by Mary Brown Malouf
diningguide
Stoneground Pizza evolves into Stoneground Italian Kitchen. An old fave becomes a new fave. Last March, I ran into Peri Ermidis in the
parking lot of the downtown DABC wine store. Peri is the well-respected wine director at Shallow Shaft and also works as a wine consultant. He was balancing a box of bottles on his shoulder and I asked him where he was taking it. “Stoneground,” he told me. “They’re redoing the whole place with a wine bar.” With a few notable exceptions (see p. 34), this is how PR works in Salt Lake City. In other cities I have worked, my in-boxes, literal and digital, were always stuffed with press releases about new restaurants, bars, menu items, chefs, food events—anything anyone thought I might possibly write about. Here, not so much. I have to be an investigative restaurant reporter just to find out what’s going on. So thanks for the hot tip, Peri. Now I’m passing it on to you, readers. Bob McCarthy has indeed re-conceived Stoneground. What was formerly a basic pizza bar is now much more than a wine bar; it has become an excellent mid-price Italian restaurant with a creative chef in the kitchen and an interesting Italian wine list. Chef Justin Shifflet, once in the kitchen at the late Metropolitan, is in charge of the menu and his standards for Stoneground’s local, housemade, artisanal, etc., etc., ingredients are as high as that formerly four-star restaurant’s. The setting has been changed to suit the fare and the boisterous beer-drinker’s haven has become a stylishly casual trattoria with a patio in back whose artful trellises disguise the parking lot view, huge windows in the front looking out over the Main Library and distant Wasatch and long communal tables and booths furnishing the rest of the second-floor dining room. Over the course of several visits, Stoneground has become a favorite of mine—I love the space and I love the
Reviews: IN THIS ISSUE
EAST LIBERTY TAP HOUSE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 SALT LAKE CULINARY CENTER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 LUNCH MEET . . . . . . . . . . 166
Chef Justin Shifflet
KYOTO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 PROVISIONS . . . . . . . . . . . 174 COBBLER COVE. . . . . . . . .176 FRESH PEACHES . . . . . . . 178
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S A LT L A K E M A G A Z I N E . C O M SEPT/OCT 2015
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