Sea Salt Italian restaurant in Salt Lake

Sea Salt in Salt Lake City

Reviewed by Becky

Routine is something I secretly love.  Most of the time my schedule forbids routine in my life.  Traveling and being married to an independant artist is gloriously rewarding and always exciting but when we are home for a few weeks at a time and really get to sink in, enjoy our friendships, try out some new restaurants in the city we love, and actually buys groceries to share a home cooked meal together… this is a beautiful part of life.  I’m sure if we didn’t get to travel so much I wouldn’t see the wonderfulness of just being at home but I do and for that I am glad.

Grabbing lunch with a friend and catching up on life together over a bowl of olives is sometimes a rare occasion, but it is something that I try and prioritize.  Meeting a good friend on a regular occasion, now that is something I really love!

Sea Salt Italian Restaurant in Salt Lake

Heather, who also blogs here, and I try and grab lunch together often.  We’ve tried several great spots in town like Martine and Ekamai.  We are always up for the challenge of a new restaurant. After hearing some bad reviews of Sea Salt, we knew we had to go and try for ourselves.
Sea Salt, located on 1300 South and 1700 East in Salt Lake City, is owned by the same guy who owns the popular neighborhood restaurant, Paris Bistro.  His new restaurant specializes in Itlaian pizza and pasta.  He even has several menu items that were original recipes of his grandmother, who migrated here in 1914. Anything on the menu with “Nona Maria” in the name is worth trying!

Sea Salt Restaurant

The ambiance of the restaurant is super clean and fresh, with white decor, tons of windows, and only a few touches of color, being the ripe plum tomatoes, fresh tomato sauce in jars lining the wall, and the blue tile around the wood-fired pizza oven.

The food all tasted good, altough maybe a bit difficult to eat due to the culinary craft that they take pride in when creating the dishes.  Our pizza was beautiful, stacked high with fresh arugula, prosciutto, slices figs, and shaved parmesan (The Olive Barrel). Though beautiful it was, and delicious too, it was a bit hard to figure out how to take the first few bites.  We also enjoyed the bright green olives, which came with delectable Nonna Maria focaccia.

Sea Salt Restaurant in Salt Lake

Although it was a bit pricey and also seemingly inaccessible, we had a good experience and I urge you to try it out for yourself and get back to me on what you thought.

Sea Salt
1709 East 1300 South
Pranzo (lunch) Monday-Saturday 11:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M.
Cena (Dinner) Monday-Thursday 5:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M; Friday-Saturday 5:30 P.M. to 10:00 P.M
Closed on Sunday
Sea Salt on Urbanspoon

Comments (23)

  1. I wish my experience was as possitive as yours and Heather's. It is a beautiful space, but the food was lacking when I was there and I came away very disapointed. Maybe it was what we ordered?

  2. i am glad to hear a review from the two of you… i am still curious to try myself. believe me… not traveling and having routine is special and i never forget the beauty of home :) xo

  3. I agree, beautiful restaurant. Beautifully presented dishes. We had the summer salad, which I absolutely loved and a pizza. Also tried a dessert. Yummy Chocolate dish. Anyway, loved the outdoor seating. Love the neighborhood. Prices were a bit steep about $30 each w/ tip, no drinks. For lunch, I think that's a bit high. Otherwise, give it a thumbs up!

  4. That pizza looks delish, but I can see how it could be hard to manage! And those olive – YUM. I love olives and would eat them not stop if the salt didn't get to me first!

  5. Cristie, maybe they've improved since your visit! If you go back, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts again. They are over priced for sure.

  6. This restaurant is in my neighborhood. I had heard terrible reviews from neighbors so I went to see for myself. I'm glad you liked it. I was extremely dissapointed. I wanted to like it but I just can't recommend it to anyone. With the prices as high as they are, I won't risk going back.

  7. Bonnie,I have heard many bad things so I was kind of surprised that we had a good experience. It is definitely a place that I would warn people before trying it out. Thanks for your comment!Becky

  8. we tried sea salt with high hopes (not being from here we really appreciate the local food scene, since we moved here have not eaten at a chain rest.). service was what did us in, we left before trying any food. waited 30min to get drinks ordered and another 30min to get them delivered. hope they get the service stuff ironed out, maybe we'll try again.

