Editor’s Note: Welcome back husband and wife team Scott Sommerdorf and Lesli Neilson who bring us today’s post from Park City, Utah. Before Scott met Lesli, he was the junk food king. She has since changed his eating habits and fine tuned his palate with her fabulous home cooked meals. They are a busy duo with jobs and kids that keep them running but always find time to enjoy a well made burger. To see more of Lesli’s writing check out the SLC Trib’s website www.sltrib.com/food

If you live in Salt Lake City, then you’re lucky enough to have the choice of seven ski resorts that are within a 30-minute drive. I’m partial to Park City Ski Resort because that’s where I learned to ski and, after years of practice, I’m able to tackle one of the resort’s most difficult bowls — Jupiter Bowl.

But for the next 10 days, throngs of people, from actors, directors, celebrities, paparazzi to independent film lovers, will descend upon the quaint mining town of Park City not to ski but to attend the Sundance Film Festival. You know, the annual event that’s been celebrating independent films for over 30 years. The festival that was the brainchild of famed actor-director-producer Robert Redford.

But theater-goers cannot live on movie-viewing alone. They also need to sleep, eat and, perhaps … bowl? You see, there’s this place called The Lift Grill and Lounge at Jupiter Bowl. No, you don’t have to take a resort ski lift to get there. This Jupiter Bowl is conveniently located just outside of Park City in a hamlet called Kimball Junction, which also has theaters that are showing Sundance films. And, did I mention, this Jupiter Bowl makes a decent burger?

The Lift’s beef burgers are a unique blend of fresh ground brisket, chuck and sirloin. Beyond beef, there’s braised pork belly, kalua pig, buffalo, turkey, crab and a veg patty — all presented in burger form.

Scott got the “smokehouse” burger ($12) with just over five ounces of the aforementioned ground beef blend, a blanket of tender brisket, jalapeño slices, Monterey jack cheese, barbecue sauce and two onion rings … inside the burger. An artisan bun miraculously held it all together. Scott managed to get his mouth around the burger’s contents but he was particularly impressed that he didn’t come away with an entire onion, as is often the case when you bite into a fried onion ring. Rather, each crunchy onion ring bite complemented the other soft ingredients.

I ordered the “drive-thru” burger ($7) with cheddar cheese, pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard and mayo. Wow. I’m usually not a mustard-onions-or-pickle-on-my-burger person, but the flavors all complemented each other.

You can upgrade any burger with an 8-ounce wagyu patty ($8) — what the restaurant incorrectly calls kobe — but my extra patty was cooked way beyond what the premium beef should ever be cooked while my 5-ounce beef patty arrived cooked to a perfect medium-rare.

All of The Lift’s burgers come with a side, such as the great-tasting and well-salted sweet potato fries, not-so-good Jupiter fries, zucchini fries, southern-style potato salad, onion rings, potato chips, house-made cheddar-bacon-green onion tater tots (more like croquettes) or jalapeño mac ‘n’ cheese. Also, there are nine dipping sauces to choose from, including tomato-balsamic ketchup, chipotle mayo and jalapeño ranch.

Once your hunger has been sated, it’s just a brisk 10-minute walk to the town’s movie theaters, and back to the “scene” that is Sundance.

RATING: 3 out of 5

The Lift Grill and Lounge at Jupiter Bowl
1090 Center Drive
Park City, UT 84098
(435)-658-BOWL (2695)

http://www.jupiterbowl.com

Hours: Monday-Thursday 11:00AM – Midnight
Friday-Saturday 11:00AM – 2:00AM
Sunday 11:00AM – 11:00PM

Editor’s Note: Welcome back husband and wife team Scott Sommerdorf and Lesli Neilson who bring us today’s post from Park City, Utah. Before Scott met Lesli, he was the junk food king. She has since changed his eating habits and fine tuned his palate with her fabulous home cooked meals. They are a busy duo with jobs and kids that keep them running but always find time to enjoy a well made burger. To see more of Lesli’s writing check out the SLC Trib’s website www.sltrib.com/food

It’s only 30 miles from Salt Lake City International Airport to Park City’s rustic-cum-chic Main Street. Look for the cool, old red brick building with a big copper door halfway up the street on the right-hand side. You’ll know you’ve arrived when you see the sign that proudly says “No Name Saloon & Grill: America’s last authentic miners organization of debauchery.” Originally a power and electric company, the 1903 building was The Alamo bar for 30 years. For the last 10 years, it’s housed No Name, which specializes in buffalo burgers and booze.

