jlawrence01 wrote:
However, I don't see a lot of great options in and around the national park areas. A lot of these areas are HIGHLY seasonal and generally cannot support a lot of great restaurants. And in rural Utah, the average income and to an extent, family size, means that most families eat at home rather than going out.
If you are going to hit the entire state of Utah, do realize that snow is still possible at higher elevations. I was hiking around Logan, UT in May and we were hiking in six inches of snow.
Jonah wrote:4. About the only "local" food item I can ever recall is lots and lots of frybread.
David Hammond wrote:Jonah wrote:4. About the only "local" food item I can ever recall is lots and lots of frybread.
Frybread is definitely on our list (I usually have it only once a year at a pow-wow), but I'm also keen to try the Pastrami Burger and Fry Sauce (mentioned above), as well as Funeral Potatoes and Utah Honey (we buy honey whenever we travel; it's cool to sample how the bees are making this stuff in different states/countries, and we eat a lot of it).
On several run-downs of Utah regional foods, I've seen Green Jello listed, which I find kind of funny.
Markauf wrote:Jailhouse Café in Moab for breakfast.
Rene G wrote:I used to regularly fly from Chicago to Seattle and often tried to schedule a long layover in Salt Lake City, exclusively to eat pastrami burgers (and fry sauce, I guess). Unfortunately, it never worked out. I've linked to this terrific article a couple times before, but here it is again: Greeks Bearing Burgers. I used to work with a guy from Utah who told me root beer (especially homemade) is very big in those parts. The Root Beer Store in Sandy UT claims to have the world's largest selection of root beer (though I don't see Brigham's Brew listed), but I suspect that's only the tip of the iceberg.
David Hammond wrote:The pastrami burger is the kind of thing I was hoping to find, a regional specialty that, as the article says, "is still relatively unknown outside of Utah. Portland food blogger Nick Zukin said he has heard of a California restaurant offering the burger, but found nowhere to compare to Utah’s 'city on a hill where all burgers come with pastrami.'”
MarlaCollins'Husband wrote:
That's the pastrami burger from The Oinkster in LA. Let me temper your expectations. Pastrami burger isn't much of a revelation. Have you ever had a burger and thought to yourself "this is a great burger but what it really needs is a lot more pepper"? Have you ever had pastrami and thought to yourself, "this is great meat, but what it really needs is to be less cured and less peppery"? Hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high. At least about the food. The rest of the trip sounds spectacular.
chezbrad wrote:I'm tardy for the party here, and the OP is likely on his way and won't see this, but if you keep your expectations low the pastrami burger will overpeform. The the titular specimen at Crown Burger has all the beauty of a hospital cafeteria/concession stand hamburger, but there's some alchemy going on there with how the ingredients work together.
David Hammond wrote:The jlawrence rec of Sun Glow Cafe in Bicknell was excellent. We stopped in for a sampler of four pies (buttermilk, pickle, pinto bean, and oatmeal) all very good if just a touch too sweet for me. Carolyn was especially taken with the pickle recipe, and we’re taking home the recipe. I was thinking it would be dill pickle/savory, but it turned out (entirely unsurprisingly) to be sweet pickle/sweet.
I had a taste of all the slices, but what I really liked was the Utah scone, which as mentioned above is fry bread with honey-butter. So simple...
David Hammond wrote:MarlaCollins'Husband wrote:
That's the pastrami burger from The Oinkster in LA. Let me temper your expectations. Pastrami burger isn't much of a revelation. Have you ever had a burger and thought to yourself "this is a great burger but what it really needs is a lot more pepper"? Have you ever had pastrami and thought to yourself, "this is great meat, but what it really needs is to be less cured and less peppery"? Hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high. At least about the food. The rest of the trip sounds spectacular.
Thanks for the warning, but be assured that expectations are not all that high. A lot of what I've read about Utah regional food suggests that it's not the stuff of dreams, but rather just relatively pedestrian food items gussied up with a bit of weirdness. That said, these weird variations are exactly what I'm looking for because (at the risk of sounding a touch high-falutin') my interest in these foods is sometimes more anthropological than gustatory. Moreover, admittedly, after a day of hiking (and we'll be doing potentially hundreds of miles of that on this trip), I'm pretty sure I'd be hungry for whatever is set before me (and if part of that meal contains some minor insight into the culture that produced it, then my appetite will be fully sated).
David Hammond wrote:And Dan, the trip to Utah was utterly mind-blowing. The National Parks were so spectacularly unique, each with a different topography, and I ended up on a major hunt for petroglyphs, which are also abundant in Utah and the Four Corners area.
MarlaCollins'Husband wrote:David Hammond wrote:And Dan, the trip to Utah was utterly mind-blowing. The National Parks were so spectacularly unique, each with a different topography, and I ended up on a major hunt for petroglyphs, which are also abundant in Utah and the Four Corners area.
Outstanding! Utah hiking is on the to do list. And glad you got to satisfy the pastrami burger curiosity. Think you'll ever order another one?