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Friday, November 10, 2007 - Volume 35 Issue 45

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posted Friday, November 10, 2007 - Volume 35 Issue 45

Juneau Exotic Dining Adventures

Juneau Exotic Dining Adventures
By Rev. Barbara Allen, CMP Juneau is 2 hours from Seattle by air, but once there, nothing is more than 15 minutes from downtown. Climate there is mild, like Seattle's, except they get much more rain. It's the state capital, with thousands of civil servants, merchants, business people, and year 'round dining opportunities. Whatever your food preference, Native American, Chinese, Thai, Russian, Phillipino, Japanese, Mexican, Italian, or fast food chains, it awaits. I asked modest income residents who live and work there year 'round what they recommended, and where they dined. When traveling this is a good way to find value and quality. Close to the Ferry terminal in Auke Bay is Chan's Thai Kitchen, open 5 days a week, Tues.- Saturday, family owned and operated. It's one of the most popular places in the area, completely drab on the outside, plain on the inside, but with a home cooked fresh food menu of Thai, Chinese, and East Indian foods that would be welcome anywhere. On weekends, get there early, or wait patiently for a table. This is the favorite local neighborhood place to dine. I tried their soups and two of the curries. I'd be happy dining there several times a week, and the prices are reasonable! Along the way from Auke Bay to downtown Juneau, off on Salmon Lane, in Lemon Creek, is the Alaska Travel Adventures Salmon Bake, an outdoor venue where you should prepare for rain and damp. It's a self-serve buffet with great alderwood cooked salmon, bbq ribs, usually some pork, chicken, good Alaskan Baked Beans, salads, vegetables, simple deserts, coffee, tea, soft drinks and live entertainment. Admission includes transportation from downtown hotels, so, you won't need a car. This is one of the better AYCE outdoor dining venues, except for the uncomfortable fixed benches at the tables. The Sandpiper Café on Willoughby Street, close to the Driftwood Lodge offers excellent breakfasts and lunches at moderate prices, including wonderful omelettes. You cannot go wrong there. Enjoy the historic restaurant, furnishings, photographs and ambiance, you'll feel like it's 1900 again. My favorite, where, again, I could eat several times a week, is Fast Eddies in a downtown area, with the stand-there-and-order-counter is on one side of an indoor building walk way, seating on the other. The Phillipino cuisine is outstanding as is everything else Eddie offers. Of particular interest even if you think you're not hungry, that Phillipino crewmen bee-line for when in port from the cruise ships, is Eddies ice-cream. He flies in the best and richest tropical fruit laden ice cream I'd ever tasted, and serves it by the dish or cone. I don't know if this treat is available anywhere else except, of course, in the Phillipines. Keeping up with all trends, he's also got an espresso machine, and can provide whatever beverage you wish. All this off Front street down by the waterfront. Kenny's Wok and Teriyaki in downtown has another branch in Sitka, and is extremely popular in both cities, with inexpensive good Asian food. It's jam packed at noon hour with locals, in both cities. If you enjoy simple, honest, peasant Russian food, try Pel Meni's at lunch or dinner time in the Merchants Wharf. They keep boiling pots of water going in this stark bare-bones place, and serve marvelous Pel' Meni's, which are somewhat akin to boiled ravioli, but Russian style, served with fresh sour cream, and a slice of real black bread (hot sauce if you wish, is on the table). Inexpensive. There are outstanding fast ethnic food culinary opportunities here from street vendors at lunch time. Two umbrella covered stands offer pork or chicken satay on skewers, lumpia, fried egg rolls and beverages for cheap. Up the hill a bit is a Mexican food stand that offers two hot dishes at least, with all needed accoutrements, in a wrap. The most adventurous and exotic culinary experience has to be the Taku Glacier Lodge, which is not within 15 minutes of downtown, but a lengthier flight from there departing from a waterfront float plane dock. A noisy but reliable Dehaviland aircraft that will fly you there over many glaciers, and mountains, up the Taku River, rain or shine. I believe some folks fly in here for winter skiing and fun, but in summer, the only visitors are tourists and bears, sometimes it would seem in almost equal numbers. They're on the edge of a huge wild blueberry field the bears love grazing on, in competition at times with deer and elk. The Lodge installed a substantial landing dock in the past ten years, and offers the very best salmon bbq in all of Alaska, bar none. Their baked beans, slaw, home made baked goods including herbed biscuits and cookies are without peer. One of the managers secures huge chunks of ice for drinks and keeping things cold by taking an open outboard motor boat across the water, where he chunks off blocks from small ice bergs that have calved from the nearby glaciers. The crystalline glacial ice is available at no other restaurants there that I know of, and is an adventure in itself, drinking pure water that was frozen hundreds of thousands or more years ago. The flight-seeing opportunity of looking down at the glaciers, rivers, and mountains is worth the price of the trip all by itself. I wish I'd had more time in Juneau but, we had ferry reservations for Sitka, which would be our last significant stop before boarding a ferry for home. Within a moment of the salmon chef leaving the outside grille, uninvited bold bears appear to lick the hot grate clean. They aren't tame, or guests, but love the Lodge. The staff carry quarter staffs about 7 feet long to fend them off. Photo by Barbara Allen Taku river and melting glacier seen from Dehaviland airplane en route to and from Taku Glacier Lodge. Photo by Barbara Allen Taku Lodge Glacial Ice-Man, holding piece of ice he'd chipped off an iceberg in the Taku River earlier in the day to be used in beverage offerings at the Lodge. The ice is crystal clear water frozen long, long ago. Photo by Barbara Allen