small restaurant is always crowded. We made dinner reservations and still had to wait 40 minutes for a table, which means standing on the sidewalk next to the al fresco diners. Every ten minutes or so, a server or the owner would pop their heads out the door to apologize and there is a “Now Hiring” sign propped in the window.

At a big, professionally designed restaurant from a well-financed owner, this would have annoyed me, but Sicilia Mia is small, family-owned, unpretentious and inexpensive, so my expectations were not the same. Actually, because Sicilia Mia has gotten so much hype, including being called the “best Italian food in Salt Lake,” my expectations were low. I expected the usual one-note red sauce, overcooked pasta and powdered garlic flavor you’re served at many Salt Lake Italian restaurants.

Color me biased. Color me snobby. Color me surprised.

Arancinette—the crisp, deep-fried orbs breaking open to a gooey rice, sauce and cheese interior—were good, better than more expensive ones I’ve eaten at upscale Italian restaurants. That shouldn’t really be a surprise, this is truly a family-owned restaurant, and fried rice balls are not a sophisticated food. Surely they originated with an Italian mamma faced with leftovers and a hungry family. They are an essential Sicilian food and there are other authentic Sicilian dishes on the menu, in addition to the familiar Italian dishes (Caesar salad, bruschetta, carpaccio) that are must-haves for any middle America Italian restaurant.

Pollo involtini, for instance, chicken pounded thin and rolled around a filling studded with pine nuts and raisins, shows the Eastern Mediterranean’s influence on Sicilian cooking. Out there in the middle of the Mediterranean, Sicily was a natural crossroads between North Africa, Europe and the Near East and those cultures influenced the island’s seafood cuisine. Pasta Palermitana is dressed with anchovies, red chili and tomatoes (Sicilians were early adopters of the North American oddity introduced by the Spaniards), Spaghetti Trapanesi is typically Sicilian, with garlic, capers, olives and tomatoes (I did wish for better olives; these were Lindsay-style) and Fettucine Sicilia Mia is packed with chunks of fish, clams and mussels (I think.) It came to the table flaming.

The menu is full of such dramatic presentations—the famous pasta carbonara is made in a hollowed wheel of Parmigiana Reggiano softened by flaming with alcohol. The pasta, egg and pancetta are tossed into the wheel and mixed quickly, the server scraping the sides of the cheese to incorporate as much as possible. The tableside drama is a little corny, like fifties Continental food, but it’s also a lot of fun—the place is so small that the spectacle entertains all the guests. The result on the plate was a much stiffer dish than you would make at home, and incredibly rich. It’s a version that makes you support Calvin Trillin’s campaign to make pasta carbonara the national dish for Thanksgiving. 

Sicilia Mia isn’t perfect. I was disappointed in lasagne—the flavors were good, but I thought it was over-sauced so the layers slid around instead of being a laminated stack. I probably should have let it set for ten minutes or so. And I was surprised at the absence of caponata on the menu. On the other hand, some dishes, like the simple spinaci all burro, are stellar. Spinach was another Saracen introduction to Sicily and at Sicilia Mia it is served in a timbale shape, bright green and tender, garnished with zigzags of balsamic and shards of Parmigiana.

At lunch, sandwiches come on crusty bread made from the house pizza dough. Canoli and other pastries are made in-house; the wine list is brief but focused on Italian wines, including some Sicilian selections.

In the end, what makes Sicilia Mia irresistible is the genuine warmth of the chef Franco Mirenda and his entire—and mostly Sicilian—staff. (Here’s a nod to our Norwegian server, who was as personable and knowledgeable about the food as the Sicilians.) You can’t fake friendly.

4536 Highland Rd., Millcreek, 801-274-0223

Originally from Massachusetts, Thomas Garwood was working in a brewery and playing music with buddies when one of them introduced him to his future wife, Ashlee House, a Utahn. Garwood moved to The Beehive, and the two married a little over four years ago.

Sharing a love for specialty drinks, Garwood and House began experimenting with ginger beer recipes until they found the perfect one. And while ginger beer itself is nothing new in Utah, their use of real and organic juice is uncommon.

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They saw a potential business venture and started Garwood’s Ginger Beer in the fall of 2014.

Originally receiving feedback only from friends, Garwood participated at the US Bartender’s Guild, where the couple had their first opportunity to share the drink with more people. Receiving only positive comments, Garwood and House expanded their small business to something greater and now sell their golden ginger beer at the Downtown Farmers Market, Park Silly Sunday Market and at various locations throughout the state.

Photos courtesy of Thomas Garwood