South Salt Lake, nor the Salt Lake Valley, may not rival New York City or Los Angeles when it comes to its restaurant scene, but in its own way, it offers a wide variety of foods from different cultures around the world. 

There are plenty of places that serve Mexican food, but you can also find places that make  dishes from El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Venezuela, and other countries of Central and South America. Beyond that, you will discover Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian, Nepalese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Tongan, and other countries’ cuisines in an array of restaurants around Utah’s second-largest city. There’s even a Chinese-Venezuelan fusion restaurant. 

“We have such a huge, diverse group of restaurants out there,” said Michele Corigliano, executive director of the Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association. Minorities comprise 53% of West Valley City’s population, which makes for fertile ground for restaurants that feature global fare. 

SLARA represents independently-owned restaurants and bars by providing education, training, and promotional resources, as well as keeping owners abreast of legal issues and market trends in running their establishments. 

Generally, these restaurants are often located in strip malls and other unassuming locales, but don’t let their appearance outside dissuade you from stepping inside to something besides burgers and burritos. Corigliano says it’s the authenticity of the food that draws customers. The eateries know how to prepare the dishes the way they are in their countries of origin rather than “Americanizing” their fare. She notes returned church missionaries who enjoyed what they ate while serving foreign missions can get a taste of that experience here at home because of the variety of authentic restaurants. 

What came first—the restaurants that open their doors in hopes of attracting customers or the potential customers who clamor for restaurants with an international flavor. Corigliano believes it leans more toward the restaurants and specifically the people, often immigrants, who come here from distant countries and want to offer their native cultures’ cuisines to the locals and start up restaurants to do so. 

“When it comes to opening up restaurants, it takes great courage to do so,” Corigliano said. She said that determination comes from the trials of fleeing or otherwise immigrating from their home countries and the attitude that if they can do something like that, they can certainly navigate the obstacles of starting a new dining establishment. This in spite of the fact that the restaurant failure rate is 80% within the first five years of operation, according to the National Restaurant Association. 

Corigliano says the variety different nationalities benefits West Valley City. “It really does lend itself to being a more interesting city. It is the unsung hotspot for these kinds of restaurants. We just need to get the word out a little bit better than what we’re doing.” 

One of the city’s interesting places to try is Chang’s Food, a Chinese-Venezuelan restaurant located at 3576 S. Redwood Road whose menu features Chinese fare with a Venezuelan twist. An influx of Chinese immigrants to the South American country in the early 20th century brought with it the Chinese way of cooking. That has since resulted in a number of fried rice-based dishes combined with beef, pork, chicken, shrimp and vegetables that have attracted growing legions of Venezuelans, Colombians, and Peruvians, and other Latin Americans. “It’s kind of like Chinese food with a little bit of Venezuelan seasoning. There’s no Venezuelan food in it. It’s the seasoning and how you make it,” said Kiang-Yi Chang, who manages her family-owned restaurant. 

“My grandpa was Chinese and my grandma was Venezuelan. They got married, they had my dad and my uncles and they started to cook Chinese food but with Venezuelan fusion,” she said. “They grew up with it.” λ