CITY GUIDES | THE WEST

Salt Lake City’s Best Restaurants Are Cooking at a Higher Elevation

By Mei Chen | June 11, 2026

Table X

AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.

I spent a lot of time in Salt Lake City back when I worked for a tech company with an office there, which meant many of my days unfolded inside a windowless conference room that could’ve been almost anywhere. By dinner, I was ready to see the city, and I came to cherish the nightly hunt for Salt Lake’s best restaurants: a bowl of ramen, a taco cart in a parking lot, or a tasting menu that made the day’s meetings feel very far away.

Those searches also taught me that Salt Lake City’s restaurant scene has long had a very deep bench. Chefs here draw on Utah farms, New Mexican childhoods, Japanese training, and family recipes, and the best places range from polished downtown dining rooms to carts serving carne asada on paper plates.

Now, whenever I come back, one of my favorite parts of the trip is updating the list—and finding out just how much more there is to add.

Here then are the 12 spots currently at the top of my list: the best restaurants right now in Salt Lake City.

Aker Restaurant & Lounge

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Aker opened in 2024 with dry-aged nigiri, grilled yakitori, Latin American flavors, and a menu that moves easily from sushi to A5 Miyazaki Wagyu with fresh wasabi. Head chef Johnny Lopez and sushi chef Pae Randall oversee the kitchen, including a chef-selected nigiri flight that gives the sushi program room to show off. Tall windows, low lighting, and a polished lounge make it feel built for a long dinner downtown.

Best for: Dry-aged sushi and a dressed-up night out

Bar Nohm

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Chef David Chon first opened Nohm as a restaurant before the pandemic interrupted the plan, then brought it back in 2023 as Bar Nohm with the team behind neighboring Water Witch. Chon, a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist, serves Korean- and Japanese-inspired dishes such as kimchi rice with shrimp and Chinese sausage. The small Central Ninth space feels more like a serious drinking bar with an unusually good kitchen than a conventional restaurant.

Best for: Korean and Japanese bar food with cocktails

Cosmica

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Chef Zachary Wade and restaurateur Zakary Pelaccio’s take on an Italian-American diner centers on house-leavened pizzas, fresh pasta, puffy bread, eggplant parmigiana, and low-intervention wines. Retro details and an easygoing dining room keep the place casual, even when the table starts filling with far more food than anyone planned to order.

Best for: Pizza, pasta, and low-intervention wine

Felt Bar & Eatery

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Out of the historic Felt Building on Main Street in 2024, chef Travis Herbert leads a kitchen that goes well beyond standard bar food. Depending on what’s fresh, you might find a Connecticut-style lobster roll, shrimp and grits, or watermelon prepared like sashimi. Black ceilings, leather, concrete, warm wood, and candlelight give the 21-and-over space the right amount of downtown cool.

Best for: Cocktails and ambitious late-night food

Junah

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The team behind Koyote opened Junah in Central Ninth with a menu devoted to itameshi, the meeting of Japanese and Italian cooking. Chefs Hiro Tagai and Mirella Oliveira combine the two in dishes such as shima aji crudo, lobster gnocchi under a crisp Parmesan dome, wagyu ragù, and matcha tiramisu. Short and long tasting menus, along with a dark, intimate dining room, make this one of the city’s more ambitious new restaurants.

Best for: A Japanese-Italian tasting menu

Koyote

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Chef Hiro Tagai was born in Japan, raised in Utah, and returned to Japan for culinary school and ramen training before opening Koyote in 2024. The focused menu includes gyoza, karaage, and American shoyu ramen with smoked brisket and a marinated egg. The clean-lined Fairpark restaurant feels polished, but the prices and straightforward format keep it firmly in neighborhood noodle-shop territory.

Best for: Ramen worth crossing town for

Oquirrh

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Andrew and Angie Fuller opened Oquirrh in 2019, with Andrew handling the kitchen and Angie running the front of the house. The seasonal menu has included house sourdough and milk-braised potatoes with curds and whey vinaigrette, along with changing dishes built around vegetables, seafood, and meat. Andrew Fuller’s James Beard recognition brought wider attention, though the small restaurant still feels personal and closely tied to the couple behind it.

Best for: Seasonal cooking in an intimate setting

Post Office Place

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The team behind neighboring Takashi opened Post Office Place as a cocktail and Japanese-whisky bar with a kitchen strong enough to make dinner the main event. Chefs Brice Okubo and Takashi Gibo combine Japanese and Peruvian influences on the regular menu, then go further during omakase dinners built around nigiri, sashimi, and more contemporary courses. The narrow, softly lit space feels polished without losing the energy of a downtown bar.

Best for: Japanese whisky, small plates, and omakase

Table X

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Chefs Mike Blocher and Nick Fahs opened Table X inside a converted 1930s factory, then planted gardens around it to supply herbs, vegetables, and fruit to the kitchen. Menus of five and seven courses, for $85 and $115, change with the harvest and draw on nearby farms, along with bread from the restaurant’s James Beard-nominated bakery. Exposed brick, old timber beams, handmade ceramics, and ingredients grown just outside give the restaurant a strong sense of place, even as what’s playing it is mostly about what’s on the plate.

Best for: A tasting menu rooted in Utah

Tacos Don Rafa

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Jesús Rosas opened Tacos Don Rafa in a Sears parking lot on Valentine’s Day in 1998, and since then his cart has built its reputation on inexpensive street tacos. That’s especially true with the carne asada that’s cooked on the griddle and served quickly with no unnecessary fuss. More than 25 years later, it remains one of Salt Lake City’s essential cheap meals.

Best for: Carne asada tacos from a Salt Lake original

The Pearl

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Chef Tommy Nguyen opened The Pearl in 2022 with recipes developed alongside his mother. Her pork belly and egg rolls remain signatures, joined by dishes such as black cod with chrysanthemum greens and shishito peppers, banh mi, and Sunday pho. The lively Central Ninth bar keeps the mood casual, while the cooking has made reservations increasingly useful.

Best for: Vietnamese cooking built around family recipes

Urban Hill

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Executive chef Nick Zocco brings the flavors of his New Mexico childhood to to life over a wood-fired grill. A James Beard semifinalist, Hill’s chile relleno is good enough that it once helped him defeat Bobby Flay. An oyster bar, open kitchen, lounge, and broad dining room give the restaurant enough scale for celebrations without burying the Southwestern cooking.

Best for: Southwestern flavors on a big-night-out scale