As I said two posts ago, when I arrived in Utah in September 1991, it was quite difficult to have a decent cup of coffee in Salt Lake City, because to the well-known weakness of American coffee one has to add that mormons, which were a majority here, don't ever take coffee. After a few desperate days without a coffee the right way, some friends took me to the Salt Lake Roasting Company, and sky opened for me :)
Founded in 1981, the Salt Lake Roasting Company is one of the places with more feeling in Salt Lake City. It's just a coffee shop, they only have coffee and pastries, no coke or alcoholic beverages. It's located right downtown, one block from the City Hall. But its most peculiar trait, which makes it unique among all coffee shops I know, is that (as its name indicates) they roast their own coffee. You can see in the picture the two roasting machines, which take up half of the space, together with the coffee sacks.
If you happen to go while they are roasting, which happens quite often, a strong coffee smell will welcome you and will be stuck to your nostrils for three hours after you leave. Needless to say, the Roasting Company serves a wonderful espresso, black, bitter and with foam, along with all coffee specialties you can think of. It also sells coffee by the pound, and all coffee paraphernalia. That first day I went, I spent 60 dollars right there in an Italian coffee maker, a coffee mill, two pounds of coffee and little espresso cups and plates. I still have that coffee maker in my house in Barcelona, and it has the curious feature that it is half metallic and half clay, with the top part being clay to preserve heat. Very cool coffee maker.
So, the Roasting Company became (and still is) my favorite hangout in Salt Lake, and I still remember quite fondly that I wrote my first math paper sitting at one of its tables some evening in 1994.
Everything is different nowadays, and neither mormons are a majority in Salt Lake, nor it's difficult to have a decent cup of coffee here, with the invasion of imports that happened in the late 90s and then with the Olympics, especially from California, escaping rising real estate prices and violence in Californian streets. But the Roasting Company is still there, with its faithful clients. We hope it will stay this way for many years. I recommend anyone who goes to Utah, and likes coffee a little bit, that he stops by the Roasting Company. He won't be disappointed.
