When I'm not out and about keeping tabs on our local food scene, I can usually be found scarfing down horror movies. With October nearly upon us, horror nerds like me have started to spend their weekends at the Broadway Theater, which is playing host to the Tower of Terror, Salt Lake Film Society's annual celebration of all things horror.

After catching this year's inaugural film—Friday the 13th on Friday the 13th—it dawned on me that I hadn't been to Copper Common since the glow-up it had undergone a few years ago. There's nothing quite like a celluloid slasher to put me in the mood for some well-curated bites and drinks, so my friends and I migrated slightly eastward after the credits started to roll.

If you also like to frequent the Broadway Theater, chances are you've noticed both Copper Common and its sister The Copper Onion on the same block. Both restaurants are credited to Ryan Lowder, one of Utah's most influential restaurateurs. Boasting a stellar culinary pedigree that found him working under chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and cooking in renowned establishments throughout Spain, Lowder was named one of the country's best new chefs by Food & Wine Magazine in 2012.

While The Copper Onion represents a true milestone in Utah's culinary evolution, it's by no means Lowder's only claim to fame. In 2014, Lowder opened the Asian-inspired Plum Alley, which underwent its own set of growing pains and eventually metamorphosed into Copper Common. Its concept remains the same as that of Plum Alley—a small-city restaurant and bar with big-city style.

As it was a Friday night when we arrived, Copper Common had a decent crowd seated and enjoying their evenings. The menu selections aren't terribly flashy, which is a flex in and of itself. If you know you're good at what you do, there's no need to brag.

Our group was a mixed bag, so we hopscotched around the menu until we had a half dozen oysters ($3.75 each), some house focaccia ($7), a plate of crab beignets ($16), a braised pork sandwich ($16) and a CC Burger ($12) on our table. Drinks were also abundant; Copper Common is known for its craft cocktail menu, and a few standouts were the Tokyo Drifter ($16) and the Southgate ($14). It was a whiskey night for sure.

There aren't many places in Salt Lake City where I'd feel comfortable with oysters (no shade intended, but we're a landlocked desert, and fresh seafood is hard to come by). Copper Common is one such place, and you can get either East Coast or West Coast oysters when you drop by. They're served with a nice acidic mignonette sauce, and a few slurps of these will do wonders for waking up your taste buds. We were all pleasantly surprised with how good the house focaccia was. We weren't necessarily expecting it to be bad, but its toasty texture and compound butter came very close to stealing the show.

The crab beignets were a nice foil to the freshness of the oysters as they're presented with contrasting layers of richness. These little golden-brown beauties look a bit more akin to hush puppies, though they retain the buttery texture that make beignets so magical. They're topped with a heavy dose of pecorino cheese and served sitting atop a spread of buttermilk dressing. The crab flavor is subtle, imparting a bit of its shellfish sweetness to the beignets' interior. Each beignet is a fantastic little pop of flavor and texture, and the buttermilk dressing ramps up the dish with a complementary creaminess.

The two mains that we tried are unassuming enough for pub food, but both the burger and the braised pork sandwich have a lot going for them. I appreciate a burger that doesn't get crazy with toppings—Copper Common is too cool for such theatrics—and this one arrived with nothing more than some aged gouda and pickled onion. The burger itself has been prepared au poivre, which provides a nice crusted black pepper finish to the patty. It's a textbook pub burger, but the subtleties of the gouda, black pepper and pickled onion make it something special to Copper Common.

Moving on to the braised pork sandwich, the first thing you notice is just how tender that pork is. With each yielding bite, you get plenty of the chimichurri and arugula, which lend a nice herbaceous quality to the sandwich. The caper-chili aioli packs a nice amount of spice, and the soft hoagie roll does an excellent job of soaking up any excess flavors. It would be difficult to choose between this sandwich and the CC Burger, as they're both doing something slightly different—though they do it very well.

I like to extend an outing to the movies into a prolonged event, and having Copper Common right next to one of my favorite movie theaters helps make that possible. I'll likely be seeing a bit more of this classic downtown nightspot as I continue to make my way through the SLFS Tower of Terror this year.