Over the weekend, crowds turned out in droves for the much-anticipated opening of Matilda at the Snow Park shopping center, and co-owner Ian Pope said that momentum hasn’t slowed.
Matilda, a pizza and small plates restaurant, is the most recent restaurant opened by Pope, who co-owns Five5eeds next door.
A couple of months earlier, Pope and his partners opened another Australian concept — Tilly’s Charcoal Chicken — in Kimball Junction.
It was never the plan to open both new places at once, but Pope said the opportunity was too good to pass up.
All three restaurants are meant to make Park City feel a little more like home for Pope, an Australia native who grew up in Sydney.
“I always swear that anything I do will have little nods to back home because I miss it so much. But I also love it here. So, just desperately trying to have my own little piece of Australia in Park City,” Pope said.
Each restaurant is trying to solve a particular “problem” that Pope, a longtime chef turned restaurateur, has noticed in his eight years living here.
Matilda
For people who feel Park City is lacking a great pizza spot, Matilda is their answer, said Pope.
“I just couldn’t believe how easy it is to go to other other cities in America and the world and get incredible pizza, and just not in Park City,” he said.
Setting out to create the right pizza, they knew they wanted a sourdough crust because of its flavor and the better digestibility, so they brought on Sam Pew, a sourdough baker down in Salt Lake City, as a consultant.
“He is obsessed about the flavor of sourdough, and not just the act of sourdough, but he’s obsessed about what flour you put in there, the percentages of flours, the flavor of the different flours, and that really aligned with what we wanted,” Pope said.
The result is a 100% sourdough, fully naturally leavened, with a touch of rye for the added nutty aroma and taste, cooked at a low temperature to keep its form. And of course, fresh, produce-driven toppings.
Before opening the restaurant, Pope said their love of pizza began when he, Matilda and Tilly’s Executive Chef Pierson Shields and their friend Jonathan Kantor with Gozney pizza ovens began doing pizza pop-ups called Pizza Underground.
“We do pizza for a cause — 100% of donations goes to charity. And we’re still going to be doing that, which is really fun. It’s how we learned how to make pizza,” Pope said. “We did one outside of Five5eeds. We did one at Offset. We did one at Billy’s Barber Shop this year. We want to go out to crazy locations, like maybe the top of Guardsman’s Pass, just stupid places, and see if people turn up.”
But now, with Matilda, they’re bringing their love of pizza as a permanent fixture in the community. And it’s not just a pizza place, Pope said. Their share plates are equally committed to vibrant, fun ingredients. The share plate element is the most Australian, he said, a current movement in the country, with a light, casual environment.
The response so far has been crazy, said Shields, who is also part-owner of the two new restaurants.
“The line has been out the door,” he said. “It’s been like Black Friday.”
The turnout has been in part because of the long-awaited opening, which was originally meant to be in the fall. Pope admitted that the original open date was ambitious, and the delays were more on them.
“From the moment that we signed the lease to actually having the plans is what took the longest time, nothing to do with the city,” he said. “The city has been amazing. The building team to get this built in six months was absolutely incredible. I think it was just more so us making the right decisions and making sure that we didn’t overspend on a build.”
They transformed a former medical space into a hip-yet-elegant restaurant, with wood and eucalyptus-green tiles creating a light, airy atmosphere. Their take on an open kitchen is practically an at-home kitchen, a pizza oven in one corner and a long island with chefs working all sides, Shields and Pope both working the dinner rush and greeting guests when they can come up for air.
The open kitchen also gives the restaurant extra movement, keeping the energy up and loose.
“We don’t want this to be a ‘serious’ restaurant. We want this to be a fun, adult restaurant where my friends can go, my family can go,” Pope said. “People could come on a Tuesday night with their wife and have just a super simple meal and not feel like they’ve just spent $600, or you could come and spend $600 on a Saturday and really have a wow of a meal with 10 of your mates.”
Matilda will have their most changing options, with menus printed daily, giving them the freedom to try new ingredients or flavors they’re most excited about. It’s designed to be a place for regulars, locals, who can come multiple times and never get bored, Pope said.
“We’ve got bloody awesome pizza, but we’ve got a whole menu, whole bar, and pizza is just one aspect of it. You could easily come here and not have a pizza and leave extremely happy,” he said.
Tilly’s Charcoal Chicken
Tilly’s, short for Matilda, is like Matilda’s little sister.
Designed as a quick grab-and-go charcoal chicken and salad shop, Tilly’s Charcoal Chicken is their baby, co-owner Price Nicol said.
