by Michael Cooper
DRAPER, Utah — When Vuz Restaurant and Vuda Bar opened here a couple of months ago, the idea was to bring a dash of dining chic to this corner of the Salt Lake Valley.
Diners can watch white-jacketed chefs prepare their risotto in the glass-enclosed kitchen. The lounge area is down a hall dominated by a glass wine cellar. Its centerpiece was to be a shiny bar, with high-end bottles arrayed on circular steel shelves bathed in red, blue and purple lights.
Then the concept ran into Utah’s famously strict liquor laws, which remain unusual even after they were relaxed in 2009 to bring the state more into line with the rest of the nation. Unable to get one of the state’s closely held licenses for its bar, Vuda is now run as a restaurant, which means under current Utah law that drinks can be served but not seen — at least until the customers get them.
So the wine cellar, upon closer inspection, is stacked with empty bottles.
Stools still line the shiny bar in the lounge, but they look straight at a wall of clouded white glass that rises from the middle of the counter, obscuring the bottles and bartenders on the other side.
“Without that license, the patrons cannot see the alcohol and they cannot see the bartenders,” explained James Ables, the restaurant’s manager. “Hence the ‘Zion Curtain.”
It is no longer true that you cannot get a drink in Utah, despite the shot glasses sold in souvenir shops that say “Eat, drink & be merry — tomorrow you may be in Utah.” But the state’s liquor laws — heavily influenced by the Mormon Church, which has its headquarters here and which frowns upon alcohol — are still among the most complex in the country.
Read more:
