The PBS travel food show, Moveable Feast came to Utah to film two of its 10th-season episodes and to set up its iconic “Feasts” at two (also iconic) dining spaces—Log Haven and Park City Mountain Resort’s Lookout Cabin. Moveable Feast combines travel with an emphasis on cooking and an aggressive focus on finding local and honest food purveyors and chefs in each city they visit. The crew, fronted by wisecracking host Alex Thomopoulos, visits purveyors and restaurants and invites chefs to shoot a collection of cooking demonstrations. Its signature is a breathtaking aerial shot of “The Feast,” a grand table filled with the local chefs, purveyors they’ve met and local food lovers. Yes, it’s a BIG production.

In Utah, Alex and the crew tapped Salt Lake City restaurant Chefs Viet Pham (Pretty Bird), Dave Jones (Log Haven) and Lavanya Mahate (Saffron Valley) to showcase their culinary techniques for the show’s cooking demonstrations. They also featured ingredients from local purveyors like James Fowler (Sugar House Distillery), Wonderland Mushrooms Company, the market Bombay Foods and the International Rescue Committee’s refugee farming program New Roots SLC at Wheeler Farm, among others. At each location, several days are spent shooting setting the grand table on the final night. For the local chefs and purveyors, it’s a chance to share what’s cool about Utah on a national stage. 

“When the producers first called, we were skeptical,” says Log Haven’s event coordinator Faith Scheffler. “We’ve had film crews here before and they just take the place over to use as a set. But when we learned more about the show, we jumped at the chance. This was about Log Haven and celebrating Utah’s food culture.” 

During the shoot at Log Haven, we spoke with Thomopoulos about the show, which she described as “gentle” in contrast to many aggressive, competitive food shows. (Less Kitchen Nightmares and more “friendly Bourdain.”)

“We meet the people feeding their communities,” she says. “The people who are doing it right. I like to say, they’re doing it with both intention and attention. Everywhere I visit, I learn something and walk away with something new.”

In Utah, for example, Chef Viet Pham led the crew to New Roots SLC, a program by the IRC (one of two agencies that resettle international refugees here in Utah). It teaches refugees who farmed in the country they were forced to flee Utah farming techniques and helps them find markets and co-ops to sell their produce. 

“I was surprised at how many refugees are welcomed in Utah,” Thomopoulos says. “People here receive them with open arms. These are people who are in search of a better life and getting to meet the New Roots Farmers was an example of what I love about this show. We get to share these stories.” 

Thomopoulos, however, is no stranger to Utah. When she was in college she was roommates with Bill Coker and Lucy Cardenas, owners of beloved Salt Lake restaurant Red Iguana, who were guests at the moveable feast film in at Log Haven. 

“The first thing I did when I landed was go to Red Iguana,” she says. “Lucy and Bill are like family to me.”  

Locals in the Spotlight

The two Moveable Feast episodes filmed in Utah featured many local purveyors, chefs and products. 

•Log Haven and Chef David Jones

•Chef Viet Pham of Pretty Bird

•Chef Lavanya Mahate, Founder of Rise Culinary Institute

•Park City Mountain Resort’s Lookout Cabin and
Chefs Alex Malmborg and Zeke Wray 

•Loulia Greek Olive Oil Company and the
Park City Farmers Market

•Grace and Milan Bronchella owners of Wonderlands Mushrooms

•James Fowler, owner and distiller at Sugar House Distillery

•Cheesemaker Fernando Chavez-Sandoval of
Gold Creek Farms, Woodland, Utah

•Sierra Govett from New Roots Community Farm

•Pratap Singh from Bombay Foods 

Ready For My Close Up? Not.

The day after the first night “Feast” at Log Haven, which I attended as a guest, I received a frantic call from show producers Tiffany Thompson and Kat Kingsley. “Alex is sick,” Thompson says. “Would you be willing to be a backup host?”

Wait. What? I mean. Why not? So the morning of the shoot at Park City Mountain Resort, I took the Orange Bubble Express up to Lookout Cabin to be a television host. As it turns out, host Alex Thomopoulos, recovered from a bout of altitude sickness and I was off the hook. Honestly, I had no idea how I would have done that. Basically, it was a huge relief. 

But the crew did have a job for me after all. I helped Thomopoulos (and by helped, I mean did what she told me to do) during a cooking demonstration featuring salmon glazed with Sugar House Distillery’s Bourbon and a melon salad made with Loulia Greek Olive Oil and cheese from Gold Creek Farms that was served at the Feast. Meanwhile, I prattled on about Park City and Salt Lake City history and whatnot. How much of this ended up on the cutting room floor will be determined when the show airs in December. 

