Ryan Lowder: Cooking Up Something New.

• Author: Johnson, Melanie
• Position: Around Utah - Interview

Ryan Lowder left a successful corporate career to explore his passion for cooking. It started a journey that has transformed him into an award-winning chef and owner of The Copper Onion. Lowder worked in some of the finest culinary outlets in the world before opening The Copper Onion and Plum Alley, one of Bon Appotit's 50 Best New Restaurants of the year.

What makes The Copper Onion unique?

We source what we can here. We can grow garlic and parsley--we do a salsa verde mixed with olive oil, which is a very Spanish sauce. Our main meat purveyor is a three-man operation in Utah. Instead of spending a lot on marketing dollars, we'll do things like production kitchen and gardens. It's kind of uncharted territory. I mean, if you go into a restaurant and they grow the food or they're doing all of their own butchering with local animals, that's the kind of push we make.

What are the top menu items?

Top menu items include beef stroganoff. Certainly the burger. Fish is always popular--sablefish with a dashi broth. We also have a griddle trout that's super popular. Patatas braves--a fried potato with a spicy aioli and paprika. It's really popular.

What are your long-term plans?

We've signed a lease in Holladay for an American pizza and pasta concept, which will happen this summer, We are also under construction with a production kitchen at 900 South and 700 West. We have gardens laid out there that will launch this spring with a 15-by-50-foot greenhouse. We plan to expand our garden program and start growing a lot of our own produce. ... We do a lot of things in-house. We make all of our own pasta, bread, ice cream. These things take a lot of space and it's expensive real estate downtown. We just don't have the room for it. We'll start producing that over there. We have a pretty serious butchering program here, but we'll be able to cure meat down there, we'll be able to make simple cheeses. ... It's setting us up to more easily manage the restaurant and the production. Even though each restaurant will...