The Pearl’s Fish-sauce wings; Bok Choy with Shimeji and house chili crisp; Appetizers: Egg Rolls, Lemongrass Port and Sugarcane Shrimp, Vietnamese Sausage Platter; Cocktails: Roselle Colored Glasses and a Mezcal White Negroni. Photo By Adam Finkle
Conceived by the minds who brought us Alibi, but firmly standing on its own, The Pearl provides an unforgettable food and drink experience. First, let’s talk about the food. The menu is inspired by Vietnamese street food that pays homage to the formative days of Chef Tommy Nguyen, who is “a legend,” in the words of Darby Doyle. The food is a delicious and intimate affair, in a cozy setting, and nothing on the dinner menu will let you down. The pork belly and the egg rolls are unforgettable and Nguyen’s mother’s recipe (and the pho is definitely “a thing” worth trying), which inspired Stuart Melling to compare the experience at The Pearl to dining at “Tommy’s family table.” As for the drinks, expect exceptional and balanced craft cocktails (if you’ve been to Alibi, you know what we’re talking about), perfectly paired with the dishes by masterful and sage bartenders.
Chicken fried chicken served with gravy and sides of collard greens and candied yams. Photo By Adam Finkle
Inside, Sauce Boss Southern Kitchen feels more like a diner than fine dining, but that’s the point. “It’s not fancy, but it is great eats served with love,” says Darby Doyle, a Kentuckyian who knows Southern food. The menu is the embodiment of nostalgia, Southern comfort and Black soul food at its best—a rare combination to find in Utah, to say the least. The focus is on authentic flavors, consistent quality and the details: Red Drink (their house-made version of Bissap), real sweet tea, crunchy-crust cornbread, fried catfish, blackened chicken wings and the best collard greens in the valley. Chef Julius Thompson nails the standards. He’s a master at the deep fryer, and, our panelists say, his touch with spice and sauces is pretty special.
HSL’s Grilled cauliflower with coconut milk and red cabbage emulsion. Photo By Adam Finkle
These are two different restaurants in two very different spaces. Handle, located just off of Park City’s Historic Main Street, stands out in a town that caters to visitors where some operators, frankly, phone it in. HSL on the edge of downtown SLC is Handle’s cousin in the city. The common denominator is, of course, Chef Briar Handly, who is the impresario behind what panelist Lydia Martinez called “The Briar Handly Experience.” Chef Handly is an enfant terrible who can’t stop playing with his food. But sitting still is only prized by preachers and school teachers. We, on the other hand like our chefs to have poor attention spans which result in surprise and, from Handly, delight, regardless if you’re in a party of 20 or two. (The latter was experienced by panelist Jennifer Burns, who watched in awe as the servers and kitchen produced one of “the most phenomenal experiences ever.”)—Jeremy Pugh
Poached, line-caught, Pacific halibut with sunflower seed and arugula puree, fennel sauce and sourdough breadcrumbs. Photo By Adam Finkle
Table X continues to push its high-concept experiment further. Started by a team of chefs who came from traditional fine dining restaurants on the East Coast, Nick Fahs and Mike Blocher, Nick focuses on the restaurant’s bakery (which sells directly to customers) and Mike sources food locally (much of it from the restaurant’s own garden). Last year, Blocher doubled down on his confidence in the food from his kitchen. Table X only serves an ever-changing tasting menu at each seating. Basically, he’s saying, “I’ll decide.” Relax. You’re in good hands. “This is the most ambitious kitchen in town,” says panelist Lydia Martinez, echoed by panelist Darby Doyle who says, “their prix fixe tasting menus are dependably stunning and always include vegetarian and vegan options.” But don’t think this is fussy food, Blocher limits himself to a small number of minimally manipulated ingredients. But. No. They don’t serve a burger.
Tona’s Green Globe: spicy ahi tuna, snow crab salad, avocado, orange and wasabi tobiko caviar with citrus-soy. Photo By Adam Finkle
Tona Sushi Bar & Grill in Ogden has been wowing our cousins to the north for more than a decade with “creative and ingenious art,” as described by Dining Awards panelist Jennifer Burns. “I’ve eaten sushi within sight of an ocean and thought, ‘Tona is better,’” she says. Chef Tony Chen combines traditional Japanese techniques with a modern sensibility that wows on the plate. Sushi, after all, is fussy food with exactness and precision required of its practitioners who are as much designers as they are chefs. “Every touch is thought out to create the perfect bite,” Burns says.
I followed them to the sandlot once after school. I’d never seen any place like it. It was like their own little baseball kingdom or something. It was the greatest place I’d ever seen anyway.”