How to Watch

The 10th Anniversary season of Moveable Feast is underway. The Salt Lake City episode with Log Haven is scheduled to broadcast on Nov. 18 and the Park City episode featuring Lookout Cabin at Park City Mountain Resort will air on Dec. 16, as the season finale. Check listings at PBS Utah. The show is also available streaming on Apple TV and for PBS Passport members. pbsutah.org, pbs.org

I once met someone at a party who said, “I come from a gin family.” It sounded so novel—or at least something that would be the opening line of a novel—and I had to know more. Intrigued, I asked him everything. His family has been distilling gin for generations, and he grew up using it for everything from toothaches to cleaning cuts. 

While I did not grow up in a “gin family,” I figured I could find a way to incorporate more gin into my life. And so was born the gin-brined turkey recipe I go to every Thanksgiving. If you are brining your bird anyway, why not add gin? It is aromatic, with a hint of juniper and fresh citrus. And it’s the recipe I am asked for the most often when the holiday’s approach. 

Gin-Brined Turkey

Ingredients:

12–14 lb turkey, thawed (you CAN scale this recipe up or down based on how many people you have coming to dinner and if you want leftovers)

For the Brine:

• 1 750 ml bottle of quality gin. (Go for more than cheap pine-scented gin. I use Beehive Distilling’s Jack Rabbit Gin.)
• 12 cups Water
• 1 cup Diamond Kosher Salt
• ¼ cup honey
• Fresh thyme, 5 sprigs
• Fresh rosemary, 2 branches
• Fresh sage, 3 sprigs
• 1 tablespoon juniper berries
• 1 tablespoon whole pepper
• 1 lemon,sliced
• 1 lime, sliced
• 1 apple, quartered
• 5 garlic cloves, crushed

Compound Butter:

• ⅓ cup unsalted butter, soft but not melted
• ½ teaspoon each of fresh rosemary, thyme and sage, finely chopped

For the Pan, AKA Future Gravy:

• 1 cup turkey or chicken stock
• Optional aromatics: celery, garlic, carrots, bacon, onions, herb stems—whatever you want to flavor the broth as it cooks
• Maybe a shot or two of gin

Method:

1. In a large working bowl, combine gin, water and salt. Stir with a wooden paddle to dissolve the salt. Add the honey and stir to dissolve as well.

2. Add all the aromatics to the brine: thyme, rosemary, sage, juniper berries, whole pepper, lemon, lime, apple and garlic. Make sure the fruit and the garlic are slightly crushed so that they will release their flavor.  

3. Put thawed turkey in a brine bag and then in a food-safe large bucket, ice chest, cambro, or big working bowl. Pour the brine over the bird. If you use a brine bag, seal it and put it in the fridge. If you have the bird in an ice chest, pack it with ice. You want it to be cold but not frozen. 

4. Let the bird hang out in the brine in the fridge for at least 24–48 hours. The longer it hangs out, the more “gin-y” it will be. Four hours before you are going to roast the bird, remove it from the brine. Rinse, pat dry with paper towels, and place in the roasting pan. The roasting pan with the bird inside will go straight back into the fridge, uncovered, to dry out the skin. 

5. Bring the turkey out of the fridge at least an hour before you roast it—your turkey will turn out the better for it if it does not go into the oven cold. 

6. While the turkey is hanging out in the fridge drying out, make an herbaceous compound butter to slather under the skin. Whip together room-temperature butter with fresh herbs (and even a splash of gin if you’d like) and let it sit to the side. You want it very soft before using it. 

7. Preheat your oven to 450. Once the turkey leaves the fridge, the skin will look dry and almost leathery. This is just the look you are going for. Gently work the skin up and separate from the breast of the turkey, starting at the back cavity. Go slowly so that the skin doesn’t tear. Once the skin is loose from the breast, you can work in a thin layer of compound butter under the skin. This will help with moisture and flavor. You can also rub the exterior of the skin with olive oil, salt, and pepper to flavor the skin. It never hurts to stuff some aromatics inside the bird—I put an apple, a lemon, and an onion inside my bird—all halved or quartered.

8. A final step before adding the turkey to the oven is to prep for future gravy. Add aromatics to the bottom of the roasting pan—celery ribs, onions and carrots—which serve to flavor the drippings. Add turkey or chicken stock to the base for flavor and basting. Add a couple of shots of gin as well to flavor the broth and future gravy.

Roasting Instructions: 

1. Preheat your oven to 450°F (230°C).

2. Place the turkey, breast side up, on a rack set inside a roasting pan. Here you may truss the bird if you want. 

3. Roast the turkey in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

4. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (175°C).

5. Continue roasting the turkey for approximately 2 to 2.5 hours, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh (without touching the bone) registers 165°F. (74°C).

