The Roof Restaurant has been open since 1990, which means it has been feeding Salt Lake City from ten floors above street level for more than three decades. That alone makes it unusual. What makes it stranger is that it sits inside the Joseph Smith Memorial Building on Temple Square — operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and yet it functions as a fully realized fine dining buffet that anyone can walk into. No membership required. No dress code enforced, though most people show up in something nice anyway.
On a Saturday evening in October, the light outside goes pink and then orange over the Wasatch range somewhere around seven o’clock. Inside, the dining room is wide and formal — white tablecloths, tall windows, a ceiling that feels like it was designed to make an impression. It was. The building itself was completed in 1911 as the Hotel Utah, and the bones of that original elegance are still visible even after decades of renovation. The view from the east-facing windows looks directly toward the Salt Lake Temple, lit up at night against whatever the sky is doing. It’s a lot to take in.
The buffet runs about $45 per person for dinner, a little less at lunch, and covers more ground than you’d expect. There’s a carving station with prime rib, a seafood section that usually includes shrimp and salmon, a salad bar that doesn’t embarrass itself, and a dessert spread with enough variety to keep a table occupied for an extra half hour. The food is not revolutionary — this is not the place to go chasing a trend — but it is consistently solid, well-maintained, and plentiful. The prime rib, when it’s fresh off the carving station, is reliably good.
Alcohol is not served here. That’s worth knowing before you go. The restaurant offers sparkling cider and a range of non-alcoholic drinks, and the servers handle the question without any awkwardness. If that’s a dealbreaker, fine. But for a lot of people — including plenty of non-members who just want a good meal with a spectacular view — it barely registers once the food arrives.
Lunch is the quieter hour to visit. The room fills up less, the view is different — afternoon light on the mountains has its own quality — and the buffet is priced around $25. On a weekday, you might share the room with a few tour groups and a smattering of locals who’ve figured out that this is one of the more civilized midday breaks downtown. Reservations are worth making either way. The place books up on weekends without much warning, especially in the summer tourist months and around the holidays.
What actually surprises people, once they get up there, is how much the city looks like itself from that height. You can see the grid in both directions, the lake faint and silver to the west on clear days, the mountains close and specific to the east. For a city that often gets described from the outside, it’s useful to look at it from the inside out for a couple of hours. The Roof gives you that, along with a decent plate of food and no particular rush to leave.
