Food, Food and Food

A couple weeks ago the City Weekly ran an article about some of the great Salt Lake restaurants that had closed down over the years and then last night while I was waiting to go out I watched an episode of No Reservations from last year where Tony went around to some of the great old New York spots that have survived into the modern culinary world of today.  I have a certain sick love for these kinds of restaurant reviews, a mix of depression and ennui and nostalgia that I think is at the very heart of the Hipster Generation and although I find it ridiculous that kind of attitude has a certain resonance with my personality at a basic level.  Especially when it comes to food in Salt Lake, this city is a wasteland for good food, there seems at times like an almost willful desire from locals to destroy everything good and turn this city into junior Phoenix, the land of chains and strip mall food.

There are still a couple great old places that have survived due to a small number of loyal customers that actually life good food and there are a great number of really good, authentic ethnic places scattered around the valley that must never be overlooked.  It’s the more mainstream traditional good restaurants that are hopelessly with a home here.  It is a city that desires trends more than anything else, always looking for the newest trend, a surprisingly faux hip place in a lot of ways, Williamsburg West I’ve called it many times.  But there is no heart to any of it, whatever trendy chain blows through town that someone heard about when they were in LA or New York hits and hits hard for a while then is gone.  There are of course the Gastronomy places that have been here for years and serve a quite high level or uninteresting sea food, but still good.  There is one great Italian place, maybe two actually, but truly great French is not to be had.  There are a lot of places that survive on ambiance more than food quality as well, and there is lot to be said for ambiance, but both things would be nice.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I would really like to make more of an effort here to at least document, if not bring some kind of notoriety to some of the great local places on this site.  As much as I hate people and would much prefer to eat in an empty restaurant to a full one, it would be nice for some of the great places that happen to still be here to stay in business.  I would hate for the Golden Dragons to be replaced with PF Changs and the Mama’s Kitchens to be nothing but KFCs.