(By, Max Wastler-- BasilHaydens.com) To get a good sense of a city, when I touch down, often, the first place I head is the oldest building I can find.

In the case of Salt Lake City, I found such a place in Bar-X, the oldest operating bar in all of Utah. As their website will tell you, “the same year that Prohibition was repealed (1933), The Bar-X opened its doors.”

Straddling a stool, the man behind the bar, co-owner Duncan Burrell, asked me, “What’ll it be?” I told him anything with Basil Hayden’s, and I watched him furrow his brow and glare at the floor as though he were contemplating the world’s problems, and then he looked up and smiled at me.

“Do you like Amaros?” Burrell asked.

I nodded.

“I’m working on a little something. Tell me what you think.”