The bar’s motto “Helping people forget their name since 1903″ seems fitting since No Name probably has the best-stocked bar in Park City. Bottles of all shapes and sizes line the antique wooden bar’s shelves. Choose from 10 different whiskeys — including three from High West Distillery & Saloon, another Park City business and Utah’s first distiller of whiskey and vodka since the 1870s — along with other liquor and oodles of bottled beer  — draft choices like Uinta Cutthroat Pale Ale are only $3.50 a pint but only contain 4 percent alcohol. You can get a drink here as early as 10 a.m. or as late as 1 a.m. Despite the fact that it’s against Utah law to smoke indoors, No Name is one of the few places I’ve been to in Utah that still offers matchbooks with its logo on it.

Locals will most likely give you “the look” once you enter the place. But that icy feeling vanishes quickly, thanks to the blazing fireplace near the bar’s entrance, helpful servers and all the Western and snow-themed kitsch methodically placed throughout the bar. There’s an old wooden toboggan, license plates, antique snow shoes — even an old motorcycle — that all hang from the ceiling. There’s shuffleboard, plasma TVs and plenty of conversation to keep you entertained. Moose and buffalo heads greet you downstairs, while upstairs there’s a mounted deer head and an outdoor patio which is open in the summer months. No Name is the kind of place you might see some big-wig Hollywood producer chowing down on a buffalo burger between screenings during the yearly Sundance Film Festival (which is Jan 20-30, 2011), or a bunch of locals enjoying an after-work beer — or during work, for that matter.

No Name’s menu is a mix of the usual bar fare: starters such as wings, chili-cheese fries, jalapeño poppers; salads; wraps; fish tacos; fish ‘n’ chips; and barbecued pork and chicken sandwiches. But No Name’s signature items are its 1/2-pound buffalo burgers. Served in red plastic containers with red-and-white checkered paper, the oval buffalo patties come on custom-shaped oval toasted buns alongside thick-cut potato chips or onion rings.

Buffalo’s caveat is it has 75 percent less fat than beef so pulling off a moist burger with this animal is tricky. In hopes that the added fat from the pork might help the fat quotient, I went for the bacon blue cheeseburger ($10). Sadly, my patty was cooked to well done.The garlic aioli and crumbled blue cheese helped the overall taste of the burger, but I just couldn’t get past the dryness of the meat. What can I say? I like my burgers to practically moo. Uh, maybe snort or grunt in this case.

Scott’s 1/2-pound “saloon” burger ($10) was only slightly better, though the meat was still overcooked. This behemoth of a burger sported grilled onions hidden in a cloak of teeth-clinging melted American cheese with tomatoes, shredded lettuce and mayonnaise. Crispy onion rings and a pot of commercial ranch dressing come alongside. This is definitely a “man’s hands” burger. i.e. only a man could get his hands around a burger this big. If I ordered it, I’d definitely be asking for a knife. But even Scott had a hard time getting his mouth around the “saloon’s” tall bun and all its contents.

But, if you’re in the mood for a cool-looking place to drink a pint, a decent burger and a game of shuffleboard, plop yourself down at one of the worn wooden chairs or the bar and get treated like a local, albeit for the duration of your visit.

Note: When we dined at No Name, burgers cost $10. Expect to pay a couple dollars more when it’s high season in this posh ski resort town, which is November to May.

RATING: 3 out of 5

No Name Saloon & Grill
447 Main Street
Park City, UT 84060
(435) 649-6667
www.nonamesaloonparkcity.com
Hours: Sunday-Thursday 11:00AM-12:00AM
Friday-Saturday 11:00AM-2:00AM
21 and older only

Editor’s Note: We are proud to have a professional food writer join the Hamblogger team along with her photojournalist husband. Scott Sommerdorf and his wife Lesli Neilson bring us today’s post from Salt Lake City. Before Scott met Lesli, he was the junk food king. She has since changed his eating habits and fine tuned his palate with her fabulous home cooked meals. They are a busy duo with jobs and kids that keep them running but always find time to enjoy a well made burger. To see more of Lesli’s writing check out the SLC Trib’s website www.sltrib.com/food

Lucky 13 Bar & Grill just celebrated its first birthday. Despite such a short pedigree, it’s managed to make quite a name for itself in such a short time. Maybe it’s the $1.50 drafts on Monday nights or the live music on Thursdays and Saturdays? The fact that it’s a couple hundred yards away from Spring Mobile Ballpark, home to the Minor League team, the Salt Lake Bees. Maybe. But, I’d be willing to bet what has most people streaming into Lucky 13 is its superb burgers.

