Felt Bar & Eatery: Inventive Cuisine Repurposes a Historic Building

Felt Bar & Eatery
341 S Main Street Suite 101, Salt Lake City
Open Daily: 4:00 p.m.–1:00 a.m.
Happy Hour: 4:00–6:00 p.m.
(385) 267-1093 | feltslc.com

While “Felt” feels like an odd name for a restaurant, the homage to the historic Felt Building in an ever-evolving and growing city is one beautiful touch of a stunning restaurant. Designed by Richard Kletting, the same man behind the Utah State Capitol, this building has housed Felt Bar & Eatery since March 2024. In the ongoing efforts to revitalize downtown Salt Lake City, I really appreciated the nod to a historic building and utilization of an existing space amid blocks and blocks of orange traffic cones and scaffolding.

The food and cocktails at Felt feature local ingredients with an Asian or Latin twist. My best description would be upscale fusion bar food, but that doesn’t do Felt justice.

My dining companion and I started our meal with Beet Pickled Eggs ($6) to pair with our Japanese-inspired cocktails. I started with a Tokyo Old Fashioned ($13) featuring Japanese whisky, Genmaicha syrup and black walnut bitters. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any green tea notes from the drink, but that may be more a comment on my whisky palate than the cocktail itself. The bar at Felt features decadent cocktail garnishes, including a blow torch. It will take several visits to work my way through their extensive cocktail menu.

I’m a sucker for anything featuring beets—it’s the one item on a menu I will always order. These did not disappoint and were in fact my favorite bite of the night. The two hard-boiled eggs pickled in beet juice were served cut in half over a honey beet purée, topped with slices of serrano that added the perfect spice level to the slightly sweet purée. The purée and eggs were a beautiful color of borscht and gave me unctuous food memories of the beet margaritas I used to drink in college (shout out to Coley’s in Columbia, Missouri, which has since closed).

Next we ordered some happy hour specialties, Oysters on the Half Shell ($12) and Korean-style BBQ Baby Back Ribs ($12). Raw oysters are a favorite of mine, and their rarity in Utah restaurants made me splurge. The day of my visit, the oysters were from British Columbia, and served with citrus horseradish and a bacon orange mignonette. Unpopular opinion: Bacon doesn’t make everything better. However, the chef at Felt may be the first person to pair raw oysters and bacon. I certainly appreciated the inventiveness of the oyster accompaniments, but I think I’m an oyster purist.

Next were the ribs, another happy hour special. The menu reads that they come glazed in “sticky icky sauce,” which is an accurate description. My dining companion (my mother, in from out-of-state) kept politely informing me that I had sauce all over my face, a testament to how delicious the ribs were. The meat was fall-off-the-bone tender and converted this Texas gal from beef ribs to pork ribs.

The ribs were served with a miso-corn soufflé. While the word “soufflé” may inspire terror from years of watching Gordon Ramsey on TV, I really enjoyed it with the ribs. It may have lacked the height I expect from a “MasterChef” contestant, but it was delicious. The sweet corn felt like a perfect ode to the end of summer. I wish the miso flavor had been stronger to balance the sweetness, but I thought this was a super unique pairing with the ribs.

After washing my hands, we moved onto starches, which I paired with a Made In Japan cocktail ($15) that was topped with the most delicious peach foam. This semi-frozen fruity drink was a perfect palette cleanser for Truffle Fries ($10) and Local Mushrooms with Corn Polenta ($16). 

While truffle fries seemed like one of the more basic offerings of the large menu, I literally could not stop eating them. I’m a sucker for a crispy potato and these did not disappoint. As a non-Utahn, I don’t have an affinity for fry sauce (sorry!) but did like the aioli that came with the fries.

The mushrooms and polenta was the dish I was most excited to try. The variety of mushrooms were served over a sweet corn puree with two triangles of crispy herb polenta. As with every dish, the plating was beautiful and we ate every last crumb. 

This being my first visit, I had a hard time choosing from the extensive menu. As I turned my head to look at every dish that went past our table to another diner, the chef kindly brought me one of the dishes from the Raw Bar I had been ogling. The Prawn Aguachile Tartine ($18), a small stack of prawn, avocado, pickled red onion and pineapple all served on a tempura fried lemon slice to emulate a slice of bread or cracker. While the chef specifically instructed us to eat it in one bite, we failed that task. I found that the bitterness of the lemon overpowered the other flavors, but I would definitely consider this the most interesting thing I’ve eaten in a long time.

Lastly, while all the dessert options were tempting, we settled on the Blood Orange Crème Brȗlée ($12) to finish our meal. The silky custard had the perfect amount of citrus taste and was a perfect end to the meal.

Not to be underrated, the service at Felt was incredible. Our server, Aidan, was bubbly, attentive and helpful, and every staff member who touched our table was welcoming. Beautiful decor and delicious food make a good restaurant, but great service makes a restaurant I will visit again and again. 

This was my first visit to Felt, and I will definitely be back to explore more of the menu (and have some more Beet Pickled Eggs). 

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