Monte
Martin Babio starts the ravioli three days out, aging the chicken with koji and confiting it in butter he clarifies himself.
Why go
Babio and his wife Karen cook inside Beehive Distilling on West Temple, with the gin stills and the barrels still in the room (Utah Stories). They ran Monte as a pop-up and a private-dinner operation for years before they took the space. He cooks and she runs the floor, and both trained at Montevideo's Instituto de Alta Cocina. In August 2026 the room took the only MICHELIN star in Utah, in the first Southwest guide the company has ever published (Gastronomic SLC).
Babio starts his day at the farmers market. Around 80% of what we use comes from Utah,
he told Stuart Melling, counting produce, wild herbs, proteins, dairy and honey (Gastronomic SLC). The menu turns over inside the month, which he puts plainly: No two weeks look the same, and that's exactly how we like it.
Ted Scheffler ate the summer menu and put the cooking beside the early Metropolitan and Viet Pham's Forage (Utah Stories).
The guide's own inspector describes a room that charts its own course in the region
, with gin barrels stacked high, concrete floors and widely spaced tables, and says Babio's menu leans on local producers
with French, Italian and South American influences weaving in and out (MICHELIN Guide).
Scheffler had given up on tasting menus before he ate this one. He spends a third of his own review explaining that they run long and precious and leave him no say in dinner, and then writes that Monte is enough to make me reconsider my avoidance of tasting menus
(Utah Stories). He reviewed this city for City Weekly and edited dining at Salt Lake Magazine.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the ravioli, which arrive as a trio in a sauce of roasted chicken bones, lemongrass, lime leaf and ginger. Babio calls it
a rare Italo-Filipino fusion rarely seen in the American West.
2 - Order: Cold Waters, which puts scallop, pork, celeriac, potato and trout in one ceviche.2
- Order: the beeswax ice cream. The wax is local, the caramel is miso, and sommelier Ignacio Cittadini sears it at your table with tongs holding binchotan heated in a molcajete.2
- Avoid: starting at the twelve-course. Melling ate the five and said the pacing was the best part of it, and the five and the seven come off the same kitchen.1
What locals & experts say
- Ted Scheffler, Utah Stories:
Equally exciting and innovative is a dish called 'Cold Waters' wherein scallop, pork, celeriac, potato, and trout commingle in what is possibly the most amazing – and certainly the most creative – ceviche I've ever come across.
2 - Stuart Melling, Gastronomic SLC:
With just eighteen months under their belts as a full-service operation, the Babios now stand on equal footing with names such as Guy Savoy and Jose Andres.
3
Good to know
- What it costs: five courses at $95, seven at $115, twelve at $175, on the 2025 summer menu. Substituting A5 Wagyu into the venison course adds $85 and the caviar on the beet carpaccio adds $25.
- Booking: essential, through Tock. Seatings run Wednesday for the five-course and Thursday to Saturday for the longer menus.
- Where: 2245 South West Temple, inside the working distillery, about ten minutes south of downtown.
- What kind of room it is: fine dining in a working distillery. Concrete floors, barrels along one wall, tables far enough apart to talk across, and Babio's cookbook collection behind the bar.
Verdict
must-visit — This is the only kitchen in Utah holding a MICHELIN star. Ted Scheffler had given up on tasting menus, then called the Cold Waters ceviche the most creative he has come across and put the cooking beside the early Metropolitan and Viet Pham's Forage. Babio buys about four fifths of what he cooks inside Utah and rewrites the menu within a month.