What I Ate in Alaska – Part 1: On Land

I spent 12 days (11 if you don’t count my last day which was full of traveling home) in Alaska on a land & cruise vacation. I spent the first 4 days in the interior of Alaska before getting on the cruise ship and cruising down southeast Alaska and finally ending in Vancouver, Canada.

While on vacation I ate a ton of delicious food, and a couple things not worth writing about, so I of course wanted to share all of the yumminess with you. Because I ate so much, I need to break this post into 2 parts and so I’ve decided the best way to divide it up is by what I ate on land and what I ate on the cruise ship. That means that this won’t all be in chronological order overall when the 2 food posts are said and done because I’ve also decided to include in this “food on land” post what I ate on the excursions I went on from the ship.

Being in Alaska means that a lot of my food was seafood, especially salmon. Without further ado, let’s get to it!

First up, after my riverboat ride in Fairbanks, I got this smoked salmon wrap from Steamboat Landing. It was one of the best wraps I’ve ever had!

While staying at the Denali Princess Lodge, we ate dinner one night at the Grizzly Bar & Grill. Below are the Bering King Crab Seafood Dip – King Crab and shrimp dip with crostini & Fish ‘n Chips – Alaskan Pacific Cod hand dipped in Denali Gold Beer batter. I had variations of this dip a few more times during my time in Alaska and this one was hands down the best.

For lunch at Denali Princess Lodge one day, we went to the pizza place in the little lodge village. I love thick crust pizzas!

For our last night at Denali Princess Lodge, we ate at King Salmon. I got the King Salmon of course. It was sea salt accented king salmon grilled and dusted with gray sea salt served atop crimini mushrooms, English pea risotto with a beurre rouge sauce. The risotto was a little dry, but the salmon was great.

Back to King Salmon for breakfast before heading out. I ordered the Lingonberry French Toast topped with chantilly cream and warm berry compote. Lingonberries are popular in Alaska, which makes me happy because I always order the lingonberry crepes from IHOP! They are not easy to find back here in NJ but I did find a jar at the supermarket when I got home this weekend so look out for a recreation!

After driving for a few hours, we got to our next stop McKinley Princess Lodge. We ate lunch at 20,320 where I ordered the Big Alaskan Burger and shared the Tuxedo Cake for dessert. I was pleasantly surprised with how good the dessert was.

For dinner we ate at Mountain View restaurant at the lodge which is the perfect name for the restaurant since this is where I was when Mt. Denali finally came out of hiding! I ordered the Wild Alaskan Smoked Salmon Chowder which consisted of roasted red pepper cream with potatoes, garlic, onion, celery, and wild Alaskan salmon smoked in the traditional northwest style over native hardwood. This soup was so good I could’ve licked the bowl clean! For my entree, I got the Alaskan Seafood Pasta which had scallops, crab and halibut with asiago and garlic cream sauce over fettuccini.

The next day, we went on the train ride to Whittier where I had a salmon spread on baguette which wasn’t so great hence no picture. For a snack, I got a Blue Bunny Big Alaska Bar, which you may recognize looks like the more popular Klondike Bar. Fun Fact: Klondikes are what they called gold miners in Alaska (like how the ones in California were called 49ers).

Then it was onto the cruise where I was constantly stuffed with 4 course meals and will talk about tomorrow! But on my excursion to the Takshanuk Mountain Trail we were treated to a delicious meal of potatoes, salad, baked chicken and beer battered halibut. The chicken was so good that my dad even asked the cook how she makes the skin so crisp!

On another excursion which I’ve yet to write about we were had an all you can eat dungeness crab lunch! Followed my a New York Style Cheesecake with blueberry topping. Blueberries are also wildly popular in Alaska. This cheesecake was fantastic and reminded me of my childhood favorite cheesecake from a bakery in NYC. It was so light and airy. Not heavy at all which made it easy to eat the entire slice.

So that wraps up what I ate on land in Alaska! There were a few other things that were god awful and not worth mentioning nor the effort it would take me to write about them. Sorry if this post made you hungry, but be warned tomorrow’s post featuring the food from the cruise ship will definitely have you salivating!