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Everything at The Perch Restaurant is made in-house from scratch using local ingredients as much as possible, like these handcut pappardelle noodles using Alaska barley flour.

The Perch Restaurant

“We have to be very calculated about it,” he says. “Small groups, ten to twenty people, are a bit easier. But for the larger groups, we recommend coming very early, when we open, or late in the evening.”

Prey Pub & Eatery is about ten miles south of Glitter Gulch, near the airstrip outside of the park. Farther south, perched above Carlo Creek about twelve miles from the park entrance, is The Perch.

The restaurant has undergone “a bazillion different iterations” since co-owner Jessica Rinck’s mother-inlaw opened it in the ‘90s. The most recent, which Rinck and her husband settled on when they purchased The Perch five years ago, is American bistro-style fare. The menu focuses on scratch cooking using fresh, local ingredients.

“The bread, the sauces, the pasta, everything is made from scratch inhouse with a really small team and people who are just committed to the art of making really good food,” Rinck says.

The restaurant often welcomes small, independent tour groups, which are booked months in advance. Rinck says the restaurant accommodates groups without advanced notice when possible, but they must call ahead of time rather than just walking in; the restaurant switched to reservation-only during the pandemic.

The Perch’s sister restaurant in the Carlo Creek area is Panorama Pizza Pub, which Rinck and her husband also own. The couple renovated the restaurant in 2018 and debuted a menu that was the same, but different.

“The restaurant’s stayed pretty steadfast, but when times change, we try to stay on trend as much as possible,” Rinck says. “So, the menu’s been the same, but changing.”

Translation? Pizza is the star, but more adventurous than basic cheese (though that’s on the menu, too), like the Banh Mi-Oh-My, inspired by the Vietnamese sandwich, or the Berry White, which consists of whipped goat cheese, berries, and caramelized onions and topped with arugula and microgreens. Like The Perch, everything is made from scratch using local ingredients whenever possible.

The pub’s pizza-centric menu simplifies operations, which makes it easier to accommodate large groups, Rinck says, though she still recommends calling ahead.

Panorama Pizza expected to open a spinoff location in the Palmer/Wasilla area last fall, but a fire damaged the building. Their plans for winter cashflow dashed, Rinck and her husband decided to risk opening the Denali Park shop in February, if only on weekends, in defiance of the area’s usual off- season shutdown. They’re counting on shoulder-season recreational travelers. But first, they had to make sure the building’s plumbing would work at all before spring thaw.

Another Busload to Feed

“There are so many challenges on a daily basis in food services in remote Alaska,” McCarthy says. “There are so many moving parts, and everything has to be coordinated correctly.”

From the diner’s perspective, it may not be immediately clear why one table of twenty diners is more difficult to serve than five tables with four diners each. Twenty people is twenty people, right?

Not exactly.

“Kitchens are never built, unfortunately, to actually feed every table at the same time,” Scheffer explains. “The grill space or the number of burners that you have, and the number of staff that you have, is really aligned with how much food you can produce at once, so a lot of times we’re controlling the flow.”

Controlling the flow ensures that diners at individual tables get each course at the same time and that a steady stream of food is coming out of the kitchen. Restaurants manage this by staggering seating (which is why you may have a 15-minute wait even though there are empty tables) and spacing food production. Groups of diners interrupt that steady stream by pulling the kitchen’s attention away from the entire dining room and focusing it on a single table.

“We’re trying to provide a great experience for all of our guests, and if a kitchen is focusing on a table of twenty, the rest of the restaurant’s tables are waiting for that food to come out,” says Smith. “The line, each station, is focused only on that table for the most part. There isn’t a trickle of food coming out.”

To alleviate that bottleneck, restaurants typically require that groups make reservations well in advance of their arrival, often long before tourist season even begins. That helps guarantee they’re not overextending themselves on any given night.

“At the beginning of the season I just have to map out where these tour companies are going to go and check availability,” says Rinck. “Then we pin them in where we can.”

Demand, but Little Supply

Getting seafood, meat, produce, and other essentials to Denali Park has always been a challenge. National food supply chain issues haven’t helped.

“Unfortunately, there are only so many purveyors that supply Alaska,” Scheffer says. Last season, he says Alpenglow Restaurant was on a two-week hold for gluten-free panko, went ten days without bananas, and, when they did have produce, the quality was less than desirable.

“These are constant things that we’re trying to source by running to Fairbanks, driving two hours in a vehicle to buy all the bananas at Costco,” he says.

Logistical relationships with vendors have helped. For example, since 2010 Northern Hospitality Group has been getting its halibut from Kachemak Bay delivered via DiTomaso Produce Company in Anchorage, alongside regular orders of vegetables and fruits. But McCarthy says sometimes the items are unavailable, forcing his restaurants to adapt the menu.

Staffing shortages have also complicated restaurants’ ability to get supplies.

“Trucks weren’t able to get to the location to make the delivery because they didn’t have drivers or hours,” Smith says. “So we would not be getting product at all.”

Due to difficulty with their own staffing, too, restaurants had to adjust, whether it was increasing wages, modifying hours, paring down the menu, or switching to a buffet breakfast because there wasn’t enough staff to provide plated service.

The restaurants’ response in the face of these challenges, and the nimbleness with which they continue to handle them, serve as good advice for diners.

Smith says, “Being flexible and knowing it’s all part of the Alaskan adventure are part of the requirements.