Three Salt Lake County food and drink businesses are changing which customers are allowed to walk through their doors — either switching to an all-ages model or opting to serve only those 21 and older.
Cosmica, at 945 S. 300 West in Salt Lake City, received a bar license in June, so all patrons must now be 21+.
Drunken Kitchen, a Chinese/Taiwanese eatery inside Grid City Beer Works at 333 W. 2100 South in Salt Lake City, recently got its own restaurant license, so it can now welcome families to what was previously a 21+ space.
And in May, Bout Time Pub & Grub, at 475 W. 14600 South in Bluffdale, debuted its new main floor, transformed into a family-friendly restaurant complete with a “dirty” soda fountain. Its upper floor remains a 21+ sports bar.
Here’s how each business made the switch.
Cosmica
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Cosmica in Salt Lake City on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
Zach Wade, owner and chef at Cosmica, the nationally acclaimed “Italian diner” in the Central Ninth neighborhood, said they decided to apply for a bar license because “we noticed that we were serving less and less families,” who would typically only come in the early evening.
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Wade said he thought getting a bar license would allow Cosmica to “serve our customers better.”
“We think we’ve created such a fun space that we’d like people to be able to move around and enjoy it, and see how people see that space, aside from just as a restaurant,” Wade said.
Now, people can come to Cosmica just to have a drink — they’re no longer required to order food to go with it, and they don’t have to sit in one place with their adult beverage.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Zach Wade at Cosmica in Salt Lake City on Thursday, May 1, 2025.
Eventually, those customers will be able to hang out at Cosmica until 1 a.m., a change that Wade hopes will bring in more people. He said they’re working up to that, though; for now, Cosmica is open until 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Cosmica is “not just going to become a bar overnight,” Wade said. “It’ll take a while to grow that aesthetic.”
Wade said they’re taking the change from a restaurant to a bar as an opportunity to grow the cocktail program at the wine-centric Cosmica. He cited the cocktail programs at The Pearl and Water Witch, two of Cosmica’s Central Ninth neighbors, as inspiration.
But even though Cosmica is now officially a bar, Wade said they will “always have our full-service menu. We’ll always keep trying to evolve that and do more fun things with what we love doing, and that’s cooking really fun food.”
Drunken Kitchen
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Families dine at Drunken Kitchen, inside Grid City Beer Works, on Thursday, July 2, 2026.
For Drunken Kitchen, the recent change from 21+ to all-ages is a return to their original format.
Owner/chef Tim Rammell started Drunken Kitchen in Square Kitchen Eatery, an all-ages mini food hall that acts as an incubator for emerging chefs.
When Drunken Kitchen took over Grid City Beer Works’ restaurant side in early 2025, the eatery lost a lot of its original customers, Rammell said.
The number of people they had to turn away from their doors on a daily basis was “significant,” Rammell said. “You don’t see very many Chinese and Taiwanese restaurants in Salt Lake that [are] a bar,” he said, and people would come not expecting the business to be 21+.
So, going back to welcoming families into the restaurant was “something that we wanted to do for a while,” Rammell said.
Now, most of the main floor is family-friendly seating, but if you want to sit at the bar or near the bar, you have to be 21+, he said. If you order a drink downstairs, you also have to order food, to comply with Utah law.
The patio upstairs, which is popular with dog owners, is 21+ only. And you don’t have to order food in order to drink there.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Drunken Kitchen, Grid City Beer Works, upstairs outdoor deck, which is 21+ only, on Thursday, July 2, 2026.
Rammell said that the change to all-ages has brought Drunken Kitchen “lots of good, positive feedback.”
In the first two days after the announcement about Drunken Kitchen’s restaurant license, Rammell said they had an increase in customers, and “way more families.”
Younger patrons can even order from a new Drunken Kitchen menu made just for them, with kid-friendly options like noodles with butter, fried rice with egg, and “Chinese-style” chicken tenders.
Bout Time Neighborhood Grill
In Bluffdale, “there’s actually an overwhelming amount of families” and “not a lot of sit-down restaurants,” said Dan Eckersley, Bout Time’s director of operations and marketing.
That means before Bout Time turned their ground floor into a family-friendly restaurant, called Bout Time Neighborhood Grill, people would have to drive to either Draper or Riverton to dine out.
To change that, “we wanted to make an establishment where families could come in and actually walk in, because there’s a lot of people on bikes, a lot of people walking at night, and we just saw an opportunity where there’s an unserved population,” Eckersley said.
After years of telling people that Bout Time Pub & Grub is a bar and they have to be 21+ to enter, they’re now telling people that kids can enter and you have to be 21+ only if you want to drink upstairs.
So far, people have been enthusiastic about the change, Eckersley said.
Bout Time changed their ground-floor bar into a soda fountain, with a handle that once dispensed beer now serving root beer on draft.
“We don’t pour or mix any alcohol down there at that bar, so we can have the family sit right up there and belly up and order a ‘dirty’ soda” and have it made in front of them, Eckersley said.
Bout Time Neighborhood Grill has all of the syrups and ingredients necessary to make “dirty” sodas, he said, and there’s even ice cream available for root beer floats.
A certain food item on the menu will also appeal to families who have been to a Disney park.
Eckersley said Bout Time Neighborhood Grill is one of the only restaurants in Utah that makes the Monte Cristo sandwich famously sold at Disney parks. It’s a sandwich made with ham, turkey and Swiss cheese that’s deep fried, sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with raspberry sauce for dipping.
“There’s a lot of Disney people in this town that once they find out that we have that sandwich, we get a lot of people ordering it,” Eckersley said.
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