With those words, David Mickey Evans, the writer, director and narrator introduced us to The Sandlot, the iconic childhood baseball nostalgia film released in 1993. When Evans wrote those words in his screenplay for The Sandlot he was dreaming of a very real vacant lot in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley circa 1968. It had been transformed by local kids into a ramshackle baseball sanctuary where, throughout the summer, the crack of bats echoed from dawn to dusk. Back then, Evans and his little brother Scott were new arrivals to the community, and yearned to get in on the fun. But, this is where reality departs sharply from fiction.
“We got beat up a lot,” says Evans. His Pacoima neighborhood, one of many United States suburbs created to accommodate the White Flight of the 1950s and ’60s, had become home to lower-income Chicanos. The Evans boys didn’t look like the other kids, so they were persona non grata on the makeshift ballfield—even after Scott, desperate to court the bullies’ favor, bravely hopped a fence to retrieve their only baseball. His sole reward was a gnarled leg courtesy of the homeowner’s vicious dog.
Two decades later, in 1989, Evans now one of the hottest screenwriters in Hollywood thanks to his semi-autobiographical Radio Flyer (a dark fantasy wherein he reckons with the physical and emotional scars inflicted by his abusive step-father), mined these unhappy memories for a script called The Boys of Summer. It was to be his how-you-like-me-now revenge on the kids who denied him access to their baseball kingdom. This sounded wonderfully cathartic in theory, but there was just one problem: Evans didn’t want to see it, and couldn’t imagine anyone else buying a ticket for a downer movie about the bullies of his childhood. So on the day he was fired as director of Radio Flyer (early enough in production that the producers were able to scrap his footage and start from scratch with a completely different cast), he went in the opposite direction, crafting a deeply nostalgic mash note to the unifying spirit of baseball. It would be a film about unconditional friendship. It would be not about the way things were, but the way they should have been. And while the film would still be set in the San Fernando Valley, Evans would find his field of dreams a couple of states over after he visited a vacant lot in the Glendale neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
photos courtesy 20th Century Fox
The Sandlot turns 30 this year and remains a timeless account of the best summer a ragtag group of adolescents ever had. Set in 1962, the film kicks off with young, timid Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry) moving to Southern California with his mother (Karen Allen) and stepfather (Denis Leary). While exploring his strange new environs, Smalls stumbles upon a makeshift baseball diamond composed of dirt, dead grass and a flung-together backstop. This is the sandlot where eight rambunctious boys bat the ball around until the sun dips below the horizon. Eight players means they’re short one for a full team, so when baseball-mad Smalls appears out of nowhere to set up in left field sporting the cheap plastic glove gifted to him by his grandmother, the squad’s leader, Benny (Mike Vitar), spies an opportunity for a ninth. Smalls is a disaster at first, but he ultimately overcomes his unsightly deficiencies in the throwing and catching department to win over the gang, leading to a magical three months full of highs and lows and plenty of mischief (most notably a Babe Ruth-signed baseball landing in the jaws of a backyard menace known as The Beast).
Given his devastating experience on Radio Flyer, Evans couldn’t afford another behind-the-camera misstep with his second feature. He hedged his risk by writing an all-ages comedy that could be made for under $10 million (a pittance for a studio production when Fox greenlit the film in 1991). The slashed cost, however, knocked Southern California out as a potential filming location. Evans, who’d lived most of his life in the area, was flummoxed. “I couldn’t imagine there being another Southern California basin,” says Evans. “It’s basically a desert surrounded by big purpley-blue mountains.”
Desert, big purpley-blue mountains…where might one find such a setting in the continental U.S.?
Producer Mark Berg thought this sounded an awful lot like Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Mountains. Evans flew out to the valley for a location scout and was immediately convinced. Location managers David B. Smith and Dennis Williams knew the area well, and, armed with photos of Evans’ old San Fernando stomping grounds, locked down one perfect approximation after another. The film suddenly flickered to life in Evans’ imagination: The Beast’s chaotic pursuit of Benny through the Founder’s Day picnic; Squints’ shrewdly calculated kiss with lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn at the local pool; the ill-fated carnival ride fueled to vomitous effect by Big Chief tobacco; the boys’ drubbing of the rich kids’ team at their meticulously maintained ballpark; and, of course, that little baseball kingdom nestled in the heart of a tight-knit neighborhood.
