How to eat smarter when friends and family visit Anchorage
Notes on: Excellent patio drinks, king crab, avoiding tourists, grilled chicken thighs, Alaskans at the James Beards, cabin recipes, a Filipino food festival
Fade-in to a classic ‘80s summer scene. Your grandmother’s Italian cousins are in Anchorage and you’ve been added to the passenger list for “a drive.” Soon, you find yourself in the back seat of the burgundy Oldsmobile, between Sara and Giovanna. Nonna clutches the panic bar. Grandad blasts off with no plan to use turn signals. Your destination: Portage Glacier.
For the children in the audience, there was once a time when you could drive right up and see that glacier. Hulking bergs floated by. A kid could reach in and grab a piece of ice and let it melt in her palm. The words “climate change” had yet to be uttered. On the way back, it was customary to stop at The Bake Shop for soup. This is what we *always* did when people visited.
I have been thinking about our rituals when it comes to eating in Anchorage with visiting friends and family. What are our Portage Glacier restaurants? Are they actually worth it? Is there a smarter way to experience them? I’d like to put forth a Love Anchorage challenge that might be controversial: Don’t waste a single summer minute with guests (or otherwise) waiting in a crowded restaurant lobby. Maybe it’s time to rethink eating-in altogether — because the usual spots are bonkers with tourists right now.
Shall we talk Moose’s Tooth? Panic-attack level busy, but Anchorage-tastic pizza all people who grew up here and moved away want to eat. (I prefer Bear Tooth —same-ish pizza, logistical masterpiece of a take-out game.) To win at MT take-out, if you don’t eat there often, order 90 minutes (I’m serious) before you want to eat, grab that pie, and run. (With Bear Tooth, plan 60 minutes ahead). Eat in your backyard among the dandelions. Your visiting dad, who wears hearing aids, will not have to pretend he can hear you.
How about the classic fancy family seafood dinner at Simon and Seaforts? If you want to get a table for a group at the actual dinner hour, make a reservation as far ahead as possible. A month is not crazy. Everybody’s Outside family wants king crab, but red king crab, sadly, has kind of gone the way of Portage Glacier, its fisheries upended by climate change, making it rare and expensive. Simon’s offers golden king crab, but a better value, in highly-subjective order, is the Copper River salmon, black cod, or halibut fish and chips.
What if you went somewhere new and less touristy? My favorite visitor take-out: Serrano’s La Paz tacos with halibut. Want to be outside on a pleasant night? Head to the Anchorage Brewing roof deck and get Familia’s excellent daily special. Or go to Double Shovel Cider. Check here for the food truck schedule. If it’s a bring-your-own-dinner night, get Arctic Roadrunner. (We love their fish sandwiches.)
What’s for dinner: I’m picnic grilling and cabin-cooking right now, also a primo option for guest meals. In lieu of salmon, my current go-to is a simple spicy, crispy-skin chicken thigh. I partially defrost skin-on chicken, debone it with a sharp knife, throw it in a freezer bag with the juice of a lemon, a glug of avocado oil, and generous shakes of Spanglish Pollo Asado seasoning. I put that on ice in a cooler till I’m ready to grill. (I sometimes marinate in my fridge for 24 hours, too.) You can buy a big ol’ container of that asado seasoning at Costco or get it in packets at Walmart. I grill the thighs at 350-375°F for about 7 or 8 minutes per side, till there are grill marks on the meat and the skin gets crunchy and smoky. Slice it to feed a crowd.
Current fave cabin cooking side: spicy rainbow salad. I prep and bag the whole rainbow of hearty vegetables — peppers, shredded carrots, edamame, purple cabbage. I mix the tamari, sugar, lime juice, garlic, oil, and chili in a Ball jar. It keeps just fine in a cooler for up to 2 days.
For dessert: the world’s best chocolate chip cookies. With the help of my chef friend Jana, we adapted the lost but awesome vintage “Joy of Cooking” recipe for “chocolate-chip cookies cockaigne.” Find the recipe and nerdy old cookbook trivia in this week’s Anchorage Daily News.
Little Treats: I drove out to my family cabin north of Wasilla and got to stop for lunch at my former culinary student Shaun Kahele’s family restaurant, Lei’s Poke Stop, which sells hands-down my most favorite Hawaiian-style poke. Also: I’m told there will be lots of great Filipino food on the Delaney Park Strip for Pista sa Nayon, a food and culture festival, planned for Sunday, June 22. Fernanda, newsletter treats scout, reports a must-visit—with guests or not—is the Alaska Native Medical Center, where the art is breathtaking, there are subsistence foods on offer at the cafeteria, and the craft shop, open weekdays 11-12, is 10 out of 10.
Good news: Chef Kaylah Thomas, who we learned last week was in a serious car accident, tells me she’s on the mend. ❤️🩹 And our friends at In Bocca al Lupo in Juneau—who now have more James Beard nominations than we can count—wowed the schmansy food people at Monday’s Beard Awards ceremony in Chicago, serving them a beautiful scallop crudo in buttermilk with squid ink agrodolce and dill. 💅
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I’m headed out on a reporting adventure, so I’ll see you again in two weeks with twice the weird stories.
Thank you, always, for reading.
Julia
P.S.: For my newest recipes and access to many stories I link to, subscribe to the Anchorage Daily News and Edible Alaska. You can find all my recipes and writing at juliaomalley.com.
P.P.S.: Here are the adorable folks from Lucky Wishbone, accepting their American Classics Award at the Beard celebration. Note the trademark green gowns. ☘️
Copy editor Fernanda Conrad, an highly assiduous Virgo, read this newsletter. Hire her. 👩🏻🏫
Definitely agree on BT over MT (and testing the waters now that ET is open and closer to me!). I love taking people to Kami Ramen, although that's more difficult to take and eat outside. Mei's, on the other hand, would do wonderfully for that!
What do you consider to be the best time to visit Anchorage--other than the summer months?