If you would like a fabulous apres-ski experience, whether you've just hit the slopes or not, here are five of the area's newest ski-area restaurants:
Park City’s Silver is becoming known as much for its unique, silver-themed décor as for its upscale, haute-cuisine menu, which features appetizers like oven-roasted olives and venison tartare, as well as entrées like wild mushroom risotto with chianti, coq au vin and goose leg confit and exotic sides like pomegranate-fried Brussels sprouts and cauliflower gratin. Silver, which opened this winter, is open at 5 p.m. daily.
More family-oriented is Cena Ristorante and Lounge, at The Chateaux at Silver Lake. This restaurant, which opened last winter, features unique but accessible food like goat cheese and lemon pizza and a "winter margherita" pie with oven-roasted tomatoes, as well as pasta entrées ranging from spaghetti and meatballs to butternut squash ravioli topped with roasted duck and brown butter sauce. Open 7-11 a.m.-3 p.m. for breakfast and lunch; 5 p.m. for dinner.
Bistro@Canyons, which opened in December, is the first certified kosher restaurant open all season at a U.S. ski resort. But even people who don't eat kosher may be interested in the bistro's creamy smoked cauliflower soup, beef cheek gnocchi, mustard-crusted wild salmon and "chicken 3 ways," which features chicken breast piard, roasted chicken leg, chicken thigh croquetes, smashed potatoes and sous vide baby carrots. Open breakfast, lunch and dinner (special Jewish Sabbath buffet available Friday evenings and Saturday lunch) for the 2011-2012 Canyons ski season, closing April 4.
Daly’s Pub & Rec at Montage Deer Valley advertises itself as a "gourmet gastropub" with not only a raft of casual favorites on its menu, but also bowling, billiards, darts and vintage arcade games. The pub has its own display oven for making brick-oven pizzas, as well as offering comfort food like burgers, fish and chips, shepherd's pie and chicken pot pie. Open daily 3-11 p.m.
Escala Provisions Company also opened in December at Park City's Hyatt Escala Lodge.
While some services at Escala Provisions — the small grocery, the availability of packed lunches — are directed right at the Hyatt's guests, the restaurant offers "modern comfort food" like a roasted half chicken or chimichurri skirt steak with sofrito rice. Sharing is encouraged with "small snack" plates of braised black mussels and fondue for two; with comforting desserts like apple gallette or gluten-free hazelnut cappuccino torte. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner from 7 a.m.