Need advice on bars in Utah

In My Humble Opinion
21

Thanks to all for the input.

FWIW, the Baseball Trips can and do include side trips to local points of interest, so those suggestions are also welcome. (I’ve seen the Kennedy Space Center, Mount Rushmore, the Alamo, the Grand Canyon, and more, all on Baseball Trips!)
I’m getting together with my traveling buddy tomorrow night to make this year’s plan. I’ve got a draft of a workable itinerary that includes a night in Salt Lake and possibly a night in Ogden, but nothing is set in stone yet.

In case anyone’s interested, once we have a schedule I’ll probably post a thread listing all of the stops and soliciting further advice.

22

My experience with SLC on business trips:

Me: Ah, barkeep, I thirst!

B: What’ll you have?

Me: What’s for Happy Hour?

B: There is no “Happy Hour” in Utah.

Me: No drink specials?

B: not if you’re looking for 2-for1 or half price drinks or something.

Me: Okaaay, how about a Beam and Coke, double.

B: No doubles.

Me: Really? Ok, just fix me a single and a shot.

B: Only one drink at a time. In fact, I can not bring a second drink as long as the glass for the first drink is still in front of you.

B: Oh, and I can’t serve you liquor unless you are ordering food.

Me: I am ordering food. In fact, my group is waiting on a table for dinner. The hostess said it will be about 10 minutes.

B: I can’t serve you liquor until you are seated for dinner.

Me: But all my friends are drinking beer…?

B: I can serve you a beer but not a mixed drink. Until you sit down to eat.

Me: But I want to sit down to eat. That’s the point. It’s not my fault we don’t have a table yet.

B: Buddy, it’s Utah. what do you expect?

That’s my SLC experience.

23

Oh, that’s funny - our Visitor’s Guide to Salt Lake City, which came with our welcome gifts from the ship reunion, included a whole sly page on “so you want a double!” We were encouraged to ask, “So, let’s say I wanted a double, how would I ask for it?”

24

Draught beer is limited to 3.5% (state wide I think)
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This is still true, and to me personally, it is the single-most onerous Utah liquor law still on the books. I would LOVE to be able to enjoy a cold draught Spaten Pils, Plisner Urquell or Sierra Nevada (all of which are widely sold in bars, restaurants and liquor stores all over the state, but only in bottles) but the mollyfocking Mormon-run state legislature must feel that so-called “heavy” beer on tap is only a step removed from widespread teenage Angel Dust addiction and nonstop hott-wife parties on the Salt Lake Temple’s front steps.

25

How many years ago was this?

26

While this might? still be true in Utah County (Orem, Provo) this is NOT the case in the State of Utah as a whole—You can buy 3 cases of Heineken from the drive-thru window of a gas station at 8am on sunday morning in Salt Lake City or anywhere else in the state, all except for Utah County…

27

I was referring to Utah county only in that paragraph (minus the aside about the 3.5%) although it probably wasn’t clear. I am pretty certain the no beer purchase from a grocery / gas station on sunday is still in effect, well it was in late '09 when I last tried and got the “sorry dude, this is Utah response”

On the OP side - of course you can still get beer on a sunday in a food serving places in Utah county.
On that front, depending on the restaurant you can get a beer if you have intention of ordering food. So ask for the menu and order a beer, then say nothing on the menu took your fancy. This is highly establishment dependent, there are some that won’t let your order a beer until the food order has been placed, others that don;t mind and one place (A mexican restaurant) in downtown Provo that would only let you have 2 beers per main dish ordered and only delivered the beer with the food.
It’s a funny place, although this years ski season cannot be faulted.

28

FWIW I was up at Sundance last month (which I think is Utah county as well) and a work college requested a double, and was turned down, and then asked for two singles and was told by the server that now that she knew his intent was to get a double she could not serve two singles.

Further alcohol buying comedies take place at the state liquor store. Two guys in front of me were purchasing booze, the one who went to pay has his ID turned down (it was a foreign drivers license) his friend, with a passport, went to pay, but was refused because he was buying for the person without ID. Similarly on another occasion the cashier refused to sell to two people because one did not have his ID with him.

Always fun

29

This may be the case by law, but in practice it is not. There are large parts of Utah where you just can’t find a place that sells alcohol. I came out of Grand Gulch after five days of drinking warm water that had been run through a t-shirt to get the big bugs out, and then through a filter to get the tiny ones out, and would have killed for a cold beer. I had to drive damn near to Moab before I found a place that would sell me one.

30

I assume the SLC bars are open on Sundays?
Looks like if we do get to SLC it will be on a Sunday. There appear to be at least a handful of pubs within walking distance of the ballpark.

31

We went to the liquor store in SLC and found that they sell NOTHING but liquor. No ice, no mixers, nothing cold, and most importantly for us no goddamned corkscrews. We were told it is to encourage people to drink only at home.

It was funny, though - we were having a hard time finding it using my iPhone, but we knew we were nearby and passed a lady with a baby in a stroller and neither my mom nor I asked her. When we were out of earshot my mom said, “Okay, I just couldn’t. What if she was one of them?” God, I laughed. (I mean, that’s why I didn’t ask either, but “one of them”?)