Next Saturday, 17 local restaurants will set their tables along the length of Main Street in Old Town for “Utah’s largest outdoor dinner party”: Savor the Summit.
But it’s not just about the party on June 28 — this Park City Area Restaurant Association event has become opportunity for local chefs and businesses to showcase their creativity. For participating chefs like Firewood on Main’s John Murcko and Deer Valley Resort Executive Chef Peter Menteer, it’s something to look forward to every year.
Savor the Summit started in 2007 as the restaurant association’s summer kickoff to help the town’s culinary community garner more revenue and retain more employees, said the group’s Executive Director Ginger Wicks. Sixteen iterations later — two years skipped because of COVID — the event has taken on a life of its own.
“The first year we did it, it was only from Heber Avenue up to the top of Main Street, and it was actually in conjunction with this event that used to happen at Deer Valley Resort called the Park City Jazz Festival,” Wicks said. “We had maybe eight restaurants participate, and I was begging restaurants to please participate. It’s certainly taken off over the years.”
Wicks said the dinner has also adjusted to meet the needs of the restaurants — the whole reason the event even happens.
“When we first produced this event, one of the requirements was that we created this illusion of one long table down the center of Main Street. But the event was selling out so quickly, and restaurants wanted to be able to add more seats. The only way to allow that to happen was to break away from that visual,” Wicks said.
Now restaurants are allowed to get creative with their space — but no tents or large structures — to maximize seating and therefore maximize revenue. The resulting creativity is one of the best parts, she said.
“Depending on where you’re dining, you will have a different experience with each restaurant,” Wicks said. “For example, Top of Main brewery, they’re super fun. In the past, they’ve had cornhole and beer pong, and they kind of stick to who they are. Whereas as you move down the street, Firewood on Main John Murcko — my gosh, he always creates such an amazing visual display with his table.”
Murcko, executive chef and hobby craftsman, said he goes all out for Savor the Summit.
“It’s so special because, for me, it’s really to embrace the setting of Main Street and make it feel like you brought your dining room outside,” Murcko said. “I’ve worked really hard on creating a different concept for every year.”
Everything from building 80-foot connected pergolas, displays made of logs, the entire table filled with live mushroom spores, found sage and tumbleweeds brought in from the desert, Murcko said he never repeats the same design.
“I built tables once with a hole down the middle and then dropped in flower boxes, and then I filled them with five different herbs. So each course you had scissors, and you trimmed the herbs for the top of the course,” he said.
Their displays along their designated 100 feet of Main Street have become popular, and Murcko said he’s even had people request to take and reuse his setup for other events like weddings.
This year, inspired by an old winery in Napa Valley, Murcko said he’s hoping to build another huge display hanging above the table. He said seeing the contrast and the personalities of each restaurant is one of the fun parts about the outdoor setting, too.
“I’ve always looked at it as, this is about being part of the community,” he said.
Participating restaurants must be members of the restaurant association, but the event isn’t only open to Main Street businesses. Wicks said usually there are fewer off-Main establishments because of the added challenge of setting up a portable kitchen.
This year, Deer Valley Resort and Dilecta Wines are the only two off-Main Street participants, and the other businesses will service out of their regular kitchens.
Menteer said that while setting up operations on Main is difficult, joining in the celebration as the resort is well worth the effort — especially for their staff.
“That one’s a lot of fun for our team,” he said. “There’s a lot of camaraderie within the executive chef team, chef leadership, to go down there and do this event.”
Menteer said Deer Valley’s plan this year is to feature more Southern cuisine, a reflection of their staff’s roots and the resort’s original owners, who were from New Orleans.
“This year we’re going to go down south and do a jambalaya rather than a paella,” he said, using their huge paella pan. “And then we’re going to do some bacon-wrapped gator bites and cool, fun stuff like that.”
They’ll have 125 seats for the dinner, and they’re planning to do service with big, 9-liter bottles of wine. It’s meant to be fun and lively, and Menteer said the staff gets excited to show out for the guests.
