Local Favorites: Cafe Rio vs. Costa Vida

Here in Utah, they know how to make burritos.  Really good burritos.  But the question everyone is asking is "do you prefer Cafe Rio or Costa Vida?".

Some background for starters: Cafe Rio started around 1997 in southern Utah serving burrito, tacos, enchiladas and salads with homemade tortillas cooked on an open griddle. The best part is that they put your food through an oven which heats it up and gets the cheese melted.  They had one in Provo before I graduated in 2000, and it was a big treat to go there since I was a poor college student.

For those in Iowa, all they have is Chipotle and locally owned Pancheros, etc, which both make a burrito the same way, with luke-warm meat, cold beans, rice and toppings, and heat their homemade tortillas on an industrial hot press thing. In the end you get a cold burrito. Period. Which is why I love Cafe Rio's style here.

Costa Vida started in 2003 with a carbon-copy menu, store layout, kitchen layout, etc. So close, in fact, that "In 2005, Costa Vida rival Cafe Rio filed a lawsuit in Salt Lake City over recipes. The Provo-based Cafe Rio, founded six years before its competitor, alleged in a 3rd District suit that Costa Vida franchises had wrongfully copied and used its "trade secrets, menu, layout, food presentation, procedures and processes."  Source

Costa Vida denied the allegations and added the chain was "completely surprised by this complaint and it's timing. We have been operating for nearly two years and have heard nothing of these allegations since we opened."

Costa Vida was also concerned that after 2 years of being open, there was no allegations until 2005 when Cafe Rio was purchased by Apex Partners, who had much deeper pockets for things like law suits.

The law suit was settled in 2007, with no apparent change to the Costa Vida operations or menu, and the court docs state that the terms of the settlement are not disclosed.  IE: Payout.  Both have since moved on and have opened dozens of local locations, and more out of state. They both have great food, don't get me wrong, but it took a while for me to understand that it is a "legal" situation that both restaurants have the same menu and same layout. Here is another blog post that has photos of how identical their food is, both salads and burritos.

Decision time: For me, it comes down to the subtle differences, but I have to put my $$ with Cafe Rio. 3 reasons:

1. Cafe Rio has free quesadillas for the little ones. Our son gets a free one, and picks at the rest of our food. Costa Vida charges $3.99 for a kids quesadilla. This is the major reason why we go.
    
2. Cafe Rio is my original experience with this type of food, and it is nostalgic to eat there, reminding me of my college days, and how cool we thought we were to go out to eat on the weekends.  Otherwise we were eating some pretty cheap food the rest of the week. Trust me, a quick dinner at my apartment of a hot dog with cheese in a tortilla is still a vague memory from college that I am trying to erase from memory still.
3. We had Costa Vida when we first got here 2 months ago, and there was a cotton string from a cleaning rag in the quesadilla tortilla that we were eating. Not totally nasty, but still. We pulled it out, showed them, and they got us a replacement quesadilla. If we were at Cafe Rio, even if they had a string in the tortilla, it would have been free. 

So, that being said, which do you prefer?

Traffic: Will someone let me merge, please?

One of the adjustments to make here in Salt Lake City is adjusting to the traffic.  Granted, I have a relatively simple 8-mile commute to work, but in the 15 years I was gone, the population doubled, and so did the number of cars on the road. I work on the west side and I live on the west side, so for the most part, I jut go with the flow for east-west travel iwith no real traffic headaches. The good news is that I don't get into the north-south commuting on I-15.  That's just plain old nuts, with construction and way too many cars, it's a recipe for stand-still-traffic every day. More on that in a separate post......

I try to leave for work around 7 am to avoid the morning rush, and this works great, traffic moves well, and the lights are timed such that on some mornings I may only stop at 1 or 2 lights along my entire route. I try to leave at 4:30 in the evening to avoid the evening rush. The evening rush ramps up around 4:45, and by 5 it is bumper to bumper traffic with everyone trying to get home. I work on Redwood Road, and the logical route home is to turn left out of the parking lot and head south.  However, Redwood road at 5 PM is 6 lanes of white-knuckled speed-racers trying to get home. Some take a chance and pull into the 2-way turn lane down the center and wait for "an opening", but I for one prefer to turn right, head north 1 block, and then start turning right until I am heading west again. 

