More Than Pizza: Salt Lake's Comfort-Food Lineup (Ours Included)
Pizza gets the headlines, but Salt Lake quietly runs on comfort food — the stick-to-your-ribs, made-from-scratch, exactly-what-you-needed kind. So does our menu. Here's a tour of the city's best, with a few of our own thrown in.
For barbecue: R&R BBQ. What started as a Salt Lake competition team turned into a downtown storefront in 2013, and the recipes haven't budged since the trophy days. The brisket, pulled pork, and burnt ends have earned a citywide following — order the brisket chopped rather than sliced for the juicier cut, get the baked beans and mac & cheese, and don't skip the peach cobbler.
For a Salt Lake original: Crown Burgers. You can't talk Utah comfort food without the pastrami burger, and Crown Burgers is where that legend lives. A Greek-American family converted a downtown hot-dog stand into a burger joint in 1978, put a charbroiled patty under a towering pile of hot pastrami, and accidentally launched a statewide obsession — there's a reason half the burger spots in Utah now copy it. The "Crown Burger" with that pastrami, cheese, and Thousand Island is the move; load up on their fry sauce, which is some of the best in a state that takes fry sauce very seriously.
For breakfast-all-day: Ruth's Diner. Ruth Evans, a cabaret singer with a famously rebellious streak, opened her diner in 1930, and in 1949 she hauled a decommissioned trolley car up Emigration Canyon and built the restaurant around it. Nearly a century later it's still one of the oldest operating restaurants in Utah, still serving its legendary "Mile High Biscuits," country gravy, and chicken-fried steak on a gorgeous canyon patio. Worth the winding drive every time.
For a deli fix: Feldman's Deli. When the craving is for hand-sliced pastrami, crispy latkes, and a sandwich stacked taller than the Wasatch, this east-side spot delivers a genuine slice of Brooklyn in Salt Lake.
And at our table: Litzas. We've always been more than pizza. Our spaghetti comes with a hearty pork-based sauce and a slice of garlic bread; the lasagna is layered with ricotta and mozzarella and built to put you to sleep in the best way; the calzone folds your favorite toppings into a golden turnover; and the garlic bread is the side people come back for on its own. Comfort food, made from scratch, since 1965.
Some nights call for a pie. Some nights call for a plate of spaghetti and a basket of garlic bread. Good thing Salt Lake — and Litzas — has both.
