Fiddler’s and Sugar House Pizza
Address: 1063 East 2100 South
Telephone: 801-441-7260 (Fiddler’s)
801-441-7261 (Sugar House Pizza)
Website: fiddlerssugarhouse.com
District: Sugar House
“You kind of need to maintain some of the old, dingy, fun stuff that was here - the charm that was in Sugar House forever.” For Jimmy and Jordanna Brown, bringing Fiddler’s back to life and opening Sugar House Pizza beside it was never simply about owning a bar or a pizza place. It was about honoring a corner of Sugar House that had meant something to generations of people, including Jimmy’s own family. It was about creating a gathering place where longtime regulars, new neighbors, sports fans, families, clubs, and friends could all find their way in. And perhaps most of all, it was about building something together.
Jimmy was born in Montana, but his family moved to Sugar House when he was five. Growing up in the neighborhood throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he watched a very different version of Sugar House take shape. “Sugar House was a little bit different of a neighborhood then,” he said. “It was not quite what it is now.” He remembers it as a place where kids ran freely through the neighborhood, skateboarding, rollerblading, biking, and finding their own adventures. After the old schoolhouse burned down, there was a bike park nearby where he and his friends spent hours. “We just ran around this neighborhood,” Jimmy said.
After high school, Jimmy attended Weber State for a time, then returned to Salt Lake and eventually found work at Park City Mountain Resort. A job in food and beverage became a thirteen-year education in nearly every part of resort restaurant operations. He started in a coffee shop and went on to manage the bar, Summit House, Mid Mountain Lodge, inventory, night deliveries, openings, closings, and broader food and beverage operations. “It gave me a very well-rounded skill set,” he said.
It also gave Jordanna to Jimmy. Jordanna was born and raised in Lima, Peru. At nineteen, she came to Utah on an exchange program to work a winter season at Park City Mountain Resort. She returned home after that first season, then came back again for a longer period. Like Jimmy, she worked in food and beverage throughout the resort, starting as a busser, cashiering, running a small café and yurt on the mountain, working in coffee shops, serving, helping with banquets, and eventually supervising. “I did a lot,” Jordanna said. She later worked for nearly ten years as a server at The Eating Establishment on Main Street in Park City while earning a business degree from the University of Utah. After graduating, she spent three years with a small nonprofit in Park City, then worked for ten years as a project manager at a nutritional supplement company.
Jimmy and Jordanna married in 2007 and bought a house in Salt Lake soon after. “We have been in the same house for nearly twenty years,” Jordanna said. Their move from Park City came sooner than planned, after they were told they could either give up one of their two dogs or leave their apartment. They chose to leave.
Over the years, Jimmy remained connected to restaurants and bars even after leaving the resort. He worked for Uinta Brewing, then for Canarchy, which owned several breweries, including Wasatch and Squatters locally. When that company was acquired by Monster, he became the sales manager for the state of Utah for Monster Brewing Company’s brands.
Still, Jimmy had long imagined doing something of his own. “I have always wanted to open a restaurant or bar or something for a very long time - probably twenty years.” In August 2024, Jordanna left her corporate job and returned to bartending at The Eating Establishment, the same Park City restaurant where she had worked in her twenties. Around that same time, Jimmy began thinking seriously about leaving his own job. They started looking for the right opportunity.
At first, Jimmy had his eye on a small old gas station downtown where he imagined opening a beer bar. But the location was too close to a school to qualify for a liquor license. He considered a food truck as well. Then, around Thanksgiving of 2024, the former Fiddler’s Elbow and Salt City Pizza & Pasta building came up for lease. For the Browns, the connection was immediate. “This place held a lot for the community in Sugar House over the decades,” Jordanna said. Jimmy’s ties ran even deeper. His father had managed there, his mother had worked there as a server, and all three of his siblings had worked somewhere in the building as bussers, servers, or in another role. Jimmy and Jordanna had often come there in their twenties after work in Park City. The memories were already there.