Heart was at the top of the docket for Evans, and he found an abundance of it in Salt Lake City, starting with his crew. “This was the first time I’d ever worked in Utah, and the people there have a work ethic that’s unrivaled,” he says. “They care about what they do. They want to do a good job and they do a great job.” As Evans and his cast of troublemakers grew accustomed to the city, he realized the themes of his movie were reflected in the people he met. “The underlying values of the characters in the movie, I think, fit pretty perfectly with Salt Lake as I know it. I love it. The people there have just a magnificent take on family. It seems to me it’s a bit of a meritocracy. It’s a good-things-happen-to-those-who-do-good-things kind of vibe.”
photos courtesy 20th Century Fox
The populace of Salt Lake City has returned this affection a dozen fold. In 2013, Marshall Moore, then the Director of the Utah Film Commission, teamed up with Brian Prutch, the Director of Corporate Sales for the Salt Lake Bees at the time, to host the 20th anniversary at the restored sandlot. Moore’s love affair with the film began when he took his 4- and 3-year-old children to see the movie during its theatrical release. He had relocated to the area in 1993 to work on the ABC miniseries production of Stephen King’s The Stand and fell hard for its gentle nature and inclusive spirit. Having missed the chance to work on The Sandlot by just a year, he leaped at the opportunity to help orchestrate the film’s birthday celebration in a city that, despite its on-screen setting in California, has embraced it as the quintessential Salt Lake City movie.
Moore believes the city’s love affair with The Sandlot is rooted in its nostalgia for a childhood innocence that is disappearing. “There aren’t a lot of kids out running around playing sandlot baseball anymore,” he says. “Maybe [kids] all get together and ride their bikes, or get together to shoot some hoops at the playground, but [youth] baseball is very organized.” Still, Moore is encouraged that the film has not only endured, but expanded its appeal. Every year, parents show The Sandlot to their children, and, judging from the turnout at the anniversary events, which occur every five years, the movie exudes a timelessness akin to cherished classics like The Wizard of Oz, The Goonies and E.T.the Extra-Terrestrial.
None of this has gotten old for Evans or the cast. They eagerly show up for each anniversary celebration, sign loads of autographs on whatever’s handy (Evans claims he’s signed more than one baby with a Sharpie) and relive what wound up being the best summer of their lives. In exchange, attendees huddle together with their spouses and children under a starry sky and dream anew about the way things should be.
Left to right: Chauncey Leopardi, Patrick Renna, Marty York, Victor DiMattia, Shane Obedzinski. photo j’adore photography / priscilla poland
Where are they Now?
Tom Guiry (Scott Smalls) went on to star in major films like Ride with the Devil, Black Hawk Down and Mystic River. He will play himself as a kidnap victim in the forthcoming mob comedy Killin’ Smallz.
Mike Vitar (Benny Rodriguez) went from The Sandlot to the ice hockey rink as Luis in D2: The Mighty Ducks and D3: The Mighty Ducks. He quit acting in 1997 and later joined the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Patrick Renna (Hamilton “Ham” Porter) had memorable roles in 1990s comedies like Son in Law and The Big Green and the lamentably canceled Netflix series Glow.
Chauncey Leopardi (Michael “Squints” Palledorous) joined Renna in The Big Green before the criminally short-lived NBC series Freaks and Geeks. He recently appeared in the music video for Logic’s “Homicide.”
Brandon Adams (Kenny DeNunez) laced up the skates alongside Vitar for D2: The Mighty Ducks. He also appeared on ’90s beloved series like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Roc and Moesha.
Marty York (Alan “Yeah-Yeah” McLennan) has appeared on TV series as varied as Boy Meets World, Wings and The Eric Andre Show.
Grant Gelt (Bertram Grover Weeks) quit acting in the late 1990s and went on to co-found the brand studio Masscult.
Shane Obedzinski (Tommy “Repeat” Timmons) left acting behind in 1993. He is now the owner of Times Square Pizza in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Victor Dimattia (Timmy Timmons) has returned to film, mostly behind the scenes, with billing as an actor and director.
David Mickey Evans followed up The Sandlot by writing the 1996 baseball comedy Ed about a baseball-playing chimpanzee. He wrote and directed 2005’s The Sandlot 2 and is currently developing a prequel.
Where to find The Sandlot in Salt Lake City
For superfans hyped about taking the SLC Sandlot tour, here’s your map of the essential stops.
Smalls and Benny’s houses are located on the 2000 East block in Salt Lake City.
Squints stole his kiss at the Lorin Hall Community Pool in Ogden.
The carnival and the Founder’s Day picnic were filmed at Liberty Park.
Our scrappy heroes routed the rich kids’ team at Riverside Park’s Rose Park Field.
