Salt Lake City

I just spent 2 1/2 days in Salt Lake City for a librarians' conference. What I've been saying about it is, "you know how Denver kind of feels like the frontier? Well, Salt Lake City does too, but it's the desolate frontier, not the bustling frontier." I don't know if it's because the Mormons are the only game in town, or because SLC's been hit harder by the global economic collapse, or if it's because the real downtown is out in the suburbs.

Despite the Mormons' rep for austerity, we ate two really good dinners. The first one was at Bambara, the restaurant in the Kimpton Hotel. I'd been trying to figure out why my credit card bill for that dinner was $100 - but I just checked the menu, and we had a $25 entree, another for $35, a salad for $9, and two $12 glasses of wine - plus tax, and there you go.

The second one was at Cucina Toscana, billed as a real Tuscan bistro, with the chef-owner in the house - and I did see him, greeting selected, must've been special customers, and fighting with a tippy table. They brought us tomato-mushroom bruschetta to start, and kept refilling the bread basket with good, chewey, slightly squishy, Italian bread. Mark & I split a prepared-table-side Caesar, that was massive and rich and delicious. I got fettucine bolognese, and it was also massive - a mountain of pasta. The sauce was prepared perfectly, just a little too meaty for me - I would've liked more tomato, carrot, celery tastes. Mark's arrabiata looked way too red and bland, but was in fact really nicely zippy. And the bill for this dinner was only $77 or so.