Even when I am in traffic, and moving along with the flow, I have noticed that merging is difficult, to use a pleasant word. My co-worker best described the merging culture here in Salt Lake City as follows: "

"When people see a car with it's yellow blinker on, they automatically assume they want to steal their position in traffic, so they immediately speed up and block the signaling car from getting in their lane. It's pretty dumb". 

I take his word since he is a transportation engineer and does dozens of traffic studies on the very roads I use to commute. I once saw a car way ahead of me trying to get in the left exit lane on Redwood Road to get on I-215, and the car behind them by 200 feet or so ( and in front of me) immediately sped up once they saw the blinker to block them from getting in, and ended up putting them on the shoulder through the on-ramp. The merging car maintained speed and eventually got in front of the crazy diver and finished merging onto the highway. Once on the highway, the crazy driver that tried to block them out sped up, pulled in front of them, and slammed on the brakes to mess with them. Since they were slowing down, and I wanted to avoid the road rage, I got in the far left lane and passed them.  As I looked over, I noticed the crazy driver was a teenage girl with a friend int he car, with big hair, lots of make-up, and the angriest face I have seen in a while. Where did she learn to be an aggressive, reckless driver? And at such a young age? I assumed it was a teenage boy or something, but I was surprised to see that. Yikes.

Back to merging: So my adjustment to this culture is to think approximately 3 miles ahead of my current position on the road and what lane I need to be in, and then stay there. Don't switch lanes, not even to get around a bus who is stopped for a person loading a bike on the front! You may never get back over. EG: If  you are heading south on Bangerter Highway and you plan to exit at 78th south, you better be in the right lane well before 70th South or you may not be able to get over. Seriously. That's my biggest adjustment.  The other adjustment to to wait 2 seconds or so before going through a new green light.  There are a lot of folks running through red lights here, so I wait for the intersection to clear before moving through.

The accidents seem to be more prevalent here, too. I would say there is an accident on 78th south about every other day during the evening commute. My insurance rates jumped about 30% when we moved here, and the agent explained that it's because the accident rate in Utah is higher than Iowa.

I am trying to be a passive driver among a lot of aggressive drivers. Honestly I kind-of like setting the cruise at the speed limit and just hum along the road. I am sure there are people behind me getting really mad that I am actually driving the speed limit, but they get around eventually, speed up, and then we end up next to eachother again at the next red light.

Silver lining? My commute is 8 miles, rather than 30 miles for my job in Iowa, so we are using a lot less gas. Less expensive, less pollution, less time in the car!  So I can't complain too much :-)

  

Where there's smoke, there's fire!

The air in Utah has changed all of a sudden!  The wonderfully calm air out here doesn't move very quickly, which can lead to long stretches of beautiful clear skies.  The downside to that comes when neighboring states have wild fires.  Fires produce a lot of smoke that travels with the wind, but it can travel hundreds of miles.  Right now, there are several wild fires in Idaho and Washington state, probably more, that are causing smoke to slowly blow into our area, and congest the air.  The view of the mountains from our back yard to the east has all but disappeared.  The news has said that it is not a health hazard, but it is more of a visibility concern for aircraft, etc.  I am curious if that stance will stay the same.  For those in Iowa, you may remember when the Iowa City landfill caught on fire a few years ago, and there was an immediate press release saying "The smoke is not a health hazard". Shortly thereafter, they recanted and told people to stay indoors and to not allow those with respiratory health issues to go outdoors. Oops.

Here is a photo of the sun rising over the Wasatch mountains to the east this morning. (I stopped the car before I took the photo...) It's a little surreal.  I hope the fires are contained soon. Perhaps a wind pattern change will blow this air out of the valley.  They released some satellite photos as well that show the smoke all over the western U.S.  At least we are not alone~

Local Favorites: Swig

Part of getting to know a community, and a culture for that matter, is knowing their go-to places for a treat. Fountain drinks have always been a popular treat here, even from my days in college down in Provo, but the competition for the best fountain drink has heated up since I left.  One place that seems to be hitting the mark is called Swig. https://www.swigstop.com/ I credit my sister-in-law Jen for for bringing this fabulous place to our attention.