The Sandlot itself is located behind 1388 Glenrose Drive, in Salt Lake City
NOTE: If you opt to visit when the field hasn’t been refurbished for its anniversary, prepare to be disappointed. It’s just a bland vacant lot. Also, it’s impossible to access the field without committing some light trespassing. So, you know, don’t do it.
Dear Evan Hansen, opening Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, at the Eccles Theater, in Salt Lake City, brings to the stage—in text and tone — the crushing isolation of a nerdy teenager, trapped in his own awkward snare. Evan Hansen is that socially inept, tic-filled kid whose biggest struggle is to face the throngs of high schoolers as he plods and weaves through each day.
But even as Evan falters and stumbles he learns the benefit of telling people what they want and need to hear. Once the story’s out, untrue though it is, the falsehoods collapse around him.
Winner of six Tony awards, Dear Evan Hansen has won numerous other awards, including the Drama League Award for Outstanding Musical Production and for the off-Broadway production, two Obie Awards, a Drama Desk Award and two Outer Critics Circle Awards and two Helen Hayes Awards.
Michael Greif, veteran director of luminous productions such as “Rent,” guides the inspiring book by Steven Levenson and haunting, score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul to its ultimate nuanced conclusion.
Underneath the thick layers of insecurity, Evan yearns desperately for affection, affection that ultimately spells trouble for its seeker.
This is when Evan’s fateful encounter with his nemesis and salvation, Connor Murphy, finds Evan in the school’s computer room printing one of the daily “atta-boy” letters to himself that his therapist has advised him to write, thus the title “Dear Evan Hansen…” The letter, seized by Connor, is grist for his own mean mill. When Connor notices the blank white cast on Evan’s arm, he scrawls his name in bold letters across it and laughs a mocking, taunting laugh.
That evening Connor Murphy, a drug-addled, alienated schoolmate, commits suicide.
As news of Connor’s suicide and his so-called friendship with Evan spreads across the school, the class smart aleck Alana starts a fund in Connor’s name. Pulled into the Connor Project’s school assembly, Evan is persuaded to give a speech. When the speech hits the social media platforms it becomes a sensation, and lackluster Evan becomes a social media phenom garnering thousands upon thousands of “likes.”
And here we have the nub of the story. Dear Evan Hansen shows how social media have become both a way of advocating for good and inspiring collective participation, but also suggests that viral movements can spiral out of control, doing more damage than good.
Seduced by the long-awaited attention, yet silenced by the duplicity of his message Evan personifies the query of what happens when you do the wrong things for the right reasons.
The story and the themes it explore are both current and timeless. And it does so through the inspiring and memorable score. “You Will Be Found “ allows Evan to express what it feels like to be an anxious person desperate to connect, yet filled with hope.
“Have you ever felt like nobody was there? / Have you ever felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere? / When you’re broken on the ground / You will be found / So let the sun come streaming in / ‘Cause you’ll reach up and you’ll rise again / You will be found ….
Dear Evan Hansen is a momentous production we’re looking forward to seeing the touring cast put it through it’s paces. And we’ll be sure to bring a hanky.
THE TOURING CAST:Anthony Norman as Evan Hansen; Alaina Anderson as Zoe Murphy; Coleen Sexton as Heidi Hansen; Lili Thomas as Cynthia Murphy; August Emerson as Connor Murphy; John Hemphill as Larry Murphy; Pablo David Laucerica as Jared Kleinman; Micaela Lamas as Alana Beck.
“I was driving tractors before it got sexy. Real cowboys don’t rock to Kenny Chesney,” according to Paul Cauthen, a musician who is bringing his Country Coming Down tour to The Union Event Center on Friday, March 3, 2023.
Paul Cauthen is blazing a Zappa-like trail with his creative, tongue-in-cheek parody of today’s country music ethos. He offers us a bigger-than-life version of Outlaw Country, and like Zappa, he doesn’t always color within the musical lines of his genre. He is affectionately known as “Big Velvet” because his deep baritone voice channels the vocal spirit of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Elvis Presley (if you can imagine such a throuple.) He plays country, but will veer off into disco or funk mid-song to build a new concoction that resonates with traditional fans and those looking for something more experimental and avant-garde.
On “Cocaine Country Dancing,” for example, Big Velvet creates a giddy-up, country disco when he adds his Elvis/Cash/Jennings vocals to a seedy strip-joint dance beat. It’s something akin to The Who’s song, “Eminence Front” with outlaw-styled lyrics to which you can either line dance or do the hustle. Choose your poison.
