Caught between COVID-19, curfews and protest marches restaurants have been experiencing a double squeeze. Just when COVID-19 restrictions were starting to ease, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall slapped an 8 pm curfew on the city, inspired by one afternoon and evening of riotous behavior followed by peaceful protests. She lifted that curfew to the relief of local—especially downtown—restaurants and businesses. But some are still suffering because of the regular protests, even though they support the cause. Over the next few days, we’ll be talking to restaurant owners about how they’re coping with multiple crises.

Today we spoke with Bob McCarthy, owner of Stoneground Kitchen and Garage on Beck. McCarthy’s a veteran; he’s been running restaurants in Salt Lake City for 20 years.

Stoneground Italian Kitchen                              And before I go any further, remember that on June 12, Stoneground Kitchen will be celebrating their 20th anniversary with a prix fixe dinner featuring their greatest hits. 

“We were hanging on by a nail and she (Mayor Mendenhall) brought out the nail clipper,” he says about the recent curfew requiring everyone to be off the streets by 8 p.m.

“We are open for business, but there’s only 17 percent occupancy at downtown businesses. We got rid of lunches—it wasn’t financially worth it. We only did 31 covers last night. Then they closed 400 South because of the marches without any notice to the business-owners.”

McCarthy says the curfew was too late and too extreme. “The trouble had already happened and there should have been considerations for diners in restaurants,” he says. He thinks the community should have been included in the decision-making. “While it was in effect, it took half our business.”

However, that’s over for now. Good for Mayor Mendenhall.

Unfortunately, restrictions on crowds and the number of guests allowed in a restaurant will continue for the time being. The number of COVID-19 cases in Utah is still rising.

McCarthy says he’s lucky, because he owns his own buildings. Other, newer restaurateurs may not be so fortunate.

“When this started, I told my team, ‘Don’t get sad, get innovative.’

So while his inside dining revenue shrank, he turned to other ways of making his space work for him.

“When I started my restaurants, I measured the square footage. I thought, I can only make money inside these walls.”

But he has expanded his walls, and even after virus precautions have loosened, he will continue to expand the parameters of his business.

“I think curbside will continue,” he says. I’m not in a rut. I can change. Rent the place, fill in with catering. I want to start our own delivery service—the services like Grubhub eat into our profit. I want to hire my own drivers, have them project the image of the restaurant, dress the way I want them to, use biodegradable containers, etc.”

McCarthy wants to deliver family meals via e-bike, develop an app that stores credit card info so ordering is seamless.

“The big problem with curbside pick up and delivery is that diners miss out on a huge part of the restaurant experience—there’s no ambiance. For restaurants like Stoneground Kitchen and The Garage, the experience is important.”

But, he says, “Restaurants are going to have to change.”

Best case scenario: He’ll get back to normal traffic in the restaurant and add the curbside dollars.

“I’m done with fear,” he says. “The only option is to adapt and be better than you were before. I feel like I was pushed off a cliff and my wings sprouted and I flew.”

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“I‘ve had a lot of time to think,” says Scott Evans, a bit wryly.

Ever since the much-lauded opening of Pago in 2009, Evans has been a force in the Salt Lake dining scene. After Pago’s success, he opened Finca, a Spanish tapas-style restaurant, which he soon moved to a large downtown location while opening diner-style Hub & Spoke in Finca’s original location. East Liberty Taphouse followed, then he opened Trestle where the beloved Fresco used to be, and Birdhouse near East Liberty at the height of the fried chicken rehatch.

It was a lot in a short time and with the shortage of good wait staff and the chef merry-go-round meant constant reshuffling and retraining. Evans is a self-defined concept and front-of-the-house guy. “I come up with a concept, organize and oversee service, develop a beverage program and give the chef a menu to start from.”

Like most of us during the downtime required by the Covid-19 pandemic, Evans has been reconsidering things. Also like many of us, he had to figure out how to survive in business and consider what he really wanted out of it.

“It’s always been about following a personal passion,” says Evans. Focusing on that, he decided to sell the Taphouse and Birdhouse, with the building they’re in, to his partners, while taking over 100 percent of Pago with Chef Phelix Gardner. “I’m relaunching Finca in the space where Trestle was with Mike Richey (former owner of the now-closed, much-lamented Fireside) as chef.” Richey was one of the opening chefs at Pago.

“I’ve always loved Spanish food and wine and tapas still aren’t really being done anywhere in Salt Lake,” Evans says. “It’s become a very muddled term.”

Both restaurants will continue to offer curbside dining and a limited, counter service lunch. “The market has become much more casual than it was when I started Pago,” says Evans.

And Covid has taught all of us, in every business, the importance of being able to pivot and expand our ways of doing business.

For Evans, this means working with an experienced, talented chef who understand the necessity of consistency as well as the power of invention and who can see the kitchen as a business as well as a creative space. He also believes in a chef-partner model of restaurant management—his chefs work towards partial ownership—he’s looking for people who have done their runaround time as young chefs and are more mature. “Guests shouldn’t be used as guinea pigs,” says Evans, whose chefs have gone on to start their own restaurants like Oquirrh or Table X.

“I’ve been thinking about when I was happiest in this business and what I really want to do,” says Evans.

“And that led me to launching Finca for the third time.”

A recent tasting of the preliminary menu was exciting—and how fun to be excited about new food in the middle of these most dismal days. Take a look at some of the dishes below.

This Finca will open with curbside takeout at the beginning of June; by the middle of that month, Evans plans to start limited availability at Finca for dining in. 1513 S. 1500 East, SLC, 801-532-3372

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Everyone in Salt Lake City except for me is tending a patch of tomatoes right now. We’re a city of home gardeners.

Despite Fred and Ginger’s famous dancing argument , it doesn’t really matter how you say it: Garden-ripened tomatoes are the soul of summer. No one said—sang—it better than Guy Clark so: Play this song while you make tomato sauce from your own homegrown tomatoes. Because guaranteed, if you’re growing them, you’ll have plenty—enough to make a sauce, besides all the other things Clark mentions.

I like this recipe from Windy Cedar farm because even though it takes some time to reduce the water out of the tomatoes, it’s passive time: You don’t have to stand over it. I like the condensed richness of tomato flavor, and the suggestion to freeze it in useable portions instead of steam-canning it makes it easy to use for months so you can have that fresh tomato flavor even in midwinter when fresh tomatoes are just a happy summer dream.