The Club at Soldier Hollow: Where the 2002 Olympic Cross-Country Venue Grinds Its Own Sausage

There aren't many breakfast spots in Utah where you can sit on a wrap-around deck eating biscuits and gravy made from sausage that the owner ground himself that morning while looking out across the same cross-country trails Norway's Bjørn Dæhlie raced on twenty-four years ago. The Club at Soldier Hollow is the only one. It's a clubhouse restaurant attached to the 36-hole Soldier Hollow Golf Course, perched on the western edge of Wasatch Mountain State Park, looking down across the Heber Valley toward Midway, the Wasatch, and the Nordic skiing venue that hosted the cross-country and biathlon events for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics.

The owner is Rob Edwards, and what makes The Club work is that Edwards isn't running it from a desk. He's in the kitchen. The sausage gets ground every morning from pork shoulder and the house spice blend — sage-heavy, a little black pepper, the kind of mixture you can taste before you can identify any single component. The hamburger gets ground in the same back room. The biscuits get baked the same day they're served. The french fries get hand-cut from whole potatoes. "Rob grinds the sausage fresh daily," one regular wrote after a visit. "Owner is hands on and really cares." Another flagged the obvious: "The homemade biscuits and gravy are top notch."

That's not the elevator pitch you expect for a clubhouse restaurant. Most golf-course restaurants are operating on the bare minimum hospitality calculus — food adequate enough that the green fee plus the post-round burger feels like a fair afternoon. The Club at Soldier Hollow inverts that math. The food is the destination. The golf course is the second-best reason to drive to Midway. The Olympic legacy is the surrounding context that makes the whole setup feel improbable.

What House-Ground Breakfast Actually Tastes Like

The breakfast menu is where Edwards's kitchen logic shows up most clearly. The biscuits and gravy is the lead — a country gravy built on the in-house sausage, ladled over biscuits that have been pulled out of the oven within the hour. The three-egg omelets run oversized and load up custom from a long ingredient list — the kind of breakfast that takes you through eighteen holes without needing a turn snack. The Cinnamon Roll French Toast is the move for anyone in the group who came for the view first and the food second. Pancakes come standard or buttermilk. The breakfast sandwiches use the same house sausage on a fresh roll, with eggs cooked to order.

What gives the breakfast menu its weight is the meat sourcing. Edwards isn't pulling sausage from a Sysco truck. He's buying whole pork shoulder, breaking it down in-house, and grinding it the morning of service with a blend he's calibrated over years. The same logic runs through the hamburger — house-ground from beef, formed by hand, never frozen. That changes everything about the burger you get at lunch. A lot of golf-course burgers come out gray and dry. A Club burger comes out medium with a crust because there's enough fat in the grind to caramelize on the griddle.

Lunch and dinner expand the menu without losing the house-ground throughline. The Reuben is the deep cut — a clubhouse Reuben that runs leaner on Russian dressing and heavier on quality meat than the standard. The fish and chips work because the french fries work. Burgers run several variations on the house grind. Vegetarian options exist (the kitchen takes them seriously, not as an afterthought). Sandwiches, salads, soup of the day rounded out by a few comfort-food entrees that change with the season.

The deck is where most of the dining happens when the weather holds. The wrap-around terrace looks west across the front nine and beyond it to the Wasatch Range — a view that gets cited in nearly every positive Tripadvisor review and a few of the mixed ones. Indoor seating is broad enough to handle the wedding-and-corporate-event traffic the venue books on weekends.

The Soldier Hollow Story: From Olympic Venue to Year-Round Restaurant

The location is a Utah outdoor-history landmark in its own right. Soldier Hollow is officially a year-round Nordic Center inside Wasatch Mountain State Park, built as the venue for the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games. It hosted all the cross-country skiing events, all the biathlon events, and the cross-country portion of the Nordic combined. In summer it converts to a tubing hill, a disc-golf course, a mountain-bike network, and — central to the restaurant — the Soldier Hollow Golf Course, a 36-hole layout split into the Gold and Silver courses that's regularly ranked among Utah's best public golf venues.

