The Best Taiwanese Street Food in Salt Lake City Is Hiding Inside a Supermarket — And That's Exactly the Point

There's a moment, tucked in the back of South Salt Lake's Chinatown Supermarket complex, where the fluorescent hum of the grocery aisles gives way to something else entirely. The smell hits first — braised pork, a little soy, a little sweetness — and then you see it. A bright, cat-branded counter, a menu written in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and a line of people who clearly already know something you don't. This is 9-UP Night Market, and it's serving up some of the most exciting Taiwanese street food Salt Lake City has ever seen.

"The pork belly is perfect, branding adorable, and fried gyoza is to die for," one customer raved on DoorDash. "Plus, they included adorable stickers and a lovely hand-written note." That last detail — the stickers, the note — tells you almost everything you need to know about who's running this place and why it works.

From Late-Night Deliveries to a Cult Following: The 9-UP Origin Story

9-UP didn't start with a brick-and-mortar and a build-out budget. It started with a craving and a conviction. The team behind 9-UP wanted to bring the electric energy of a real Taiwanese night market — the kind you find on humid streets in Taipei at 11pm, surrounded by strangers eating xiaochi out of paper trays — to Utah. Not a sanitized version. Not fusion-for-the-suburbs. The real thing.

So they started small. Before the Chinatown storefront, before the SLC Downtown Farmers Market booth that made them a local legend, 9-UP was running late-night deliveries out of a commissary kitchen. That's literally where the "night market" name comes from — they were out there burning midnight oil, building their reputation order by order, sticker by sticker.

The name 9-UP itself carries the whole philosophy. It comes from the saying that a cat has nine lives, symbolizing resilience and perseverance — a reminder that before giving up, you should at least try nine times. That's not just a cute brand story. That's the actual operating ethos. You see it in the obsessive attention to packaging. You see it in the handwritten notes tucked into delivery orders. You see it in a menu that draws from Taiwanese, Japanese, and Hong Kong street traditions without muddying any of them.

Since 2023, 9-UP's presence at the SLC Downtown Farmers Market has been making waves with its feline-centric branding. If you've wandered that market and done a double-take at the cat logo, you're not alone. That Farmers Market run was essentially 9-UP's audition for Salt Lake City — and the city said yes, loudly. The brick-and-mortar followed, landing inside the Chinatown Supermarket complex on State Street in South Salt Lake, which turns out to be the perfect home for a restaurant built around Asian street food culture.

The 9-UP Night Market Experience: Asian Street Food, Utah's Best Kept Secret

Let's talk about what you actually eat here, because that's the whole point.

The menu draws from Taiwanese xiaochi (small eats) traditions, Japanese izakaya-style snacks, and Hong Kong street food culture — and somehow keeps each lane distinct. This isn't a blender approach to Asian fusion. It's more like a night market where every stall does one thing brilliantly, and 9-UP has compressed all of it into one tight, focused menu.

The Gua Bao (Pork Belly Bun) is the anchor. The 24-hour slow braised pork belly is genuinely extraordinary — soft enough to fall apart, rich enough to be satisfying, balanced with pickled mustard greens and crushed peanuts the way a proper Taiwanese gua bao should be. One customer described it as "fluffy and delicious," noting that the flavors were both spicy and layered in a way that kept surprising them bite after bite. Another reviewer pointed out that the cucumber addition was "a wild but understandable choice" — and that it absorbed the pork flavor beautifully. That's the kind of dish detail that only comes from people who are genuinely thinking about texture and contrast, not just throwing ingredients together.

The Braised Pork Belly Rice Bowl (or lū ròu fàn, as it's written on the menu in three languages) hits differently. "Super tender and flavorful" is how one DoorDash customer put it — and that 24-hour braise is doing real work here. The umami is deep without being heavy, which is the whole trick with great braised pork. This is comfort food as a precision sport.

Then there's the Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken — the yan su ji — served in that signature style with fresh basil and enough pepper to make things interesting. Crispy, fragrant, dangerously addictive. It's the kind of snack you'd find at a Taiwanese night market stall at 10pm, and 9-UP nails the execution.

