If you don't know Salt & Straw, you might assume it's local, just from the name, but the Portland-based chain is about 15 years old, and its first Utah store opens today, Oct. 16, at Mountain View Village. If you are a city person, map the address: 4489 W. Partridge Hill Lane, Suite S-120, Riverton, UT 84096. This shopping complex is huge, and if you think you can go to Mountain View Village and "just drive around and find it"...no.But you'll know it when you see it. The shop, which had its soft opening on Wednesday, def...
If you don't know Salt & Straw, you might assume it's local, just from the name, but the Portland-based chain is about 15 years old, and its first Utah store opens today, Oct. 16, at Mountain View Village. If you are a city person, map the address: 4489 W. Partridge Hill Lane, Suite S-120, Riverton, UT 84096. This shopping complex is huge, and if you think you can go to Mountain View Village and "just drive around and find it"...no.
But you'll know it when you see it. The shop, which had its soft opening on Wednesday, definitely brings a sunny, whimsical, Portland vibe to Riverton. The exterior of the building is covered in colorful ice-cream themed murals; the wallpaper design is inpired by the weave of a waffle cone. And you can try every ice cream on the menu. Just ask the guy with the curly moustache (or any of the friendly folks behind the counter) for a sample. You'll be handed a teeny-tiny silver spoon loaded with a nip of your chosen flavor. When you're done, just slip your dirty utensil into the tiny metal slot built into the counter, labeled SPOONS.
Playful touches like this can seem gimmicky, but Salt & Straw's following comes from the quality of its ice cream, which stands out in a culinary universe that is increasingly Sysco-bland. It's made with high-fat dairy and good old-fashioned sugar, and the candy bars, cookies and brownies it mixes into its flavors are all made from scratch. In true Portland fashion, Salt & Straw also loves to make adventurous flavors like pear and blue cheese and banana-parsnip. "A lot of them are very unexpected," agreed Kim Malek, who co-founded Salt & Straw with her cousin, Tyler Malek. "It's kind of a little bit of an adventure…. It gets people talking in line."
Every month, S&S rolls out five new flavors in addition to its core menu of 13, including chocolate gooey brownie, cinnamon snickerdoodle and what Malek described as "double-fold vanilla...we use twice as many vanilla beans."
The five October flavors are Halloween-themed. The Great Candycopia is always the biggest hit every year, Malek said. "It's four different candy bars that we hand-make in our kitchen," Malek said. "And then we pour those into a salted butterscotch ice cream."
Also on deck: Jack O' Lantern Pumpkin Bread, a pumpkin spice ice cream with pieces of pumpkin bread and ribbons of whipped cream and cream cheese; Witches' Brew Fruit Punch, an electric purple-and-green sherbet filled with sour candies; Graveyard Cookie Crumble, a vegan black ice cream with coconut black-cocoa cookie and ribbons of nondairy white chocolate frosting; and a returning favorite, Creepy Crawly Critters.
"So that's a sweet matcha ice cream spiked with candy-coated chocolate crickets and toffee-brittle mealworms," Malek said, made in collaboration with the Bay Area edible insect snack company Don Bugito. "It's really yummy, honestly," Malek said. "It kind of tastes like maltballs."
The Halloween menu is available until Nov. 1, and will rotate out to make room for what Malek described as "the five courses of a Thanksgiving menu" in ice cream form. "That includes everything from the stuffing to the pumpkin pie, to the Parker House rolls, to a candied turkey flavor," she said.
In honor of its first Utah shop, Salt & Straw added an extra flavor to the menu: Frosted Pink Sugar Cookie. "It might be my favorite ice cream ever," Malek said. "Given the culture of dirty sodas in Utah, we thought it would be fun to speak to the novel treats and culinary experiences here, so we played with a sweet ice cream base and loaded it up with vanilla sugar cookie crumbles, sugar cookie dough and ribbons of pink frosting swirled throughout. But that's just for the opening."
For all those city kids who don't see themselves driving to Riverton, even for sugar cookie ice cream, Malek says the second Salt & Straw will open in Trolley Square in early December. "We wanted to open them at the same time," she said, "but sometimes older buildings are full of surprises."