Cauthen’s journey started with the Austin-based Americana vocal duo Sons of Fathers, but he left to pursue a solo career. He released his debut record, My Gospel in 2016. The dark and introspective record featured a throwback sound blending outlaw and gospel country without tipping the scales either way. The record’s opening track “Still Drivin” moves along a retro Jennings-esque trail, but then Cauthen takes you down an Elvis-styled gospel path.
On his 2017 seven-song EP Have Mercy, he started to find his satirical Big Velvet voice with catchy songs like “Everybody Walkin’ This Land” where he sings (in Johnny Cash fashion) “You racists, fascists, nihilists, and bigots we’re prayin’ for you my friend.”
With his 2019 full-length release Room 41 Cauthen makes peace with his hell-raising lifestyle with songs like “Prayed For Rain.” He sings, “The well’s runnin’ dry. Hell, so am I” and “The rain turned to hail cold, dark, and pale. It beat me as I fell. Lord, I fell.” On the song “Big Velvet,” he confessed “The train wrecked, but I walked away.” With “Cocaine Country Dancing,” his inner demon-slaying ballads give way to a sardonic acceptance of life’s occasional derailment, and the need to celebrate his wild side.
On his latest release, Country Coming Down, Cauthen fully commits to his unorthodox country sound. He offers us a Zappa-like parody of the Nashville gatekeepers who think he’s not “country” enough. On “Country as F***” he sings “I’m a shade tree mechanic, got a one-ton truck. I drink a 30-pack a day ‘cause I’m country as f***.” He adds an organic Elvis vocal shudder when he sings “Hot dog, holly golly, dagnabit I was two years old when I shot my first rabbit.” Cauthen seems at peace with his Big Velvet moniker and accepts he won’t fit in anyone’s box. He’s having a hell of a good time cultivating a larger-than-life and sometimes campy showmanship. I’m bringing both my cowboy boots and my platform shoes to the show, just in case.
Who: Paul Cauthen
What: The State Room and Postfontaine Presents: Paul Cauthen’s Country Coming Down Tour
John Courtney has lived many lives when it comes to cuisine. He’s a revered chef, having overseen numerous cuisine concepts simultaneously at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas and worked alongside legendary figures like Rick Moonen and Mario Batali. His latest venture, The Fish Market Park City, is bringing a new level of seafood quality to Park City, providing both unique, fresh ingredients for home chefs and a dine-in restaurant in Kimball Junction. It mirrors his other local business, Park City Chop Shop, which is located just across the street. If you’re looking for fresh, fine food in Park City, you’ve found your spot.
Photo by Adam Finkle
“The shrimp is poached in white wine with star anise and cloves to give flavor back to the shrimp. The cocktail sauce is house made with simple ingredients, but we burn off some gin so the juniper flavor matches the character of the poaching liquid. It’s just a shrimp cocktail, you know? But it’s not.” Talking with John Courtney is frequently like this, animated and tinged with education. He combines a philosophical simplicity about cuisine with a technical complexity earned through years of experience. Frankly, it makes me hungry to listen.
Courtney opened The Fish Market Park City in the summer 2022, a combination fresh seafood market and dine-in restaurant. It’s not his first foray into the Park City food scene. He and his wife, Paige, started a business with a similar business model, Chop Shop Park City, directly across the street. Both businesses shared an impetus: to provide high quality ingredients to the community that weren’t readily available.
“We’re the unique fish monger. We know exactly where our proteins came out of the ocean, who took them out and who shipped them directly to us,” Courtney explains. “It’s a different process that costs a little more, but part of what we do is provide education to our customers about why we do things differently.”
It’s hardly a secret that all this wonderful fish doesn’t come out of the Great Salt Lake. Despite the distance from the coast, The Fish Market Park City serves the freshest fish you can find. “We bring Park City as close to the beach as possible. We get fresh fish delivered every single day, not just two days a week like is common in a lot of places. We import some fish directly from the Toyosu Market in Japan. The fish goes straight from the deck to a cargo box, to a plane to SLC and we pick it up at the airport. It’s straight from the water to you,” Courtney says.
Photo by Adam Finkle
The comprehensive import process also allows Courtney to provide truly unique offerings. From high grade belly portions of bluefin tuna, to ocean trout to calamansi (a type of citrus), the fridges and shelves in The Fish Market house all sorts of things you won’t find anywhere else.
If any of those sound intimidating to the home chef, don’t worry. Courtney is happy to provide some direction to help you get the most out of your meal. Of course, there are also in-house dining offerings, including the aforementioned shrimp cocktail, a raw bar, a lobster grilled cheese, a churashi bowl and more. You would be hard pressed to find better fish in the Mountain West, or anywhere else for that matter.
IF YOU GO: 1154 Center Dr., Park City, 435-776-6984.