It has some biker/dive bar elements, such as a stuffed boar’s head, vintage red tractor and outdoor flaming steel skulls (only flaming at night) or T-shirts for sale that say, “Lucky 13 SL, UT,” but all add to the bar’s persona. There are plasma TVs tuned into the sport du jour, pool tables and a few video games. But, the highlight of the place – besides the burgers — is the handcrafted wooden bar, accented by corrugated steel.

Co-owners Rob Dutton, Ron Lay and Jason Stucki have high standards for the quality ingredients they put into their burgers. After lots of research, the partners settled on fresh ground chuck with a ratio of 80 percent lean to 20 percent fat; each burger comes in just under a half-pound. The rosette buns are lightly toasted and mixed greens substitute for less reputable lettuces. The bacon is smoked in-house – daily. (I could eat that stuff for breakfast, lunch and dinner.) And fluffy-on-the-inside- crispy-on-the-outside, thick-like-Wendy’s fries come with each burger. For diners who are die-hard garlic fans and don’t mind the bad breath that comes with it, upgrade to the addictive roasted garlic rosemary fries for $1.50 more.

Appetizers include items such as fried dill pickle spears ($4.50), pickled eggs ($2), fried jalapeno bottle caps ($4), or the “basket of indecision” ($10) with a little bit of everything.

The menu also has salads and sandwiches like a smoked bacon and blue cheese salad ($6.50) or loaded grilled cheese ($5.50) with tomato, onion and lettuce. But the real draw on the menu is the burgers.

There are 11 on Lucky 13’s list with clever names like the “celestial” burger ($9) with smoked bacon, grilled onions, cheddar cheese and barbecue sauce. I’m sure there’s very little that’s celestial about the aftermath of this burger, but the name is also a play on the state’s predominant religion’s three kingdoms of heaven – the telestial, terrestrial and celestial. Scott ordered this burger and, needing a little help to keep his plate tidy, our 3-year-old offered up his Spiderman action figure to save the day.

If you like your burgers with a kick, then there’s the “ring of fire” burger ($10) with smoked bacon, roasted jalapeños and habaneros, sautéed onions and cheddar cheese. The “ole man” has roasted jalapeños, grilled onions and swiss cheese ($8).

For those diners in the mood for a challenge, there’s the Big Benny burger ($15), which is 28 ounces of beef with bacon, ham, cheese, sautéed onions and Lucky 13 sauce, and the Lucky 13 burger ($15), a 14-ounce patty topped with Belizean habanero puree and roasted habaneros, which is all stuffed between two grilled cheese sandwiches along with sautéed onions, roasted jalapeños and roasted habaneros. The Lucky 13 “challenge” tempts you to finish the Big Benny and the Lucky 13 burger in one hour and they’ll be free of charge. Math isn’t my strong suit, but that’s over 2 1/2 pounds of meat and God only knows how many Scoville units those chiles ring in at. Though hundreds have attempted the challenge, no one has yet completed it. The bar has ponied up a $200 cash prize for the first person who does it. They’ll also get their name on the “wall of flame.”

I couldn’t resist not going with the stinky cheese, bacon cheeseburger ($8.50) – medium rare. And rosy pink is what I got: juicy on the inside with crispy edges with just a hint of char. The bacon adds the most ridiculously good smoky piggy notes while the blue cheese rounds out bite after bite. The cheese is pungent, but not like some of the overbearing blues can be, with just enough sweet to make this one of the best burgers I’ve eaten. At first glance, you think there’s no way you can finish a burger this size but, a half-hour later, you’ve managed to lick the plate clean.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5

Lucky 13 Bar & Grill
135 West 1300 South
Salt Lake City, Utah 84115
(801) 487-4418
www.lucky13slc.com
Hours: Monday – Saturday 11:00AM – 1:00AM
Sunday 10:00AM – 1:00AM
Over 21 only