Bar X Salt Lake City: Where Craft Mocktails Meet Prohibition-Era Cool in Downtown SLC

The red glow hits you first. Step through the glittery sign at 155 E. 200 South and you're enveloped in crimson light filtering through vintage bulbs and votive holders—the kind of warm darkness that makes strangers feel like conspirators. It's barely 5 PM on a Tuesday, but Bar X already hums with the energy of people who know they've found something rare in Salt Lake City: a bar that takes your drink seriously whether it contains alcohol or not.

"Most of our bartenders, we all geek out over flavors more than we do the actual spirits," manager Julie Tall explains while a colleague flames cinnamon over a custom mocktail. "So that's why mocktails and cocktails are just fun for us."

This isn't your grandmother's Shirley Temple situation.

How a Modern Family Star Rescued Salt Lake City's Oldest Bar

Bar X opened its doors in 1933—legend has it on the very day Prohibition was repealed—and spent decades as exactly the kind of dive bar you'd expect: cheap beer, cheaper whiskey, the occasional gold-rimmed goblet if you were lucky. By the time actor Ty Burrell and his partners discovered it in 2010, the place had taken what one regular calls "an extra dive."

Burrell, best known as the lovable Phil Dunphy on "Modern Family," wasn't looking to flip a bar for profit. He and his co-owners—his brother Duncan Burrell, brothers-in-law Jeff Bernard and Richard Noel, plus contractor Dave Hunt—simply wanted a place to get a good cocktail in Salt Lake City. At the time, that was harder than it should have been.

"We thought it would be really cool to give Salt Lake City its own craft cocktail bar because there wasn't really one around," Burrell told Utah Business in 2021. "And selfishly, we all just wanted a place to get a good cocktail."

They gutted the interior but kept the soul—vintage decor, the speakeasy bones, that sense of having stumbled into somewhere that shouldn't exist in 2011 but absolutely should have existed in 1933. When they reopened, something shifted in Salt Lake City's drinking culture. Bar X didn't just serve cocktails; it sparked a movement.

Sean Neves, co-founder of the James Beard-nominated Water Witch, credits Bar X with introducing "the classic cocktail phase of Salt Lake City's drink development." Bartenders trained at Bar X went on to open their own establishments across the city. "It's very much like 'a rising tide lifts all boats,'" Burrell notes, clearly proud that Bar X alumni have scattered throughout downtown.

The Mocktail Roulette: When Not Drinking Becomes an Art Form

Here's where Bar X does something genuinely different from most craft cocktail bars: they don't have a mocktail menu. Instead, they've developed what they call a "roulette" approach—a conversation between bartender and guest that ends with something nobody's had before.

Bartender Eric Lewis, who's been mixing drinks at Bar X for years, describes ordering a mocktail as "a tremendous compliment" and "a chance to still impress this person with our ability and creativity."

The process works like this: You belly up to the long wooden bar (seriously, it runs the length of the building). A bartender asks you a series of questions. Something tart? Bitter? Sweet? Tropical? A combination? Do you hate ginger or worship it? Any flavors you're definitely not feeling tonight?

Then they disappear into their arsenal of house-made syrups, fresh juices, mixers, and tinctures. What emerges might involve flames. It will definitely involve more thought than most bars give their alcoholic cocktails.

One Salt Lake Tribune reporter received a flaming craft mocktail during a January bar crawl—cinnamon sparked over ice, aromatic and theatrical. Another guest's custom creation leaned tropical and tart, built around fresh citrus and house-made ginger beer. A third received something bitter and botanical, more aperitif than juice bar.

"When a lot of people think of a bar, they think of a place where you go to get alcohol, and that's enough of a sales pitch for most people," Lewis explains. "And so when people come in, and they're asking for something that doesn't have any of that, we see it as, one, a tremendous compliment."

This isn't accommodation. It's craftsmanship without the crutch of booze.

The Drinks That Made Bar X a Downtown Destination

While the mocktail program deserves attention, Bar X built its reputation on cocktails that feature ingredients most bars wouldn't bother with. Their Moscow Mule isn't just vodka and ginger beer from a gun—it's built on spicy, handmade ginger beer that customers describe as "perfection" and "universal loved."

The Pimm's Cup showcases that same house ginger beer alongside Pimm's No. 1, cucumber, and lemon. Multiple reviewers single it out as a must-try.

When temperatures drop, the Hot Toddy becomes Bar X's calling card: black tea brewed with baking spices, embellished with fresh ginger, lemon, and honey. It's the drink that appears in Salt Lake City bar round-ups every winter without fail.

"I asked Julie the bartender to serve me a refreshing gin based cocktail and it was one of the best I've tasted!" writes one TripAdvisor reviewer. "It was so good I had one more before moving onto another magical concoction. I had only intended to have one or two, but they were so refreshing that I had a few more than that."

The Bar X Old Fashioned uses Buffalo Trace Bourbon from their private barrel. The Whiskey Sour gets cracked egg whites shaken into frothy perfection. And if you can't decide? Order the "bartender's choice"—trust them to make something based on your preferences, no menu required.

