Schwartz Stories: Alaskan Eats

You can visit Alaska for the scenery, but you also can't miss the food. The seafood is fresh, cheap, and plentiful. The portions were huge, and we definitely ate our fill every day we were there. It just tasted better, with none of that fishy smell and taste that turns people off of seafood.

Not surprisingly, seafood is a staple food for the locals and since Luke has been here awhile, he knew where to go.

We got all-you-can eat snow crab at a place called Phyllis' Cafe & Salmon Bake in downtown Anchorage. We ate our fill outside on the patio watching tourists and locals.

Luke grilled up his halibut and steamed fresh Alaskan fiddleheads. If you've never had a fiddlehead, the taste is somewhere between a green bean and asparagus. It's a different green veggie--and the fiddleheads there are much larger than the ones in Minnesota.

We saw moose on the sides of the road--but didn't taste any. Luke did serve us some of his caribou, which he had made into summer sausage.

At a local breakfast hotspot, Gwennies, Dave and I both had reindeer sausage (did you know a reindeer is just a tame caribou?) for breakfast. It was spicy, and good. They also cook up a mean chicken-fried steak breakfast, too... all breakfasts are served up right with a side of grits. The place was packed.

We visited the farmer's market in downtown one afternoon. There, you could get just about any type of seafood cooked up in just about any style. Tex-Mex food seemed to be pretty popular--and you could have any of it with fish instead of chicken or beef. Want a Kosher buffalo hot dog? Okay. A Buffalo Brat? Salmon Quesadilla? That too.

The Marina restaurant in Seward serves Musk Ox, which roam the tundra. We didn't try that, but we did have Rock Fish... which was fried up and pretty bland tasting. Reminded us all of catfish... most restaurants along the Seward seafront had 'help wanted' signs up, and were very understaffed. That's a tough one to figure out, seeing how Seward has frequent visits from the cruise ships.

I wish I'd taken a picture of the shrimp we had... they were bigger than any I've ever seen out of the Gulf.

The sushi topped any I've had anywhere... you get so much for your money. I ordered thinking the rolls were comparable to the rolls I've had in Minnesota, Louisiana, or New York. And, let's just say the guys made plenty of fun of me when my order arrived and it alone was enough for the entire table. Even the waitress made a crack about my appetite. (Of course, after the food got there and not when the order was placed.) And, we had lots left over.