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Travel: Moab, Utah

Part of a series: (links to go live as they get posted)

This post is a part of the Carnival of Cities.

Moab, Utah, has a land area of about 3.6 square miles and a listed population of around 4780 people. Located within a five-minute drive from the entrance of Arches National Park, this little town fills up with visitors.

The central strip is Main Street, where everything happens. There are hotels, restaurants, and various tourist services. Although the town clearly caters to tourists, the boom isn’t big enough to warrant more than a handful of souvenir shops. Drive two miles down Main Street, and you’re out of town already. There is a nice mountain-town charm to Moab.

City Market is the big grocery store. The boyfriend and I stopped here every day of our trip. There’s an interesting little three-screened first-run movie theater as well.

Practically everything in Moab is a dollar or two above what you may expect to pay but given that they have to truck everything in, I don’t think the prices are unreasonable.

For dinner, we tried the following places:

Pasta Jay’s This is a very big restaurant that stays open late. There’s a screened-in outdoor seating area that’s pretty pleasant. The food is tasty but not out of this world. It’s a good place to people watch because it draws a nice cross-section of vacationers.

Mandarin Szechuan Don’t be fooled by the buffet sign. The buffet is for breakfast and lunch. Dinner is from the menu. This restaurant reminds me a lot of the places in Chinatowns so unless you’re used to that environment, it may disorient you.

Given the prices, I would not have expected the food to have been as rustic has it was. The family appears to be Szechuan so I would recommend sticking to those regional dishes if possible. My favorite Szechuan dish, eggplant with garlic sauce, was very good. It was prepared as I would expect in a family-run little Chinatown joint instead of the bigger formal restaurants though. Nicely spicy, there was lots of garlic and a lot of grease. Put this over rice (rustic or not), and it’s one of my favorite meals. I have no complaints about this one. The more standard Chinese fare was just not as good.

Like I said before, everything is a bit more expensive in Moab, but this restaurant nickels-and-dimes a bit too hard for my taste. No Chinese restaurant should ever charge extra for rice. (Or tea for that matter.) The service is also rather rudimentary, and if you’re not used to it, a bit on the rude side. I’m repeating myself, but these are things that I would expect from a Chinatown eatery but their existence in the middle of the Utahn mountains surprised me. I’m not sure they would do that well in terms of repeat business.

Tags: Travel by Ms.
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