They snuck open around Thanksgiving, Shields said, and have been juggling Tilly’s and Matilda. It’s a lot — “a labor of love” — but they all believe in the success of both.
Pope said he’s been dying to open a charcoal chicken shop in Park City, in part just for his own family.
“Tilly’s is charcoal chicken, fresh salads, grab-and-go, take-home, feed-the-family kind of thing,” he said. “That’s what a charcoal chicken shop is in Australia. It’s simply you go there, you get your chicken, get your salads, get your dips, take it home, and it’s an easy night, so you don’t have to cook. That’s the problem that we’re trying to solve at Tilly’s.”
The concept is built around their Josper rotisserie — the only Josper in Utah as far as they know. A Josper is a closed barbecue design that cooks chicken over a bed of charcoal embers to create a golden crust and maintain a juicy interior.
Their chicken is best right off the Josper, Nicol said, which right now is when they open at 11 a.m. The menu has a Lebanese influence, Shields said — like toum, a garlic sauce, served with the chicken, or their hummus and pita and smashed-cucumber salad as sides.
“(Australia) is such a multicultural place. Where I grew up, Little Lebanon is just around the corner,” Pope said. “I think the multicultural status of Australia really lends itself to a melting pot of really great food. I hate the term fusion, but that’s what it is. We really don’t have a cuisine of our own, so we just borrow from everywhere.”
What also makes an “Australian” restaurant, in Shields’ perspective, is a group of friends coming together and making good, fresh food.
“When you look at all these pictures and recipes, it’s like a bunch of best friends all over the country that just got together and opened restaurants,” he said. “That’s kind of what we’re doing.”
Ultimately, Tilly’s is meant to provide a clean, healthy option made totally from scratch, which most people in Park City are looking for anyway.
“This is what people want to eat. This is what I eat, and that’s why we did it,” Shields said.
They’re still working out the kinks, the usual challenges of opening a new restaurant, but each of the owners is committed to getting it right, noticing areas of improvement, and listening to feedback — like they’re planning to make the menu more readable for people.
Shields said he can envision more Tilly’s locations, and Nicol said he’s eager to see it succeed.
They’re planning to do a “Thanks for putting up with us” party in the spring as another way to get the word out, Shields said, and they hope the summer will be a great season for the protein-packed, easy, healthy meals they’re aiming to perfect.
“Grab some chicken while you’re mountain biking, hiking. You know how busy that road is up there,” he said. “If we can just get some people to pull off and hit us, we help everybody.”
Five5eeds
While Five5eeds wasn’t Pope’s original concept, it was started by like-minded Aussies Andrew and Tiffany Percy eight years ago. When the couple decided to sell the business and move back to Australia, Pope jumped on the opportunity.
The breakfast and lunch spot has always been close to his heart, Pope said. And its been popular.
“We have a real, huge passion on keeping quality and standards high. We use only the best ingredients,” Pope said. “We don’t cheapen out on anything. Everything is made in house. And I think people recognize that.”
With a cultural spread of breakfast items like Moroccan shakshuka, Turkish eggs and a breakfast congee dish, the menu at Five5eeds is another draw for the restaurant, Pope said. That’s also super Australian.
“These are things that you’ll see on menus in Australia all the time, but not necessarily over here,” Pope said. “You’ll go to a breakfast restaurant in Melbourne and Sydney, and you’ll see a Turkish dish next to an Asian dish next to avocado toast, next to an Italian dish, and for some reason it doesn’t feel disjointed. That’s what I love about it.”
With all three restaurants, Pope said it’s first and foremost for the locals.
“There’s two elements of the dining scene of Park City. There’s certain restaurants that are really catering towards the one-time diner, and then there’s others that are really focused on local and community and quality,” he said. “I really love this push of quality-first restaurateurs that are popping up in Park City.”
Pope said he’s felt accepted by the food and restaurant scene in Park City, which keeps his family here.
“We will find ourselves back in Australia one day, there’s no doubt. I’ve got a beautiful 3-year-old daughter that I want to show Sydney to, but I’ve got unfinished business here,” Pope said. “I feel like there’s a lot of room for quality-based restaurants to succeed. Just from the first two weeks at Matilda, that’s obviously what people want.”
Matilda is open 5-10 p.m. daily, Tilly’s Charcoal Chicken is open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. daily, and Five5eeds is open 7:30 a.m.- 3 p.m. daily. For more, visit their websites, matildaparkcity.com, tillyscharcoalchicken.com and five5eeds.com.