written by: Mary Brown Malouf
I thought that pie looked familiar.
The menu at Tradition is half pie, and I saw a couple pieces being delivered to neighboring tables, so I curbed my appetite during dinner at the new restaurant by Liberty Park. By chance, we ate there the first night Tradition was open for dinner. But the cool-looking building next door to Beltex Meats had been open for lunch awhile. The evening’s weather was even nicer than the hip-looking restaurant and bar, so we settled in with our first glasses of Vinho Verde of the season and took our time with the menu.
Appetizers were uppity home-style—we chose pigs in blankets (sausages made by Beltex) and funeral potatoes (potato cakes with bacon jam.) Elevating beloved but banal dishes is a favorite chef trick but seldom do they turn out as well as these. Tradition dubs its food “comfortable” and that means none of the originality is jolting. The leg and thigh of an enormous chicken were fried in a crisp and very spicy crust, served with creamy cheese grits and collard greens. Big chunks of braised pork came with sweet potato hash and rapini. A few days later, we stopped by for lunch and ate inside—familiar story: very cool décor, loud as a Friday night at Club Jam. Cool young servers, most without a clue. We waited ten minutes to be greeted in a half-full restaurant and longer for a server to take us on. So we felt justified ordering a glass of wine to go with our burger and Reuben. Meat comes from Beltex Meats so the burger patty was cooked rare as requested and definitely worth risking my health for. The Reuben wasn’t quite that—the house-corned beef was more like uncorned brisket and the sauerkraut was more like slaw (And does anyone anywhere make anything but marble rye? Did purely rye bread just die?), but it was a delicious sandwich and my mouth waters a little bit when I think of it.
Slice of Heaven
Loved the caramel apple and the ginger berry. The chocolate bourbon cream pie was so intense we (almost) couldn’t eat all of it. But I was right about the pie looking familiar. The owners are Ashton and Max—Max owns Burr Trail Grill in Boulder, Utah. Famous for what? Pie.
Of course, we had to take half our sandwiches home, because, pie. 501 E. 900 South, SLC, 385-202-7167
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