  9. Sounds like a wonderful way to spend an afternoon with a good friend. If I go back I'll have to give the Nona Maria items a try.

  10. On the night we went it was so busy we had to eat at the bar, which from the sound of the other comments was a plus. The bartender/server, Daniel was efficient and friendly, kept our drinks coming, and gave us several E.T.A.'s for food as it did take slightly longer than usual, but overall it was a positive experience.

  11. GFV, I am so glad you had a good experience. I have been hearing such mixed reviews on this place that it was good to hear something positive.

  12. Beautiful photos! I’m surprised to hear that it’s owned by the owner of Paris Bistro. I tried it once and was not really impressed (but I didn’t know about the family recipe items; would try those next time.)

    • Kalyn, I really enjoyed the pizza we had there but at the prices they charge, I probably won’t be back often. If you find something you like there you’ll have to let me know!

  13. I’m seriously surprised this place has so many bad reviews. I’ve only been once, but we had a great server and everything we tried (went with my aunt) was absolutely delightful. Tried pizza, orechiette pasta, and a couple other things. I’m a sucker for authentic Italian cuisine and this restaurant fit the bill quite well. The prices are a little high, but we loved it so much we didn’t care.

  14. I have eaten at Sea Salt multiple times. The food is always decent and the customer service is always sub-par but never to the point where I felt I needed to leave a review. This last time was different. On 10/2/2013 we had a reservation for a group of 14. They seated us on time and everything went fairly smoothly. They were slow, we waited over 20 minutes for our first (and only) round of drinks, however they were also busy and we were a large group so that alone wasn’t a big deal. We did wait longer than ideal for our main meal and some of the dishes appeared to have been ready for a while, but still the dishes overall were decent. Again, this wasn’t a big deal as we were a large group and they were very busy. I had the “Malfatti” al Pomodoro ($14.95). It wasn’t what I expected. It was supposed to be ricotta and spinach gnocchi, but it was more like balls of ricotta. You couldn’t even pick it up whole as it was basically just a loose cheese ball. I didn’t particularly like it, but I don’t think the dish itself was bad, just not something I enjoyed. After setting my plate down they didn’t ask if we needed anything, they just left. I had someone on the other end of the table ask for some bread as they were still being served (large group) and I couldn’t hail my server. After 10 minutes my bread still had not come and no one had come back to check on us. Finally a wait staff came to fill my water so I asked him for some bread. Another 10-15 minutes go by. I ended up asking a total of FIVE people for bread. By the time I finally got it everyone was done with their meals and were starting on dessert. I expressed my dismay to one of our servers and she said she would check with the manager about getting it comped. When the manager (Anthony) came over, he didn’t introduce himself but just asked the table how things were. Once we realized he was the manager I told him that I was not happy that I was eating a cold plate of food because I had to wait 40 minutes to get some bread. He offered to heat it up, and I politely declined as everyone was pretty much done eating at that point. I did tell him that I didn’t feel like I should have to pay for a meal that I didn’t get to eat hot and with the rest of my group; he responded by saying that unless something was wrong with it then he wouldn’t comp me. Why even come over and ask how things were when you knew what the problem was in the first place and you had no intentions of trying to make the customer happy? To add insult to injury I later found out that the owner (Eric de Bonis) was there the entire time and knew what was going on. Our bill was over $700 and the manager couldn’t comp a $14.95 meal that I didn’t start eating until everyone was finished because of their poor service. We really liked this place. In fact, just a few weeks earlier we had a friend in town that owns a few restaurants in NYC and we decided to bring him to Sea Salt. We won’t be going there again, we won’t be having our large get-together’s there anymore and we definitely won’t be recommending this restaurant to anyone anymore. The only redeeming thing about Sea Salt and our experience last night was Brooke. She was a great server and would make a much better manager than Anthony, the current and incompetent manager. After reading other reviews on Sea Salt it seems that poor customer service and bad servers is a common theme. Go figure.

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