Food finds in Salt Lake City

Our favorite part of vacation is finding local restaurants.  As soon as we landed, I did a search for the best breakfast places in Salt Lake City and found several really great possibilities.  At the top of the list was the The Park Cafe.  The food was delicious and the atmosphere was just how we like it - crowded, but comfortable.  We always see a short wait as a sign of great food.

While out adventuring, we found a place for dinner - Taco Taco. It was a short walk from our hotel and the food was so delicious.  The customer service was amazing and we loved the selection of delicious tacos.  I am a huge fan of sweet little local places.  The two crosses on the wall were so cool.

Earlier in the day we found the Holiday Craft Market at the Rio Grande Depot in the downtown area.  We found some great food items and enjoyed seeing the historic depot.  After we made a couple of purchases, I realized that we would have to ship a box home because we were buying a lot of liquids and we only brought carry on bags.  We were violating our three ounce rule on several items.

 Some of our favorite finds included the vinegar and marinade from Slide Ridge. We are a little crazy about honey and loved meeting the producer and hearing about his products. We also learned that we can find these items in Whole Foods in Kansas City or Denver.

Our other purchases included some delicious cheese and two half pints of jam.  The story of the jam is really spectacular. The Green Urban Lunch Box harvests fruit from trees in the city for a fruit share program and then some of the fruit is used to make jam that is sold by the non-profit.  We loved the jalapeno plum jam and the pear citrus jam.

I have been a little obsessed with jam since my jam making marathon when I had a bumper crop of peaches delivered by my dad. I started following Food in Jars and have been dreaming about new recipes that I want to try.  This trip gave me a lot of inspiration.

With all of that in mind, when we were faced with our next breakfast decision, a place call Pig and a Jelly Jar was the natural choice. Again, we had a short wait and were really pleased with the food.  I was really taken by the jam. They had a great holiday special where you could choose three jams - one savory and two sweet - and get a gift card.  We chose bacon onion, blueberry lavender, and spiced peach. The gift card also meant that we returned for a second visit.

 We also tried Eggs in the City. This place was great - again, a short wait.  We loved the open kitchen and the space - a converted garage.

One of our other food finds was some flavored balsamic vinegar.  We conducted a self-guided tasting which mainly consisted of us using about a dozen little cups to try as many vinegars and oils as we could.  We walked away with peach and black cherry varieties.  We can't wait to try these with some salads.

Overall, the food finds on this trip were a highlight.  We also loved seeing mountains at every turn - a great change of pace.