They started in St. George, and are spreading throughout the state.  They have a location in Draper that is not totally convenient, but worth the drive.  It;s tucked away on 123rd South. I don't think they advertise, it probably spreads by word of mouth just fine.  There is always a line there, even at 2 in the afternoon.  They take regular fountain drinks and upgrade them with flavored syrups, fruit juice, whipped cream, whatever you want really. They top it off by having some of the best ice around. Small pieces, easy to chew, not rock hard.  I think they have special ice machines to make this stuff.  And the drink stops that have it advertise it.

To add to the mania, they sell sugar cookies. Large sugar cookies with pink icing. They are pretty good, and I am not a fan of sweets very often. They have a bit of salt in the dough that is delicious!

There is another drink stop in Ephraim, UT called Sip-It, and they take it one step further and list all the possible flavor combinations for you, so you don't have to think as hard to be creative. That is where we discovered lemon-cream soda. Sprite, lemonade, and half-n-half.  Seriously, it is amazing, and we've got the half-n-half in the fridge to prove it, now that we are making this at home for an occasional treat.

So it;s official, Swig is on the "Like" list~

Re-Discovering Salt Lake City, Utah

Welcome to Re-Discovering Salt Lake City.  A little journal of transitioning to life in this city after moving here from the Midwest in June of 2015, and all the things we find along the way. In full disclosure, I have lived here before in past, but it has been 15 years, so I feel like we are re-discovering all things Salt Lake City again for the first time. I hope to share the great things we find here: recreation, food, great deals, culture, and the interesting things you notice on a day-to-day basis.

Background? My family and I recently moved from Iowa, the state that gets confused with Idaho and Ohio, to the western mountain state of Utah. Not much gets confused with Utah.  I lived in Iowa for 11 years and Wisconsin for 4 years prior to that. So a lot of time was spent in the last decade-and-a-half living in the Midwestern lifelstyle.  The last 11 years in Iowa was a formidable time, with so many life memories, and essentially my entire time as a 30-something adult. My wife and I met while in Iowa, and our kiddo was born there as well, so there is a lot of memories from living there.

This is the first time I have made a major move like this in about 15 years.  The last time I moved that far was moving from Utah to Wiscinsin.  Basically the same thing in reverse. In full disclosure, I have lived in Utah twice before, once as a wee tot, age 1 to 5, and again from age 18 to 25 as a college student, loving the vistas and the occasional trip to go snowboarding. But I was basically living in the books outside of that, and I was very low on spending money, so I didn't experience regular life as an adult and didn't get to experience much for recreation, dining and culture.

In the last 15 years since I have been absent from Utah, I would same that some things about Utah have stayed the same, and some things have changed. Changed indeed.  (there are things about me that have stayed the same, and some things that have changed as well).  I have been finding myself saying to my wife and others "Wow, this sure is the same, and whoa, that has changed!".  There are so many things, that I have felt the urge to jot them down, and why not use the wonderful world of Blogger to chronicle my "Re-discoveries"? It has been fun to "Re-discover" all things Utah. So follow along if you wish to see our likes, discoveries, great deals (we are frugal folks) and maybe a couple of complaints of what we find along the way.

The first like? Mountains. Green, rocky, majestic mountains.  They are like a picture frame around everything else you see on the landscape here.  Not as green as an Iowa corn field in July, but still amazing! This is one of the first cell phone pics of the mountains as we arrived in Utah earlier in the summer of 2015!

The other nice thing about the mountains is the waterfalls. We took a ride up a canyon while visiting family in Sanpete County, and saw this great waterfall.  There were some mosquitoes around the falls, which was surprising because we were at about 8000 feet elevation, but I learned something that day. Where there is water, there are mosquitoes. It's a universal truth, weather you are in Utah or Iowa!

That's all for now, more to come!