Take a look inside The Roof, the Salt Lake City restaurant with iconic views now reopening after a 5-year break

It’s been more than five years since anyone has dined at The Roof, but that hasn’t stopped people from calling to see if they could make reservation — even before the landmark Salt Lake City restaurant started advertising its reopening this weekend.

“There’s a lot of tradition here, a lot of good memories, a lot of big memories for life events — weddings, receptions, big celebrations within the building,” said Brian Richter, the restaurant’s executive chef. “I feel like The Roof actually is the heart of a lot of that.”

It helps that the view from the 10th floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building at 15 E. South Temple — including the still-under-renovation Salt Lake Temple — is “pretty spectacular,” he said.

The Roof will officially reopen Friday to all customers. More than 400 reservations are already booked, Richter said, with more expected to dine there in the coming weeks.

For the menu, “we try to do a lot of comfort food,” Richter said, “things that are very recognizable, and just try to elevate those things and make them really good.”

With several dishes, “we’ve tried to lean into those things that are good about Utah and Utah cuisine.” For example, a handful feature honey — a nod to the Beehive State — and the restaurant serves a croquette that’s a “funeral potatoes” variation.

The meals are served a la carte, a change from the buffet service The Roof had offered since the 1990s, according to Richter, who also is vice president of operations for Temple Square Hospitality, which handles food service and events in the Smith building.

One thing that hasn’t changed: The restaurant does not serve alcohol, coffee or tea.

Most of The Roof’s customers will be served in two main dining rooms:

• The Temple View Room, which holds dozens of tables and booths in a three-tiered floor plan, so all guests get a western view toward Temple Square.

• The Grove, domed with a large skylight and retractable roof, can accommodate up to 150 people. It features a custom-made table that seats 22 and can be reserved for private parties. The room used to be a second restaurant called The Garden; that’s now the name of the lunch spot that opened in June in the building’s lobby.

The Roof also features several private dining spaces — two rooms that look out over Temple Square, two “chef’s table” rooms that connect to the kitchen, and the Capitol Room facing north toward the Utah Capitol.

The whole restaurant seats 320 guests, Richter said, and once it is fully staffed, it can accommodate between 500 and 700 diners an evening.

The Roof closed in March 2020, when so many other places shuttered at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Tara Durrant, vice president of marketing and sales for Temple Square Hospitality, said they had been looking to start major renovations in 2022 and opted not to reopen after health officials allowed businesses to do so.

The restaurant started in 1914 as the showpiece of the old Hotel Utah and has carried such names as the Starlite Gardens and The Sky Room.

The hotel ceased operations in 1987. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints converted it into office space and event venues, and reopened it in 1993, renaming it for the church’s founder.

Richter has fond memories of the Smith building, he said. He was also married in the Salt Lake Temple in 1994, and “I didn’t realize it at the time, until I got this job 20 years later, that I actually had photos from my wedding day in the building,” he said. “It was just cool to see it all come together.”

Even before Friday’s opening, Richter said the feedback from former customers has been positive — and may help direct menu plans going forward.

“[People say] ‘I can’t wait to come back and have the creme brulee,’” Richter said. “Those are things that we’re looking at right now, to see if that would be something that would do well on the menu.”

Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.