Boulder, Utah, is the kind of place you have to mean to visit. It sits on Scenic Byway 12, between the red rock of Grand Staircase-Escalante and the forests of Boulder Mountain. There’s no bank, no traffic light and no supermarket.
It’s also home to one of the most celebrated restaurants in the West.
Cooks who learned on the river
Blake Spalding and Jen Castle never went to culinary school. Both learned to cook in the backcountry, feeding hungry crews on whitewater rafting trips. Spalding grew up in New Hampshire, cooked on the Colorado River, worked on a Greenpeace campaign against pesticides, and ran a catering business in Flagstaff. Castle grew up in Albuquerque, where she picked up New Mexican and Polish cooking, and catered river and backcountry trips too.
In 2000, the chance came to take over a restaurant in Boulder, and they opened Hell’s Backbone Grill. Spalding has said their goal was simple: clean food, beautifully served, with love and care.
A farm at the end of the road
When you’re hours from the nearest big grocery store, you learn to grow your own. Hell’s Backbone runs a six-acre organic farm plus restaurant gardens, and buys fruit from Boulder’s heirloom orchards and meat from local grass-fed ranchers. The farm grows tens of thousands of pounds of produce a year.
The food blends the cooking of the region, cowboy, Mormon pioneer and Southwestern, into what the restaurant has called Four Corners cuisine. The restaurant is also run on Buddhist principles, with a focus on sustainability and taking care of its community. Spalding once described it to the Salt Lake Tribune as a Buddhist-based restaurant in an LDS town.
National attention, local roots
The world noticed. Gourmet named Hell’s Backbone among the country’s best farm-to-table restaurants in 2007. The James Beard Foundation recognized Spalding and Castle as semifinalists for Best Chef: Mountain in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and as nominees in 2020, the year the awards were canceled. The restaurant was later a semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurant in 2022 and 2023.
They’ve written two cookbooks, With a Measure of Grace in 2004 and This Immeasurable Place in 2017. The second arrived just as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, their backyard, was cut into smaller pieces, and the owners became outspoken defenders of the monument. “Our land is our brand,” Spalding told The Salt Lake Tribune.
In 2025 the restaurant added a new chapter, buying the neighboring Boulder Mountain Lodge with help from community loans and gifts rather than a bank.
How to do Hell’s Backbone right
- Plan around the season. The restaurant is seasonal. The 2026 season’s last dinner is November 29, with a Harvest Feast of Gratitude on November 26 and 27.
- Reserve dinner. Dinner runs Thursday through Monday evenings, and it’s a destination, so book ahead.
- Order something from the farm. Look for dishes like the posole, green chile beef stew and seasonal pies.
- Make the drive part of the trip. Scenic Byway 12 is one of the most beautiful roads in America. Give yourself time.
Some restaurants are worth crossing town for. Hell’s Backbone Grill is worth crossing a state for, and the two river cooks who built it have shown that great food can grow anywhere, even at the end of the road.
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Visit Hell’s Backbone Grill
Where: 20 N. Highway 12, Boulder, Southern Utah
Phone: 435-335-7464
Founded: 2000
Season and hours: Seasonal, roughly spring through late November. Check hellsbackbonegrill.com
This story draws on Hell’s Backbone Grill’s own history, the Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake Magazine and NPR. Top photo: A. E. Crane, U.S. Department of Transportation, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.