A Spectacularly Remote Culinary Hit in Rural Utah
A Buddhist-principled take on Southwestern fare in Mormon country.
Boulder, Utah (pop. 226), is one of the most remote settlements of the continental U.S. The hamlet is surrounded by the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and not exactly where you would expect to find a Buddhist-principled farm-to-table hipster foodie magnet, yet there it is. Since Blake Spalding and her business partner Jen Castle opened Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm in 2000, it slowly developed into one of the most lauded restaurants in the Southwest. In 2021, the pair were even nominated for a prestigious James Beard Award.
On the menu, you’ll find what the chefs refer to as “Four Corners Cuisine,” a mix of Mormon recipes, spruced-up cowboy classics, and traditional Southwestern fare. Dumpling Pot Pie, for instance, features organic chicken and farm veggies in tarragon cream. The Moqui Mac is a grown-up baked macaroni and cheese with roasted tomatoes and green chiles, and the Grilled Orange Blossom Boulder Leg Of Lamb comes with parsnip-potato mash and organic vegetables. The veggies come straight from the restaurant’s own farm, which provides over twenty thousand pounds of produce every year, using regenerative agricultural practices.
Of course, the sense of isolation is part of the thrill, along with the spectacular beauty of the empty landscape. Hell’s Backbone Grill flourished with organic and locally sourced meals long before the farm-to-table movement took hold in America’s fine dining establishments, with cooking seen as a moral and political act. When President Trump tried to dismantle Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and reduce its size by nearly half, Spalding and Castle joined a lawsuit against him, successfully stalling his plans until the end of his term and avoiding an ecological disaster. In 2020, Spalding was named among the Women to Watch by AFAR magazine (alongside Greta Thunberg) for her efforts in conservation.
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All images by Ace Kvale, courtesy of Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm
Jurriaan Teulings
Jurriaan dreamt of becoming an astronomer or a circus clown but got a law degree before settling on travel writing and photography instead. As such, he spent two decades spreading the gospel of Dutch stroopwafels across 100 countries, picking up awards of plexiglass, bronze, and beads along the way. Recently, he planted the first rainbow flag on the North Pole. Next stop: Antarctica.