"These bartenders take their job VERY seriously and not make, but produce, every mixed drink from scratch with care," writes one Google reviewer who'd struggled for years to find a quality downtown option for corporate visitors.

Inside the Cave: Atmosphere That Feels Like a Secret

Small. Dark. Intimate. Those three words appear in nearly every review, and they're not complaints.

The space holds maybe 40 people comfortably, with bar seating running the length of the room, a few tables scattered throughout, and—if you're lucky—access to the secret back room. Red glass bulbs cast everything in that warm, conspiratorial glow. Classic black and white films play on a small corner television. A disco ball hangs overhead, because even speakeasies need a little sparkle.

"It's the kind of cave this introvert can really cozy up in," writes Salt Lake Tribune food reporter Kolbie Peterson in a recent roundup of the city's coziest bars.

The darkness serves a purpose beyond ambiance—it focuses your attention on the bar itself, that building-length stretch of wood backed by colorful bottles rising to the ceiling. You're not here to be seen. You're here to taste something worth tasting.

Music leans old school—classic films, throwback hip-hop, occasional live performances on Sunday nights featuring the Josh Payne Orchestra. Thursday nights bring a live DJ spinning '70s, '80s, and '90s tracks. The volume walks a line: loud enough to create energy, intimate enough that conversation still works.

"Great spot with friendly bartenders," summarizes one Tripadvisor reviewer, capturing the appeal succinctly.

The Downtown Connection: Beer Bar and Beyond

Bar X doesn't exist in isolation. Walk through the connecting door and you're in Beer Bar—the Bavarian-inspired beer hall that Duncan Burrell and Richard Noel opened in 2014 after Bar X proved successful. Beer Bar serves 150 beers alongside house-made bratwursts, Belgian fries, and a menu developed with chef Viet Pham (named one of Food & Wine's best new chefs in 2011).

The two spaces operate as complementary experiences: start in Beer Bar's brighter, more casual atmosphere with a pilsner and loaded fries, then slip through the curtain into Bar X's darker, more focused cocktail den. Or reverse the order—there's no wrong way to do it.

Bar X sits in the heart of downtown's evolving bar scene, steps from Este Pizza, Back Door, Franklin Ave. Cocktails & Kitchen, and Copper Common. Together, they've created what the Salt Lake Tribune calls a "sober strut"—a bar crawl that works just as well for people ordering mocktails as those drinking cocktails.

This matters in Utah, where significant portions of the population don't drink for religious or personal reasons, but still want sophisticated social experiences. Bar X helps bridge that gap without making anyone feel accommodated or compromised.

Planning Your Visit to Bar X

Find it: 155 E. 200 South, Downtown Salt Lake City, UT 84111
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 4 PM-1 AM, Sunday-Monday 6 PM-1 AM
Contact: (801) 355-2287 | info@barxslc.com
Follow: @barxslc on Instagram

What to order: If you're drinking alcohol, the Moscow Mule and Pimm's Cup showcase Bar X's house-made ginger beer. The Hot Toddy warms winter nights. For mocktails, don't look for a menu—tell your bartender what flavors you're craving and trust the roulette.

Know before you go: This is a small space that fills up fast, especially Thursday-Saturday nights. Arrive before 10 PM if you want to avoid the velvet rope line. There's no table service—you order at the bar. Drinks typically run $10-12. Underground parking at Gallivan Center is about a block away.

Connected venue: Beer Bar shares the same address and offers food if you're hungry—Bar X itself doesn't serve food beyond occasional partnerships.

The vibe: Dark, intimate, focused on drinks and conversation rather than dancing or games. This isn't a sports bar or a club. It's where you go when the drink matters more than the scene.

Why Bar X Still Matters to Salt Lake City's Food Scene

Thirteen years after Ty Burrell and his partners transformed a dingy dive into Salt Lake City's first serious craft cocktail bar, Bar X remains essential not despite the competition it spawned, but because of it.

"Within a couple years, they start missing snowboarding and fishing and all the backwoods stuff that makes living in Utah so magical," says Sean Neves about bartenders who leave Salt Lake for bigger markets. "We have a really strong base of returning people, which is fun."

That cycle—train at Bar X, export talent to Portland or San Francisco or New York, return when you remember why you loved Utah—has elevated the entire drinking culture of a city that once struggled to pour a decent gin and tonic.

And in treating mocktails with the same seriousness as cocktails, Bar X quietly solved a problem most bars ignore: how to make everyone feel welcome at a place built around drinking. The answer turns out to be simple. Make better drinks. All of them.

The red lights still glow. The bartenders still geek out over flavor combinations. And somewhere in that dark, cozy cave on 200 South, someone's about to receive a custom mocktail they'll talk about for weeks—flames optional, craftsmanship guaranteed.

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Bar X is located at 155 E. 200 South in downtown Salt Lake City. Open Tuesday-Saturday 4 PM-1 AM, Sunday-Monday 6 PM-1 AM. Call (801) 355-2287 or visit barxslc.com.