Hell’s Backbone Grill

Last year I took a road trip to the world-famous Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah. My story in the September/October 2018 issue of Utah Life magazine used just a small part of all the interesting tidbits I learned about this farm-to-table restaurant owned by Blake Spalding and Jen Castle. There is so much more to share!

While in Boulder working on the story, I also discovered the Burr Trail Grill and Magnolia’s Street Food, two other surprisingly delicious options, considering this is a remote town of only about 225 people. (Check out my blog post about these here.)

Where the heck is Boulder? A four-hour drive from Salt Lake City in Garfield County, at the edge of Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument, where the Burr Trail meets Utah’s Scenic Byway 12.  The restaurant’s name comes from the heart-stopping Hell’s Backbone Bridge. Before the bridge was built in 1933, the only way in and out of Boulder was by mule.

I think right now — late August, early September — is a great time to visit. Since the menu is designed around ingredients grown on its six-acre organic farm, you could likely enjoy fresh sweet corn, vine-ripened tomatoes, summer squash and other fall crops ripening now. 

The restaurant is in its 20th season, quite a feat considering that it’s in one of the most remote areas in America, and most of its ingredients are home-grown.

“We set out to prove that a farm to table restaurant could work here, but it was really hard,” said Castle. “We are an atypical restaurant, because our food costs are lower, but labor costs are higher. It’s not just a matter of ordering food — we plant, tend, weed, water, and pick it.”

Grass-fed lamb and beef, heritage-breed chickens, fruit trees, and fields of heirloom vegetables are turned into menu items like Spicy Cowgal Chipotle Meatloaf, Lemony Cluck chicken, blue corn pancakes, and whatever vegetables are in season at the time. Over the years HBG has been praised by the James Beard Foundation, Bon Appetit, Oprah Magazine, and other national publications. 

Blake and Jen penned two cookbooks with the restaurant’s recipes.  The most recent, “This Immeasurable Place: Food and Farming from the Edge of Wilderness” came out two years ago, just as President Donald Trump downsized the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument. The restaurateurs are speaking out against the downsizing, saying it will harm the scenic landscape and hurt their business, which happens to be the town’s largest employer.

“We are in an economic boom directly related to tourism of the monument,” said Blake. “Downsizing will cause instability.”

A few things I learned during my time in Boulder:

• A local food writer once mistakenly presumed Blake and Jen were a wealthy gay couple living on trust funds. Nope, and nope. The two simply friends and business partners, both raised in modest households. When they met at a Christmas party in Flagstaff, Ariz., Blake was a caterer and back-country chef, and Jen was running a bakery. Both had catered Grand Canyon river trips, where improvising was key. They found their food philosophies were nearly identical. Before opening the restaurant, they worked a few catering gigs together, including a month in Washington State for a Discovery Channel crew.

• They run the restaurant and farm on Buddhist no-harm principles, including not killing any living things — even insects — unless they are used for food. During my interview with Blake, a wasp buzzed overhead. Instead of swatting at it, she asked one of the wait staff to bring a “wasp wand,” to capture the wasp and set it free outside. “I tell my staff they can only kill flies if they’re willing to eat them,” she said. 
• They believe in “place-based cuisine.” Their menu draws from Mormon pioneer recipes, Western Range cowboy fare, and Puebloan cultural dishes. There are Southwestern entrees with an unexpected twist such as Tamales Dolmades — a way to use the farm’s grape leaves on the farm. And the Utah classic, “funeral potatoes” gets some Southwestern flair with chiles.