“You’re getting food from not just one executive chef, but there’s a bunch of leaders down there, from front of the house and back of the house. It’s a really good event. The food is top notch. Service is top notch. We give it our all,” Menteer said.
Firewood’s plan is to showcase their all-wood-cooking style, said Murcko, with a cap set at 80 diners.
It’s a five-course chef’s tasting dinner, with either seafood and meat or a vegetarian option, made in the iconic style of Firewood.
“We cook over wood. So it’s great for us. You feel like it’s something that you would want to eat outside, that rustic style of cooking,” Murcko said. “You get the flavor of cooking over wood in all of our food here, so it works really well for the setting.”
There are always signature cocktails made just for the event, and even passers-by might get to snag small bites from the live cooking.
“This is one of the great events of Park City,” Murcko said. “There’s nothing better than you could imagine, to sit in the mountains and be outside dining.”
Wicks said that despite misconceptions, Savor the Summit is not a ticketed event. People who want to participate in the event simply call and make a reservation with the restaurant of their choice. This way, people can select the price point and flavors they want. Wicks also said that, if provided, menus will be posted on the Park City Area Restaurant Association website before the event.
Since seats tend to sell out quick — in Murcko’s case, even a year in advance — and prices can get steep, Wicks said High West Distilling began hosting a Spirit Garden free to the public.
“That’s a good option, maybe, for some people to enjoy before their dinner, or an option for people who aren’t able to make dinner reservations. They can still come up and enjoy the street and the atmosphere,” she said.
The garden will be open from 5-10 p.m., serving High West cocktails and a live music lineup with three local bands: Cory Mon from 5-5:45 p.m., THE FUSE from 6-7:30 p.m. then JAKE & THE HEIST from 8:15-10 p.m. While the whiskey brand has participated as a restaurant in previous years, High West Head of Hospitality Steve Walton said the spirit garden is more in line with their focus.
But he said the decision to stay active with the event was easy.
“Park City is our home. That’s where we started. We’re a global brand now, but our roots are in Park City,” Walton said. “To be part of any of the community events, from a High West perspective, is always something that we don’t want to get away from.”
This year, based on popular demand and feedback from previous events, they’ve expanded the garden’s footprint to allow more attendees.
“In previous years, we have been on Heber Avenue,” he said. “But now we’re moving it this year to lower to lower Main Street. The stage is going to be under the pedestrian bridge, and then the guest area will go up Main Street.”
They won’t have food at the garden, but the High West Saloon on Park Avenue will be open for people interested in grabbing a bite to eat, Walton said. Instead, the Spirit Garden’s aim is to serve locals’ favorite cocktails like their Old Fashioneds, lemonades and Dead Man’s Boots, and provide the live music free-of-charge.
“It gives people that don’t have the ability to spend $500 to $1,000 a plate on dinner on Main Street the ability to still be part of the experience itself,” Walton said.
That experience, the lively atmosphere of Main Street full of diners, is one element that makes Savor the Summit so special, he said.
“One of the cool things, if you’re not dining on Main Street, is just walking around and seeing what Riverhorse or Firewood or the other local restaurants in town are doing. And then at the end of the day, you can walk down to the bottom of Main Street, listen to some live music, have some great cocktails, and enjoy it — savor the summit a little bit differently,” Walton said.
All of the revenue from the dinners will go to the restaurants, which pay a price-per-linear-foot to cover the association’s operational costs for the evening, Wick said. Plus, the other restaurants on Main will be open, so there will be plenty of energy that evening.
For more: parkcityrestaurants.com/savor-the-summit.
2025 Savor the Summit participating restaurants:
- Bangkok Thai on Main
- Café Terigo
- Courchevel Bistro
- Deer Valley Resort
- Dilecta Wines
- Don Gallo
- The Eating Establishment
- Firewood On Main
- Flanagan’s Irish Pub & Restaurant
- Fletcher’s Park City
- High West Distillery & Saloon
- KANEO
- Le Depot Brasserie
- Purple Sage
- Riverhorse on Main
- Shabu
- Top of Main Brew Pub