6. Once the turkey has reached the correct internal temperature, remove it from the oven.

7. Tent the turkey loosely with aluminum foil and let it rest for about 20-30 minutes before carving. This allows the juices to redistribute throughout the meat, making it easier to carve and more moist and flavorful. Make the gravy, finish up the sides and get ready to eat in the meantime. 

Note: Cooking times may vary depending on your oven’s performance and other factors. Always use a meat thermometer to ensure that your turkey is cooked to the proper temperature.

Gin Gravy Recipe:

1. When the turkey comes out of the oven, remove all the drippings/broth from the roasting pan, leaving any aromatics behind. Remove the fat from the top—either skim it off or use a fat separator. Set 4 tablespoons of the fat aside. 

2. Add enough turkey or chicken stock (unsalted) to bring the total amount of liquid to 3 cups. In the meantime, toast 4 tablespoons of flour in a dry skillet over medium-low heat until it smells toasty. Nothing ruins gravy faster than a raw flour taste. Remove from the heat when the scent changes, as it will burn quickly. 

3. Put 4 tablespoons of the fat into a skillet. Add the 4 tablespoons of flour and cook over medium heat, constantly whisking, until the two are combined, smooth, and starting to turn golden. Add a shot of gin. Or two. The alcohol will cook out, and the juniper flavor will stick around.

4. Pour the broth in slowly, whisking all the while so that you don’t get lumps. Simmer and stir until that magic moment when gravy appears out of simple ingredients. Taste for salt and pepper. (Usually, with a brined bird, you won’t need to add salt.) Serve hot with your ginny bird. 

Happy Ginsgiving, all!

Praise be, a local favorite fine dining spot is flourishing after a flooding disaster last year

“It’s raining inside the restaurant.” 

No business owner wants to get that phone call. Especially not at 7 a.m., on the day before New Year’s Eve, during the salt lake city restaurant’s busiest time of year. “It was just pouring,” Manoli Katsanevas remembers he and his co-owner/pastry chef Katrina Cutrubus arriving at his eponymous restaurant, Manoli’s, just a few minutes after the frantic call from a prep cook. “Water was gushing out of the ceilings. The drywall looked like it was bubbling.” 

Fortunately, their plumber and landlord quickly shut off the water, discovering that a pipe in the business upstairs had burst overnight. Unfortunately, the damage to both the restaurant’s signature open kitchen, as well as the prep galley in the basement, rang in at a cool $250K. 

To add even more pressure to the aftermath of this disaster, they were recognized in January with a coveted James Beard Foundation award semifinalist nomination in the national category of “Outstanding Hospitality,” but without a restaurant open to promote that well-deserved point of pride. And, they were already slated to host onsite events and provide catering for the 2023 NBA All-Star Game in February. 

“So, yeah, that was pretty nuts,” says Katsanevas with Oscar-worthy understatement. “But we have an amazing landlord, had really good insurance and a contractor who got us on the schedule right away.”

Even with these odds in their favor, Katsanevas and Cutrubus pulled a massive pivot to their plans in the interim. “Obviously, we couldn’t do any of the NBA events at the restaurant, so we rented out the Greek Church and catered out of there,” he says of their temporary base at the historic downtown Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. Between catering jobs and reupping some pandemic-era favorites like take-and-bake meals and gyros to-go, they were able to keep all of their staff through the July 2023 reopening.

And optimistically, they decided that when life gives you lemons, why not make ouzo-spiked lemonade? Along with designer Rachel Hodson, they made some strategic design choices to the ground-up remodel that kept the feel of that quintessentially Manoli’s hospitable and elegantly warm welcome, with just a little bit more of it.  

More seating in the now-enclosed patio creates year-round usable space and a perfect place for hosting private events. (Don’t worry, the massive slider windows still make you feel like you’re sitting outside during a sunny Saturday or Sunday brunch.) More full-bar swagger, with expanded storage for their fabulous all-Greek natural wine selection taking center stage. And overall, about 40% more seating capacity in the still airy-feeling restaurant.

Aiding and abetting the much-lauded expansion, the Manoli’s team recently purchased a spot six doors west of the restaurant, which they’re calling Parea (Greek for “in good company”). Serving as both as the dairy and a supplemental kitchen for Manoli’s, Parea will also house a neighborhood market—specializing in their heavenly house-made Greek yogurt and cheeses, along with gyros and popular take-and-bake items like spanakopita—slated to open later in 2024. 

All of which gives us, the very happy diners of SLC, even more reason to be glad that the consistently superlative dining experience of Manoli’s is back. And it’s better than ever.   

Manoli’s

402 East Harvey Milk Blvd (900 South) #2, Salt Lake City
(801) 532-3760, Manolis9th.com

Looking for more foodie inspiration? Discover food traditions from the families behind some of our favorite Salt Lake City restaurants, here!