• You’ll find locally raised trout, but no salmon or other ocean-dwelling seafood on the menu. “We believe in pride in place, and that you should eat the experience,” said Blake. “If you go to Italy, you want to eat Italian cuisine. When people come here, they want to eat the beef they see in the fields, and the fruit from the trees — and they should.”
• “Local” doesn’t always mean “fresh-picked” or “seasonal.” When I visited in May, the veggie accompanying my entree included squash frozen from last year’s crop. When the harvest yields more than can be served fresh each night, the remainder is home-canned, pickled, dried or frozen for later use. Blake pointed out that the idea of preserving crops fits with their concept of “place,” since Utah has a long tradition of home-canning and food-preserving. And when the restaurant opens in March (after being closed since Thanksgiving) you can still have local veggies on the menu.
• How do they divide responsibilities? “Over the years we’ve gravitated to what we are good at,” said Blake. “We almost have a shared brain.” Jen is the production cook, while Blake tends to oversee the farm and the front of the house. But, they collaborate on all new recipes, they said. 
• Although it’s open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, Jen said she’s proudest of the dinners. “I relate to the dinner foods most, because I like long-simmering meats and sauces.”
• They have strong values against wasting food. Onion skins, celery ends and carrot tops are used to make savory stocks. Food scraps from diner’s plates go in a bucket to feed to the chickens. There are also scrap buckets to feed to the goats, cats and compost. Eggshells are ground up to add nutrients to the garden.

The restaurant and farm attract a variety of employees from all over the country. Because housing is at a premium in a town of 225, Blake and Jen bought a house with nine rooms to rent to employees. They also have a couple of trailers on the farm, nicknamed “Blaker’s Acres.”

I talked to young workers who moved to Boulder from New York and Miami, after responding to a Coolworks.com ad.  They said it’s their “dream jobs” to  wait restaurant tables, shovel dirt, plant crops, feed chickens and pick produce on an organic farm. They prefer quiet nights under the stars to their former city life of shopping, clubs, and movies. And they like the connection from the farm to the restaurant. 

“I plan on staying at least three years, if not forever,” Jody-Renee Karnik told me, as she picked sage leaves that will find their way into the savory sage butter for Black Powder Biscuits, or possibly Chicken Pot Pie, or Desert Sage Flatbread. Karnik said she came to Boulder from Rochester, New York, after studying sustainable community development and ornamental horticulture. 

Jen, Blake and the garden staff have planted more than 45 fruit-bearing trees on their farm, and more at their homes, so sweet plums, apricots, pears, peaches, and apples find their way into sauces, chutneys, cakes, pies, ice cream salads, appetizers, breakfast plates, jams, and cocktails.

But the big question is, how does the food taste? I’d read and heard so much about this place, and I wondered if it would live up to its hype.

At dinner, I picked some of their long-time customer favorites – the Hell’s Backbone Grill salad ($10)  Skillet Trout ($28) and for dessert, Chocolate Chile Cream Pot, ($10).

Every meal gets a starter of fluffy warm Blue Ribbon Black Powder Biscuits. When she lived in Flagstaff, Jen won a blue ribbon at the Coconino County Fair for these biscuits, which have a hint of coarse black pepper. The accompanying sage butter melted seductively into the warm biscuits.

 

The Backbone Salad was a fresh combination of greens, juicy organic strawberries, with sliced apples, pumpkin seeds and dried corn for texture and crunch.

The Skillet Trout, from what my tastebuds told me, was bathed in a molasses marinade and then encrusted with blue corn and pecans. It was served with green chile rice, organic cabbage, broccoli, roasted beets and squash frozen from last season’s crops.

The Chocolate Chile Cream Pot had rich, dense chocolate, with a hint of heat from a Chimayo chile.

Although the food is beautifully plated and garnished with herbs and edible flowers, it’s not overly fussy.

With my tip, dinner was around $65, and that was without wine or other alcoholic beverages. Yes, it’s a bit pricey. But consider that you’re out in the middle of nowhere. And consider that due to land, water and labor costs, the farm-grown ingredients are estimated to cost ten time more to produce than to ship in. Despite the costs, Castle and Spalding believe that’s why their restaurant is still thriving — the food is home-grown and flavorful instead of road-weary from traveling hundreds of miles.

The next day, while exploring some of Boulder’s scenery and the Anasazi State Park, I checked out a couple of other great eating spots. I’ll detail those in my Bolder Food in Boulder, Utah post.

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