For Adam and Meisha Ross, opening the restaurant LOMA on Main Street is a full-circle moment — it’s where the two met 13 years ago.
“We actually met the Sunday after Arts Fest, here at Bistro,” Meisha said. “(Adam) quickly became head chef at Bistro, and in those days, Bistro was a really fun place to hang out. And so my girlfriend and I were there as Arts Fest was wrapping up.”
But it was another woman he wowed first, Meisha said with a laugh.
“She left him a tip in which she wrapped up her phone number,” she remembered. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait, yes, he is a catch.’ … So I just started to frequent Bistro a little more often.”
And so it began.
Their paths to Park City are somewhat correlated, Meisha said, both having moved here from Colorado within a year of each other.
Adam grew up in the Fingerlakes region in upstate New York and attended the Johnson and Wales culinary school in Denver at 18, right out of high school. For him, moving to Park City was strategic.
“I knew there’s kind of two places to build a career, and that’s going to be large cities or resort towns, and I’ve never been a fan of larger cities personally,” he said.
Meisha, trained in marketing, started her career at Arapahoe Basin, then operated by Vail Resorts, and later accepted a marketing job at Park City Mountain.
As a couple, they toyed with the idea of opening a restaurant, keeping an eye on buildings for rent.
“I think in Park City today, the building is always the first piece of the puzzle, especially for us. We try and bootstrap the process, so we’re trying to be pretty fiscally responsible, and so obviously coming across an empty space in Park City is one thing. Coming across an empty space in Park City that we can afford is a different challenge,” said Meisha.
So when the building off Snow Creek Drive became available, the two went for it and opened Twisted Fern in 2017.
The cuisine concept for the restaurant from the beginning was always to “honor the roots of the ingredients,” Meisha said.
“Generally, food actually tastes good, and sometimes we get a little carried away in the way that we flavor or season or sauces that we add on foods,” she said.
Many of the heavy sauces that originate from French cuisine were created for an entirely different — and much less advanced — era, Adam said.
“Times have changed. We’re no longer trying to cover up rancid meats or bad fish or rotten vegetables,” he explained. “We have a very robust food economy where everything is pretty fresh and delicious.”
Twisted Fern’s menu features a lot of “whole foods” and local ingredients, the couple said, like produce from Moonshadow Farm and domestically raised Utah elk.
The flavors are light and refreshing, with “the idea that you can come in before or after a bike ride and still go on about your day,” Meisha said. “The food is nourishing, and it fills your body, and it gives you the energy that you need to go about your activities.”
In a comfortable place with Twisted Fern, they decided to explore options for a second restaurant, keeping the same philosophy for their food, but in a modern-Italian style: house-made pastas and wood-fired pizzas.
They now have seven years of restaurant ownership under their belts.
“When we opened Twisted Fern, we had a 7 month old, and shortly thereafter, I had another baby. So we were also going through the woes of being new parents and learning how to do that. So there was just a lot of challenges in general,” said Meisha.
And then, of course, there was the pandemic. Being a small business in Utah actually was an advantage then, they said.
“The nice thing about being a small business, in my opinion, is the ability to adapt quickly. There’s not a lot of layers you have to push through to make a change,” Adam said. “With COVID, everything was changing on a daily basis for that year, year and a half. You wake up, check the news, see what you’re supposed to do that day, and go to work and figure out how you’re going to survive with that day’s challenges.”
They can apply those experiences to their second venture with LOMA, now a bit more prepared.
“I’ve learned a lot in seven years. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made improvements. I know what the focus needs to be a little bit better, how to delegate a little bit better,” Adam said.
The couple has made a name for themselves in the community, which also helps.
Meisha’s marketing career has grown, landing her high-profile and local clients like the Kimball Arts Center and Festival and Woodward Park City. Adam’s time at Twisted Fern has demonstrated his expertise.
“Adam, I think, has a really great reputation from the employee side, too,” said Meisha. “People know that he’s going to be in the trenches and working just as hard.”
And it’s a lot of work, they said, getting their space on lower Main ready, training staff and finalizing the menu.
For the second time, finding an affordable and available building on Main Street — this time with a woodfire oven — helped bring LOMA to life.
“I think the location and the building style really finishes the concept for me, so we’re not trying to fit a square peg in a round hole,” Adam said.
Why not wood-fired pizzas and starting with a light, summer menu inspired by the large patio?
As for new challenges to navigate, there will be more solo parenting for Meisha as Adam’s workload increases as the head chef of two restaurants now. But their boys — Lachlan and Lander — are older, more involved with the process, and among Adam’s biggest supporters and tasters.
“The boys are so proud of their dad, and they are so proud of Twisted Fern and LOMA,” Meisha said. “To have them watch this experience and realize that nothing comes without a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication, I think it’s probably really a strong life lesson for them.”
LOMA will be open daily for dinner and offer brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.
“I think the energy that I felt in the community as we’ve started talking about LOMA just feels really exciting,” Meisha said.
Reservations are now open on their website, lomaparkcity.com, and for Twisted Fern at twistedfern.com.