Salt Lake summer’s best: Top chefs showcase dishes highlighting local produce

Summer sure is delicious, with all manner of fruits and vegetables ripening on the vine, in the trees and on lush, green plants.

And no one knows how to treat all that delicious produce better than the chefs of some of the best restaurants in Salt Lake City, including Arlo, Table X, Finca Pintxos Bar, Roux and Oquirrh. All of these establishments make it their passion to use locally grown fruits and vegetables in their food.

For this article, we asked the chefs to choose one dish to feature that highlights Utah produce in some way.

All of these dishes are currently on the menu in their respective restaurants, but if you want to try them, hurry in: These are the types of places that don’t keep their menu the same for long.

Mike Blocher — Table X

Mike Blocher, who, along with Nick Fahs, is the co-owner and chef of modern American restaurant Table X, said their team puts “enormous emphasis” on using products from farmers markets and local farms in the food they make. There’s also a garden of 13 raised beds at their location in Millcreek at 1457 E. 3350 South, where they grow vegetables, herbs and fruits, Blocher said.

For this article, Blocher is highlighting Table X’s leg of lamb, which is the fifth of seven courses on the restaurant’s tasting menu. The lamb is from Grand Teton Lamb on the Idaho-Wyoming border, and at Table X, they rub the meat with herbs and roast it.

When the dish is served, the first layer is a smooth corn sauce, made with corn from Tagge’s Famous Fruit And Veggie Farms in Perry. The roasted lamb gets sliced and put on top of the sauce, and then nestled among the meat are crispy potatoes that are braised in a broth made with smoked and dried corn cobs, and then roasted in lamb fat. Sprinkled on top of the meat and potatoes is a spoonful of red currants from the restaurant’s garden that are tossed with olive oil, sherry vinegar and chopped herbs. Drizzled over everything is a lamb jus, which is infused with dried chili and cumin to give it “barbecue aromas” that go with the corn and smoky potatoes, Blocher said.

Phelix Gardner — Pago Restaurant Group

Phelix Gardner is the chef-partner for Pago Restaurant Group — which owns the restaurants of Pago, Finca and more — and he said he’s been spending most of his time at Finca Pintxos Bar at 126 Regent St. in downtown Salt Lake City, and Emigration Cafe, at 1709 E. 1300 South in the Yalecrest neighborhood.

For this article, Gardner chose a dish from Finca Pintxos Bar, whose menu features tapas (Spanish small plates for sharing) and small tapas called pintxos, usually served on a sliced baguette. He decided on pan con tomate (”bread with tomato”), “since we’re literally right in the heart of tomato season,” he said.

Gardner makes pan con tomate by cutting a tomato (from Frog Bench Farms, Keep It Real Vegetables, or Parker Farms Produce) in half and then rubbing the halves against a box grater. Then he creates a “really explosive, really intensely flavored tomato pulp” by adding shaved garlic, olive oil and salt to the tomato. Next, he slices housemade pan cristal (”glass bread”) and toasts it, and spreads the tomato mixture on the bread.

Pan con tomate, Gardner said, is “one of the cleanest ways of tasting the season when it comes to tomatoes.”

Adam Cold — Roux

Adam Cold’s restaurant, Roux (at 515 E. 300 South, Salt Lake City), where he is the chef and owner, has been open only for about seven months, but he’s been cooking for much longer than that — about 15 years.

When it comes to sourcing his ingredients, Cold said, “I like to have partnerships with farmers, meaning that I work with them for a very long time, and all of these farmers deliver me small amounts once a week of whatever they have.”

From Harward Farms in Springville, that’s fresh corn, which Cold uses in his elote risotto. To make this “re-creation” of the flavors of street corn, Cold starts by removing the kernels from cobs of fresh corn to create a corn puree. Then he makes a corn stock using the corn cobs, coriander, chilies, shallots and garlic, and cooks the risotto in the corn stock. He finishes the risotto by adding the corn puree, whole corn kernels, butter, roasted Hatch chilies, roasted poblano peppers, cotija cheese and cilantro. Hot Cheetos go on top.

“I think the hot Cheetos are kind of fun, kind of silly, but pretty classic at the same time,” Cold said.

Andrew Fuller—Oquirrh

Andrew Fuller is the chef and owner at Oquirrh, at 368 E. 100 South in Salt Lake City, and he opened the restaurant with his wife, Angie Fuller, in 2019.

Fuller — who previously worked at Copper Onion, Pago and HSL — said he likes to let the ingredients stand out on the plate. “That is the reason why we get as much local produce as possible, is because I believe just getting really good product and presenting it simply is the best way to make the food taste good.”

He chose to feature a pasta dish for this story that’s made with radiatori pasta, which they create in-house at Oquirrh. (An interesting note: Oquirrh’s pasta is vegan, made only with semolina flour, water, olive oil and salt, no eggs, Fuller said.)

The pasta is placed in a bowl with sauteed summer squash and topped with a zucchini puree, and then garnished with raw summer squash ribbons, Fuller said. Some of the farms that Oquirrh gets its produce from are Top Crops, Frog Bench Farms, Parker Family Produce, he said. The dish also features ground chili flake and fennel sausage from Wasatch Meats cooked in roasted garlic and reduced chicken broth, which helps form the sauce for the pasta. On top is fennel pollen, basil and grated parmesan cheese.