The road into the Utah backcountry didn’t ease me in. The smooth tarmac of the interstate surrendered without warning to corrugated dirt, and my Ford Expedition was soon trailing a rooster tail of red dust as the miles between me and anything resembling civilisation accumulated. Out here, between Kanab and Cathedral Valley, you eat to survive the day. Sharp cheddar broken off with a thumbnail. Crackers from a zip‑lock bag. Energy bars high on nutrition and low on joy. Trail mix eaten by the fistful while consulting a paper map for the next stretch of nothing. This is the fuel of the backcountry, and we bore it with enthusiasm, assuming Utah would delight us with views and vistas, but that the foodie in us would have to wait until Los Angeles.
Yet tucked into the creases of this barren landscape are four establishments that have, against all logic, decided to be the kind of places that would earn notice in Mumbai or London—if only they were in Mumbai or London. Instead, they exist in towns where the population fits inside a single apartment building, hemmed in by canyon walls and a sky so full of stars it feels almost aggressive.
SEGO, KANAB
Chef Shon Foster grew up in Kanab, a desert crossroads of 4,500 people equidistant from Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. After helming the kitchen at Amangiri, the ultra‑luxury canyon resort in Utah, he opened Sego in 2018. Sego runs on what Foster calls social plates, a sharing concept common in India but unusual in the rural American West, and serves cuisines from around the world. The rendang ayam — slow‑roasted chicken with aromatic rice, sambal, curry leaf and crisp shallots — arrived fragrant and deeply spiced. The pork belly with watermelon was a revelation in contrast: rich fat against cold sweetness, a pairing that sounded pretentious until it hit the tongue. The elote fritter with fire‑roasted corn laced with rendered chorizo fat that created a sauce of dark, smoky brilliance was easily the best dish of the evening.
HELL’S BACKBONE GRILL, BOULDER
Boulder, Utah. Population 276. Highway 12, which passes through it, is often considered one of the most beautiful roads in the US. Hell’s Backbone Grill opened in 2000, long before farm‑to‑table became a marketing cliché. Founders Jen Castle and Blake Spalding began with a borrowed $3,000 and a framework guided by Buddhist principles of sustainability and community. Today, their six‑acre organic farm yields upwards of 20,000 pounds of produce annually. The restaurant has earned six James Beard Award nominations, a Governor’s Mansion Award for Culinary Artistry, and even a feature at the Smithsonian representing the American Slow Food movement. The Carne Asada — a grass‑fed flank steak on the specials list — was sold out when we arrived. I had the Braised Bison instead: slow‑cooked New Mexico bison with collard greens, tomatoes, and green chile polenta. My partner had the Lemony Cluck, pan‑seared pasture‑raised chicken with jasmine rice and a bright snap of lemon and shallot. For dessert, the Dark Magic Pear Gingerbread arrived warm, with ice cream and a salted butterscotch sauce that tasted like the landscape itself had been reduced and poured over the plate. Worth every mile of the drive.
ESCALANTE OUTFITTERS, ESCALANTE
We smelled Escalante Outfitters before we saw it. The aroma of baking sourdough drifted onto Main Street like an invitation, and we followed it. What we found was part outdoor gear store, part café, part campground — a family‑owned operation that has been, since 2004, the epicentre of life in Escalante, the last outpost before Grand Staircase‑Escalante National Monument swallows the landscape entirely. The pizzas are named for the surrounding terrain — the Chop Rock, the Devil’s Garden, the King’s Mesa — and the sourdough crust is extraordinary: chewy at the centre, crunchy at the edge, and slightly charred in the way only properly pampered dough can be. They have tables in the garden. We looked at them, looked at the sky — clear, deep and already filling with stars — and made a decision. We took the boxes to go. Six miles out on Hole‑in‑the‑Rock Road, we found a pull‑off where the ambient light of Escalante doesn’t reach, dropped the tailgate, and sat with our legs dangling off the back of the Expedition as the Milky Way slowly declared itself over the southeastern horizon. The pizzas were still warm. The silence was absolute, broken only by the sharp crunch of the crust.
HUNT & GATHER, TORREY
Just 250 people live in Torrey, and the town’s solitary traffic light is mostly for tourists passing through. In this little town by the Fremont River, the gateway to Cathedral Valley and Capitol Reef National Park, Hunt & Gather serves food that tastes like the landscape finally decided to sit down for dinner. Chef Chet Saign was born in Minnesota, trained under a French‑Chinese chef, and spent 28 summers at an award‑winning restaurant on the Jersey Shore. He and his wife Nancy crisscrossed the country for years, raising three kids and searching for a town where they could finally stop. In January 2020, they bought a building in Torrey, homeschooled their children through lockdown, and opened Hunt & Gather that July. The name came from a family research project into the Indigenous people who lived around Capitol Reef for centuries. This land, though arid and dry, sustained these hunters and gatherers. The spring menu is divided into Hunter and Gatherer. The former for game and meat, the latter for fish and vegetables.
We started with the lobster bisque which was a bowl of indulgent and delicious comfort. I ordered the Broken Arrow Ranch Elk: six ounces of seared and sliced boneless leg over chimichurri and herb‑roasted Yukon gold potatoes. It was lean and clean‑flavoured, the chimichurri cutting through with brightness. My partner had the High Mountain Trout, a nine‑ounce Red Rainbow fillet with lemon‑tarragon tartar sauce, and declared it the best trout she’d eaten anywhere. The wine list was modest but functional. For dessert, the house‑made tiramisu was textbook‑perfect — the kind you encounter in northern Italian trattorias and rarely elsewhere. It is, at its core, a family restaurant in the truest sense: built by a family shaped by their long continental search for somewhere to belong. The food they serve makes you think they found exactly what they were looking for.
Rishad Saam Mehta is a Mumbai-based independent travel and automotive writer.