Last summer, on a cloudy day in July, the coastal town of Sitka, once the capital of Russian Alaska and long a popular stopover on Inside Passage cruises in Southeast Alaska, was thronged with passengers disembarking from three cruise ships. To accommodate the crowds, the city had closed the main street to cars. Food trucks, carts, and stalls had sprung up in their place, creating a festival atmosphere where itinerant diners scooped up seafood chowder and tacos.
“In the summer, street food seems like the right thing to do in a place like this,” says Gretchen Stelzenmuller, who cooked professionally in San Francisco before returning to Sitka during the pandemic and opening her mobile food business, Enoki Eatery. Japanese inspired comfort food. “It’s wholesome and uniquely celebrates Alaskan ingredients, but you can also roll in and grab a bite to eat and still do your tour.”
In the wake of the pandemic, with cruising back to full strength in Alaska, food trucks and other vendors have proliferated in ports from Ketchikan to Seward.
“With a food truck, you can get into the hospitality industry without the full physical entrepreneurial costs,” says Jon Bittner, the state director of the Alaska Small Business Development Center. “That’s pretty appealing in smaller communities that service cruise ships.”
For passengers with only a few hours in port and lots to see — including ferry travelers taking the Alaska Marine Highway — food trucks offer local flair at relatively reasonable prices and in less time than full-service restaurants.
“Food trucks are a natural extension of what draws people to Alaska, being outdoors,” said Aaron Saunders, editor-in-chief at Cruise Critic.
Expect to pay a little more than in the Lower 48 given the high cost of living. Last summer I bought a chicken and rice dish for $16 at a stand in Seward, a few dollars more and a free can of Pepsi less than the equivalent truck fare in New York City.
For the 2023 cruise season, which generally runs from April to October, Alaska cruise authorities expect 1.65 million cruise passengers, up from 2019’s record 1.3 million. Most will sail the Inside Passage, a approximately 500-mile route in Southeast Alaska that weaves through islands that protect it from the swirling Pacific Ocean.
While ship-bound visitors can make their way through Anchorage—which has its own thriving food truck scene—the following popular cruise stops make up a locally grown coastal culinary trail.
Ketchikan: Shrimp and grits and fried chicken sandwiches
Often the first stop in Alaska for Inside Passage cruising north, Ketchikan — a traditional Tlingit fishing camp that today thrives on tourism, commercial fishing, and forestry — is thriving with the arrival of cruise ships. Passengers disembarking for day trips in the Tongass National Forest or to see the totem poles at Saxman Native Village will find a few food stalls among the stalls of vendors on the cruise dock – including D’s Fish and Chip Shack – while more robust food truck offerings can be found at can be found within walking distance.
“If you want to see someone making out with a chicken sandwich, stop by our truck sometime,” Thane Peterson, the owner of the food truck Chicke Chicke Bang Bang, which specializes in chicken sandwiches ($12), wrote in a e-mail. He described diners with “eyes closed, moaning, muttering ‘Oh my God’.”
The truck, launched last year, is often parked near the cruise docks and passengers, Mr Peterson said, account for two-thirds of annual sales.
A few blocks from the cruise berths, Amber Adams plans to open the city’s first food truck parking lot, Dock Street Yard, in August, with space for three vendors.
After moving to Ketchikan from New Orleans four years ago, Mrs. Adams found herself cooking Creole dishes with Alaskan ingredients as both a reminder of home and a necessity in a small town with few dining options. Currently, the only tenant on the lot is her business, the Food Truck, shrimp and grits ($15) and rib-eye banh mi po’ boys ($18).
“Starting a restaurant is scary,” said Ms. Adams during a break from getting her truck ready. “But it’s a different beast here because of the huge influx of people over six months that basically doubles the population in the city.”
Sitka: Musubi of smoked salmon and fish soup with seafood
In peak season, disembarking passengers can match Sitka’s population of about 8,500. Also this year, the city restricts the main thoroughfare, Lincoln Street, to foot traffic on days when the cruise ship capacity at the port exceeds 5,000, inviting mobile companies to settle.
“I think it’s a great way to showcase all the talent in this city,” says Ms. Stelzenmuller, who launched Enoki Eatery last year as a Lincoln Street pop-up serving variations of Hawaiian musubi, a piece of rice topped with Spam or fish and bound by a seaweed wrap. “Street food should be a reason to come here.”
This year she bought a food truck and parked it downtown. The vehicle has allowed her to expand the menu, which includes steamed buns filled with pork or salmon and cream cheese ($9) and smoked salmon musubi ($8.50).
Just off Lincoln Street, behind Ernie’s Old Time Saloon, Barbara Palacios serves poke, chowder and ceviche from her cart, the Fresh Fish.
“We have a boom in food trucks here in Sitka,” says Ms. Palacios, who plans to upgrade her vehicle to a full-size food truck later this year and continue to offer poke (tuna or salmon, $18), halibut ceviche ( $14) and seafood chowder ($9 per cup, $14 per bowl).