Don't sleep on the Jiggle Fries. This is where things get a little playful. The Nori Seaweed version is described by customers as "sweet but salty" with a pleasing depth from the seaweed seasoning. The limited Numb & Spicy version — when it's available — gets particular love: "cooked well and the seasoning was fantastic." These aren't an afterthought. They're a main event.

The Takoyaki rounds out the Japanese street food side of things — octopus balls done right, with a soft interior and proper toppings. And the drinks deserve their own mention. The Dark Brown Sugar Boba Milk threads a needle that most boba spots miss entirely: rich and flavorful without drowning in sweetness. One reviewer specifically called it out as "not overly sweet like I've had with some other boba." The 9-UP Signature Honey Citrus Fresh Mint Soda is the kind of drink that makes you forget you weren't planning to order a drink.

Regardless of your mode of order, the first thing that hits is the attention to detail. The playful, meme-driven packaging is attention-grabbing right from the first look. Everything is thoughtfully assembled — labeled containers, careful packaging, zero of the soggy-bag chaos that plagues so many delivery operations. This is a team that cares.

Chinatown Supermarket & South Salt Lake's Growing Food Identity

9-UP didn't land at 3390 S State Street by accident. The Chinatown Supermarket complex in South Salt Lake is one of the most culturally rich food destinations in Utah — a sprawling hub of Asian grocery, specialty shops, and increasingly, restaurants that reflect the real diversity of the state's Asian community. By setting up inside that ecosystem, 9-UP plugged into something authentic and already thriving.

The storefront is tucked in the back of the Chinatown Supermarket proper — a genuinely new experience for many visitors who didn't know there were spaces back there. Finding it feels like discovery, which fits the night market spirit perfectly. This is a neighborhood — South Salt Lake, State Street corridor — that's been quietly building one of the most interesting food scenes in Utah, and 9-UP is a central part of that story.

The restaurant also represents something larger: the evolution of Utah's international food scene. Salt Lake City's Asian food community has been growing in sophistication and confidence for years, and 9-UP is part of a new generation that isn't asking for permission or watering anything down. The menu is in three languages. The branding is unapologetically its own thing. And the food is exactly as good as it needs to be to earn repeat customers.

Places like 9-UP Night Market are doing a lot to lay the street-food appreciation groundwork in Utah — and doing it with genuine enthusiasm. That enthusiasm is contagious.

Planning Your Visit to 9-UP Night Market

Address: 3390 S State St, Suite 23, South Salt Lake, UT 84115 (inside the Chinatown Supermarket complex — walk to the back of the store)

Hours:

• Wednesday: 12:00 PM – 10:00 PM
• Thursday: 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
• Friday: 12:00 PM – 10:00 PM
• Saturday: 12:00 PM – 10:00 PM
• Sunday: 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM
• Monday & Tuesday: Closed

What to order first: The Gua Bao (pork belly bun) and Jiggle Fries are the crowd consensus starting point. Add the Braised Pork Belly Rice Bowl if you're hungry, Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken if you want something to share, and the Brown Sugar Boba Milk to drink.

Insider tip: The limited menu items rotate, so if you see the Numb & Spicy Jiggle Fries on the board, order them without deliberating. Also worth knowing: delivery via DoorDash is available and the packaging holds up remarkably well — this is one of those rare places where delivery actually works.

Phone: (801) 998-2286

Website: 9upnightmarket.com

Follow them: @9upnightmarket on Instagram for limited item announcements and the kind of food content that makes you put on shoes and leave the house.

Why 9-UP Matters to Salt Lake City's Food Story

Utah's food scene has been telling a better story about itself for a while now. And increasingly, that story includes the kind of Taiwanese street food and Asian night market culture that used to require a flight to the West Coast to experience. 9-UP Night Market isn't just filling a gap — it's building something.

From late-night delivery operation to Farmers Market crowd favorite to brick-and-mortar inside one of South Salt Lake's most culturally significant food destinations, 9-UP has done exactly what its name promises: tried again, refined the approach, and landed somewhere real. The cat with nine lives metaphor isn't a gimmick. It's a blueprint.

"This is my new go-to place," one customer put it plainly. That's the whole review, really.

If you haven't been yet, the Chinatown Supermarket on State Street will be there when you're ready. Walk to the back. Find the cat. Order the pork belly bao. You'll understand what the fuss is about within three bites.