The Club restaurant sits in the clubhouse at 1370 Soldier Hollow Lane, just inside the park entrance off River Road. The drive into the venue runs through Wasatch Mountain State Park — Utah's largest state park, 22,000 acres of high-Wasatch terrain at the foot of the back side of the Wasatch Range. From the deck you can see the trails the Olympic cross-country skiers raced on, the biathlon shooting range, the tubing hill that runs in winter, and the high meadows the Sheepdog Championships use every Labor Day weekend.

That geographic setting changes the restaurant's customer base in a way most clubhouse restaurants don't see. The summer crowd is half golfers and half park visitors — hikers off the trails, mountain bikers off the Wasatch network, families up for a Heber Valley day trip. The winter crowd is Nordic skiers, tubing-hill day-trippers, and the local Heber population that uses The Club as a year-round breakfast destination after Soldier Hollow Grill (the prior brand) rebranded under the current name. The reviews reflect the broad customer base: 4.4 stars across 155 Google reviews, with the praise weighted toward the food and the views and the criticism (when it comes) weighted toward service inconsistencies on the busiest summer days.

The Heber Valley Context and Why the View Matters

Midway sits at about 5,500 feet of elevation on the south side of the Heber Valley, a high alpine basin between Park City and Provo that's been the alpine-resort and outdoor-recreation hub of the Wasatch Back for a century. The valley floor runs through ranch country and the Provo River; the western edge climbs up into Wasatch Mountain State Park and the Soldier Hollow Nordic venue. The Heber Valley restaurant scene has historically been thin — anchored on the high end by the Homestead Resort, on the middle by Snake Creek Grill and the casual breakfast spots in Heber, and on the lower end by the gas-station-and-fast-food traffic along the highway. The Club at Soldier Hollow occupies its own slot in that map: a clubhouse restaurant that punches above its category because the owner cares about the inputs.

The 36-hole golf course was designed to take advantage of the terrain rather than fight it. The Silver Course is the more forgiving layout — broader fairways, longer landing zones, the kind of course that lets a once-a-week golfer enjoy the round. The Gold Course is the championship layout — narrower fairways, tighter green complexes, the elevation changes the Wasatch foothills provide. Both come back to The Club, which is part of what makes the breakfast and lunch program busier than most clubhouse restaurants. Two courses' worth of golfers turning in at lunch is a lot of plates moving.

What this means for someone planning a Midway food trip: The Club is the morning-and-midday move. 1886 Grill at the Homestead is the dinner-and-smoked-meat move. Snake Creek Grill is the upscale Heber sit-down. The Crater is the post-meal soak. Soldier Hollow is the morning hike or the round of golf before any of it. The dining map is tight, but it works.

Planning Your Visit to The Club at Soldier Hollow

The Club at Soldier Hollow is at 1370 Soldier Hollow Lane, Midway, UT 84049. The phone is (435) 281-2639. The website is soldierhollowclub.com, which has the current menu, the catering inquiry form, and the event-booking calendar.

Hours run 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily, seven days a week. That's the broadest schedule of any restaurant in Wasatch Mountain State Park, which matters in shoulder season when the resort restaurants tighten up. Service options include dine-in, takeaway, delivery, and outdoor seating on the wrap-around deck. The restaurant accepts reservations, which is worth doing for weekend breakfast in summer and for dinner reservations connected to a tee time.

What to order on a first visit: the biscuits and gravy is the obligation — the sausage is the whole point and the gravy is the technique that justifies the trip. Pair it with a side of the hand-cut hash browns. If you're there for lunch, the burger off the house grind is the move, with the hand-cut fries on the side. The Reuben is the order for anyone who'd rather skip the burger conversation. The Cinnamon Roll French Toast is the order for whoever in the group came for the view and is going to spend the meal taking pictures of the Wasatch.

This is why we live here. Most golf-course restaurants are operating on the assumption that the green fee covers the food. The Club at Soldier Hollow runs on a different premise: that an Olympic Nordic venue with 36 holes of championship golf and a wrap-around deck looking west into the Wasatch deserves a kitchen that grinds its own sausage. Rob Edwards built one. Bring a hungry party, get there before tee time, and order the biscuits.