Rotisserie Inn
Known Name(s)
Rotisserie Inn
Address
323 S. Main St. Salt Lake City, UT (Primary) (1959, 1960)147 South 8th East Salt Lake City, UT (Secondary) (1961)
Establishment Type(s)
Inn
Physical Status
Extant
Description
Photograph by Earl Lyman, gift of L.V. McNeely
Detailed History
Lat/long for 147 S 800 East; thus approx.
Cesare Rinetti and Frank Capitolo were stewards aboard a German luxury-liner when they got their big break. The friends served a mining tycoon named Samuel Newhouse who hailed from Salt Lake City. He had just begun work on an eponymous hotel downtown. Newhouse was so impressed with his stewards that he invited them to move to Utah and to recruit a staff of forty for the in-house restaurant. By 1915, Rinetti and Capitolo had moved their families to Salt Lake.
They managed the restaurant until the Newhouse Hotel closed shortly afterward for lack of funds after a mining bust. Rinetti and Capitolo then decided to partner and manage their own restaurant. The Rotisserie Inn opened later that year on Main Street, with a big front window that showcased roasting chickens on a spit. The partners added dishes from their native Italy along with French cuisine. Society pages frequently mentioned the Inn as a gathering place for the affluent of Salt Lake. During over forty years of business, the Inn hosted business meetings, weddings, conventions, clubs and simple family dinners. The celebrated restaurant closed its doors in 1957 upon the owners’ retirement. An ad appeared in the 1958 Deseret News offering the property and equipment for sale. There is no information on the restaurant during the years it was listed in the Green Book, 1959-1961.
Sources consulted:
The Salt Lake Tribune, April 14, 1957, page 18,
Goodwin's Weekly: A Thinking Paper for Thinking People, February 23, 1924, page 10.
The Deseret News, Sep 06, 1958, page 15.