The building itself added another layer of significance. At roughly one hundred and twenty years old, it has witnessed generations of Sugar House history and countless gatherings, celebrations, meals, and conversations. For the Browns, becoming caretakers of a space that has been part of the neighborhood for so long felt less like starting from scratch and more like continuing a story already in progress.
They signed the lease in February 2025 with a plan to bring back the spirit of Fiddler’s Elbow, while also creating something new. Fiddler’s opened first on May 1, 2025. Sugar House Pizza opened August 1, after months of construction on 2100 South made it difficult to access the front of the building. The two businesses are separate - each with its own entrance but connected through the kitchen. Fiddler’s is twenty-one and older, with a full bar, sports, games, and room for large groups. Sugar House Pizza is family-friendly, offering pizza, wings, soup, sandwiches, cauliflower bites, beer, wine, and slices on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The entire menu is also offered at Fiddler’s.
The pizza itself was important from the beginning. “If you are going to have a pizza place, your pizza better be good,” Jordanna said. They brought in Brady Nicholson, whom they describe as someone who has been making and studying pizza in Salt Lake City for a long time. He helped develop the recipes, techniques, and menus. Jimmy describes the result as “bar style,” or as he first put it, “New York style meets Mount Olympus.”
Inside Fiddler’s, the Browns have tried to preserve the feeling of an old neighborhood gathering place while updating the food, drinks, and experience. There are nineteen televisions, with more being added, along with dartboards, shuffleboard, pool, board games, booths, high tops, tables, and a patio. Running clubs, book clubs, game-day crowds, and regulars have all found their way in. “You can come by yourself, or with fifty people, or anywhere in between,” Jimmy said.
The early months were not easy. Having opened during road construction and at what is known to be a slower time of year for bars in Utah, they found some days the space felt painfully quiet. But by football season, people began coming in to watch the games, new customers arrived, and old regulars returned. Slowly, the room began to feel alive again. “Whenever I come in these days, there are always people here,” Jimmy shared with a smile.
The menu is smaller than what was offered at the old Fiddler’s, but the Browns wanted it fresh, thoughtful, and manageable. They took inspiration from certain old classics but reworked them with new ingredients and new preparation. The cocktails change seasonally, with Jordanna especially involved in the bar program. One favorite is the Elderflower Cosmo.
Behind the scenes, the work has been relentless. Jimmy runs much of the kitchen, while Jordanna handles the front-of-house, bar, administrative, and business responsibilities. When necessary, they both cook, bartend, do the payroll and social media, and simply adjust as they go. They also credit their staff, who have helped make the vision possible. “This is not a hobby for us,” Jimmy said. “This is our life.” Jordanna put it plainly: “We are just happy to be here building something together and seeing it evolve from where it started to now where we are.”
For more than a year, they have worked seven days a week, often sixteen hours a day. They have had only a few days off, but mostly, their life is the business. Sometimes they feel like two ships passing in the night, seeing one another mainly within the walls of Fiddler’s. And yet, there is sweetness in that too. On the day of the interview, Jimmy had brought Jordanna a smoothie from a place they both loved, something he used to do years ago when they were first getting to know each other at Park City Mountain Resort. “Take what you can get,” Jordanna joked.
For Jimmy and Jordanna, Fiddler’s and Sugar House Pizza represent far more than two businesses sharing a building and a kitchen. They are the result of decades spent working in restaurants, years of dreaming about ownership, and countless hours invested in creating a place where people feel welcome. They have created the kind of place they themselves value - somewhere people can gather, celebrate, unwind, reconnect, and feel at home. Every pizza made, cocktail poured, game watched, and conversation shared adds another layer to a space that has long been woven into the fabric of the neighborhood. For Jimmy especially, there is something meaningful about watching new memories being made within walls that have been part of Sugar House life for generations. “We just want those people that are moving into these big, beautiful, developed buildings to also support the old places like this that have been around forever. Places like this, sadly, are going away very quickly.”