“It’s a work of passion and love,” says Ms. Palacios, who often works 12-hour days during the season.
A few blocks east, past the Russian Orthodox St. Michael’s Cathedral, Ashley McNamee runs Ashmo’s, serving locally caught seafood in smoked salmon and cheese macaroni ($9), black cod on coconut rice ($10), and sandwiches with lingcod ($12).
Like many food truck operators here, Ms. McNamee, whose resume includes 14 years of cooking in an Alaskan fishing cabin, chose the food truck over “the restaurant grind.” Still, she added, “With the influx of people from cruise ships, it’s almost all I can do to keep up.”
From the center of town, it’s just over a mile to Harbor Mountain Brewing Co., where Cambria Goodwin and Luke Bruckert base their brick-and-mortar campfire kitchen, a wood-fired pizza specialist. This year, they added a mobile kitchen at the location to prepare fried chicken ($15) and fried cheese curd ($9) sandwiches to keep up with the hustle and bustle of business.
In another endeavor, Ms. Goodwin recently opened Sitka Salmon Wagon, where she served salmon bisque ($10 a cup, $16 a bowl) from a trailer parked downtown “to feed the masses,” she said.
The weather can be challenging for alfresco dining in Southeast Alaska’s temperate rainforest. After running the Blumen Dogs hot dog cart for a year, Shawn Blumenshine is adding a food truck and will operate at several locations, serving Nathan’s Famous Franks ($7) and creative versions ($11), including the Banh Mi Dog with carrots, cabbage, jalapeños, vinaigrette and sweet chili sauce. To date, customers are largely local. “I have hardcore banh mi fans,” said Mr. Blumenshine.
Juneau: fish tacos and potato pizza
The state capital, Juneau, is no stranger to food carts and trucks. City pioneers include Bernadette’s, a Filipino barbeque cart started in 1996 that draws queues of visiting cruise ship crew members, many of whom are Filipino, and Pucker Wilson’s, which opened nine years ago and serves two-fisted burgers such as the Huskey Dawson topped with bacon, onion rings and cheese ($16).
Visitors looking for Alaskan seafood along the way will find it a few blocks from the cruise pier at Deckhand Dave’s, a fish taco purveyor that anchors a food truck wharf. The truck and yard are run by Dave McCasland, a self-taught chef who spent two years working as a cook on a commercial fishing boat to pay off his student loans before launching his truck in 2016 with items like blackened redfish tacos ($13). .50 for three).
In 2019, he developed the food truck site with space for the original business, a spin-off oyster and champagne bar, and other mobile tenants, today including the Alaskan Crepe Escape and a cotton candy maker.
“People travel to get a taste of the place, and when they come to Alaska, they really want to eat seafood and eat local,” says Midgi Moore, who runs Juneau Food Tours and directs visitors to places like Deckhand Dave’s.
Five miles from downtown, toward the Mendenhall Glacier, the Alaskan Brewing Company tasting room is home to food trucks, including Forno Rosso, which serves Neapolitan-style wood-fired pizza ($13 to $17 for 10-inch pies). Before moving to Juneau, the truck’s owners, Alexander and Kym Kotlarov, lived in Rome, where they developed a passion for pizza that led to the mobile company named for their red tile oven.
When visitors find remote Forno Rosso, they’re usually independent travelers or fans of craft beer, according to Ms. Kotlarov, who uses specialty flour, San Marzano tomatoes from California and locally grown Genovese basil.
“I feel like we’re swimming upstream with our agenda of giving quality and staying true to the Italian thing,” Ms. Kotlarov said, noting that she continues to periodically offer Italian potato pizza as a specialty.
Seward: reindeer hot dogs and birria plates
Seward, a port on the Kenai Peninsula about 130 miles south of Anchorage, tends to get cruise ships at the start or end of their itineraries. On the road network, it also attracts travelers overland.
“They disembark and board in Seward,” said Kameron Weathers, the owner of Wild Spoon food truck and catering company. “We’re not a stop.”
Still, ship crews and road trippers patronize her booth for souped-up reindeer or buffalo dogs topped with beetroot kimchi and ginger aioli ($10), and game specialties.
In the summer of 2020, despite the tourism collapse during the pandemic, Faith Alderman and Fiona Crosby launched their breakfast and lunch business, the Porthole, to capture the early morning traffic in Seward Harbor with breakfast burritos ($12) and English muffin sandwiches ($8). The business opens at 4:30 a.m. and attracts captains, sailors, and visitors who take boat trips to nearby Kenai Fjords National Park.
Seward travelers heading to Alaska SeaLife Center, an aquarium and marine research center on Resurrection Bay, can’t miss Los Chanchitos, a busy Mexican food truck anchoring a nearby lot shared by Early Bird coffee truck and an axe-throwing company. It specializes in birria or beef brisket tacos ($17), among other things.
Peter Cavaretta, who spent more than a decade in the southern Baja Peninsula, opened the truck last April after visiting his sister in Seward and seeing “queues out the door for semi-average food at high prices,” said he. “I wanted to make super good food at reasonable prices.”
