Faustina No-Brainer Lunches
Faustina restaurant is getting “back to business” with an array of $12 lunch options, Monday through Friday, featuring chef Billy Sotelo’s new fall harvest menu. Included in the $12 lunch menu are salads such as Sotelo’s popular smoked Sonoma chicken salad or watermelon & arugula salad. Sandwich options (which include housemade sweet-potato chips or a house salad) include Faustina faves such as the beef-tenderloin steak sandwich with Gorgonzola aioli, a salmon BLT sandwich with applewood-smoked bacon, crab-cake sliders, grilled-vegetable panini and a chipotle cheeseburger with Cambozola cheese. Pasta choices include linguini Diavalo, chicken-pesto pasta and three-cheese gourmet macaroni. All $12 lunches include pumpkin roulade for dessert. “We wanted to make the lunch decisions a no-brainer,” said Sotelo. Visit FaustinaSLC.com for more information.

Ethiopia in Zion
I’ve been waiting for decades. Finally, an Ethiopian eatery has opened in Salt Lake City: Mahider (1465 S. State, 801-928-3811) features dishes such as sambusa, doro wot, siga tibbs, kitfo, gored gored and bozena shero. Stay tuned for more.

Vegan/Gluten-free Cooking
As veganism and gluten-free diets become more and more prominent, not surprisingly, more and more vegan and gluten-free cookbooks are being published. Most of them: meh. But now and then one grabs my attention. Here are a couple of good ones that recently crossed my desk. The Vegan Slow Cooker ($19.99) by Kathy Hester (founder of HealthySlowCooking.com) is full of interesting, healthy recipes for not just stews and casseroles, but also breads and even desserts—all produced in the slow cooker or Crock-Pot. Among the enticing fare: chick’n & dumplings, mushroom lasagna with garlic-tofu sauce, tempeh braised with figs and Port, and pumpkin-pie oatmeal. I don’t follow a gluten-free diet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be turning to The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen ($22.99) for recipes. Laura B. Russell’s cookbook features gluten-free preparations of noodles, dumplings, sauces and more, accompanied by gorgeous food photos from Leo Gong. Flavor-filled recipes for dishes such as tofu and kimchi stew, Singapore carrot cake, banana and sweet-potato fritters and soy-sauce chicken make The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen a winner for every kitchen.

Quote of the week: Sauerkraut and bacon drive all care away. —German proverb