3 Fun Food Experiences in Salt Lake City, Utah

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Curious about Utah’s food and drink scene? 

These three foodie experiences in Salt Lake City, Utah offer a great way to sample delicious foods and drinks while learning history—whether you’re a local or a visitor.

Two of these are walking food tours that give a great introduction to this beautiful city, and one is held inside a market and heavily focused on the food itself. The whiskey tour is of course 21+, but the other two experiences have family-friendly options that do not include alcohol. 

If you’re visiting Salt Lake City, I recommend incorporating a walking history tour at the beginning of your trip to get context and orient yourself.

I guarantee you’ll notice details throughout the rest of your visit that you wouldn’t have otherwise!

I thoroughly enjoyed each of these on my recent 10-day visit to SLC and would recommend each one. Note that I also took a fourth tour that didn’t make the cut (judged by: would I put this on a list for my sister or best friend?). 

Keep reading for my top three food and drink tour recs for Salt Lake City (plus some bonus ideas to check out at the end)!

SLC Bites & Sites Food Tour (Beehive Bites & Sites)

This walking food tour is packed full of history tidbits—without being boring. It covers Salt Lake City highlights and landmarks, but goes well beyond the standard Brigham Young story. 

From competing railroad companies to Greek influence to the Pony Express, you’ll learn a bunch of fascinating things about this town. 

My guide for the tour, Ray, was so knowledgeable and had tons of stories to share as we walked a couple miles around downtown. The other attendees canceled so I had my own private tour, which was awesome. I appreciated that Ray still held the tour for me—he’s clearly passionate about the topic and eager to share the SLC food scene and history with anyone interested.

As we left the market and walked around downtown, Ray told me about the Greek church on the corner, dueling piano bars, several murals we passed by, and the influence of the Mormon church.

He also mentioned the demolition of Japantown through eminent domain to make way for a convention center in the 60s. It struck me that this occurred just a couple of decades after Japanese Americans had lived through incarceration by the US government.

Recommended: As a side note (not strictly related to Utah), the podcast series by Sharon McMahon, Resilience: The Wartime Incarceration of Japanese Americans, is extremely compelling. I highly recommend it to learn more about this part of US history.

The story of Japantown in Salt Lake City was one that really stuck with me (though I took away many other things from the tour as well) because it’s not part of the main narrative. 

It’s a great example of why I appreciate taking a history tour at the beginning of my trip whenever possible. As beautiful as downtown and today’s convention center are, there’s so much behind what you see at face value. 

Learning history brings a deeper, richer understanding of a place and the people who call it home.

The rest of the Bites & Sites tour meanders through downtown, stopping at a couple more food stops along the way—including a Nashville hot chicken place with a reference to Dumb and Dumber in its name.

(Which obviously made me like it 1000% more.)

It finishes up at a tavern with still more interesting history as you enjoy a whiskey sample and another bite. If you want, you can hang out at the table to order drinks or food after the tour finishes. 

While I felt this tour was on the pricey end for the number of stops and amount of food (compared to tours I’ve done elsewhere), it was highly engaging, I learned a ton, and the quality of each stop was excellent. Ray was also very customer-minded, and I felt like he cared about my having a great experience—his passion for Salt Lake City’s food and history was contagious. 

Overall, this tour is a great way to explore downtown SLC and sample its craft food.

Recommended: 9 Fun Outdoor Activities in Salt Lake City, Utah (+ Nearby)

Whiskey & History Walking Tour (Wine Academy of Utah)

This downtown walking tour focuses on the history of Salt Lake City with a whiskey twist. 

And I’ll give the spoiler now: I highly recommend it (even if, like me, you’re not a whiskey drinker)! 

Within the first few minutes of our tour on a beautiful spring Saturday, our guide Jim had us all laughing with his quirky jokes and puns. His energy was contagious, and I loved the way he shared his deep knowledge in an approachable and engaging way. 

The Whiskey and History tour starts off with an overview of the city that gives context for the rest of the tour. 

This was the part I appreciated most because we moved slowly, and it didn’t feel like an assault on my senses (like other distillery tours/tastings I’ve done in the past). I might have even started to develop a taste for whiskey—or at the very least, an appreciation for its nuances.

He also shared how to enjoy different whiskeys: neat, on the rocks, or in a cocktail. Throughout the tasting, Jim told us about the process of making whiskey and how the flavor is changed. It was super interesting and felt totally unpretentious (despite his very obvious knowledge of the intricacies of the topic). 

You’ll even learn the background of some of the brands you taste, like the fascinating story behind Hugh Moon White Whiskey (Dented Brick Distillery), which involves a 1917 gun fight between a Mormon family and the police. 

The tour finishes off at an upscale pub where you taste a final whiskey sample, and you can stay and hang out for a little happy hour with your new tour friends if you’d like. 

Tip: You must be 21+ and present ID to enter a bar* in Utah, so make sure you always have yours even if you don’t plan to drink! *Being licensed as a bar is distinct from a restaurant (which can still serve alcohol and where minors can enter) in that customers can order drinks without ordering food.

Chocolate 101 (Tasting Class at Caputo’s)

Disclosure: Many thanks to Caputo’s, Visit Utah, and Visit Park City for hosting the chocolate tasting class for Women in Travel Summit attendees. I attended free of charge, but this is an experience I would happily spend money on and would even do again on a return trip.  

Even before I visited Salt Lake, I could tell in my planning that Caputo’s was a food institution in the city. 

This market and deli is staffed with self-proclaimed food nerds—their passion for good flavor and quality runs deep. 

It’s evident as you wander through the shop and sample both high-quality imports and locally produced Utah specialties. Or, as I did, gawk at the neverending shelves of gorgeous packaging while wanting to buy everything in sight. 

Caputo’s offers a variety of foodie classes where you can dive deep into ingredients, learn to make a cocktail, or taste delicious pairings. 

My favorite part was how Adri expressed over and over that this was not a pretentious or formal exercise, but the point of the tasting was to understand what kind of chocolate makes you happy.

And then to eat more of that. 

Adri also reminded us that we’re not broken if we don’t taste all the tasting notes because our olfactory memories are all different. She gave us some bonus tips about cooking with craft chocolate and threw in a lot of stories throughout the class. 

The food classes at Caputo’s vary throughout the month and are offered on everything from Chocolate 101 to a Tour of Spain to Rum Blending and more.

They sell out, so I recommend keeping an eye on the schedule and booking a couple months in advance of your trip. Also keep in mind that classes are held at more than one Caputo’s location (mostly downtown), so keep that in mind when booking. 

Other Food Tours, Classes, and Tastings in Salt Lake

I came across a handful of other food and drink experiences in Salt Lake City and Park City in my research. I didn’t have the opportunity to try them myself but thought it would be useful to share these as “honorable mentions” here to save you some research time.

Cheese Tasting (Midway): Heber Valley Artisan Cheese

Mountain West Cider tour (SLC): I enjoyed a hard cider flight in their tasting room one afternoon, which I highly recommend (get the Sweet Alice!), but they also offer hard cider education tours and tastings on certain days. Check availability on Airbnb Experiences.

Distillery tour and tasting (Park City): High West Distillery

Chocolate factory tour (Heber): Ritual Chocolate

I hope you found this roundup of Salt Lake City food and drink tours helpful! Are there any other foodie experiences in SLC or elsewhere in Utah that you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments!