Last week, I went to Glennallen for work, so I wanted to give you some ideas for the next time you happen to be driving the Al-Can or heading for Valdez. Glennallen is a small town at the junction of the Glenn Highway and the Richardson Highway. It is in a beautiful part of Alaska, at the edge of the Copper River Valley, home to one of Alaska's great salmon fisheries, and also sits next to the Wrangell Mountains and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Everything I discuss below is located on the Glenn Highway, unless I say otherwise.
Glennallen is on the highway and so technically isn't in the Bush, but because they depend on seasonal business like tourism, fishing, and hunting, they have a limited selection of services. The only real grocery store is Omni Park's Place. This is a pretty decent grocery store, and like most stores in rural Alaska the most expensive items are perishables like dairy and produce. The bananas, for example, were not in good shape, and were over twice the price of the Anchorage Fred Meyer. The only caution I would give regarding this store would be to check the expiration dates of what you buy. A lot of things have been sitting on those shelves for a while, and several of the canned and frozen items I looked at expired in 2010. Other stores that carry food, like the Hub at the intersection of the Glenn and Richardson, are really gas stations that carry snacks and basics like you find at your typical quickie-mart.
There are two places that many locals and people I know who go through Glennallen a lot warned me against: the Chuck Wagon and the Caribou. The Chuck Wagon is a food truck made from a converted school bus, and the Caribou Cafe is one of the main places in town and has an adjacent hotel. I have been told that both of these places may cause, how do I say this....intestinal distress. I have also never been to the Tastee Freeze, which has burgers and ice cream. I have been told that the food is decent, but is expensive for what it is.
I have been to the Copper Center Lodge, but not on this trip. It is located on the Richardson Highway south of the junction at Glennallen. They have a little hotel and a restaurant, and serve typical rural Alaskan food: large portions, and tons of meat. Which is great if you are a construction worker or are going out fishing. They have large, traditional breakfasts, and dinners like burgers and prime rib. Besides having decent food, they are also open year round, which is important in Alaska. There are lots of towns in Alaska that depend on tourism, and most of the businesses in these towns are only open in the summer, so it is important to support those businesses that are open all year to serve, and employ, the local population.
One of the places I ate was at Tok Thai Food. This food truck is parked next to the Hub at the highway intersection on the east end of town. It is bright purple, so you should be able to spot it. Since it is a food truck, my local friends usually call ahead and then go pick it up. All their entrees are $10, and if you want shrimp instead of the normal choice of beef, chicken, or pork, that's $2 extra. They also have Thai ice tea and canned soda. For an appetizer, they have large orders of fresh spring rolls and egg rolls (also $10, but you get a lot). The portions are huge, and the locals I know generally get something and either split it with someone, or eat it for two meals. They have things like Tom Yum Soup, Tom Kha Gai, Pad Thai, and fried rice. The special the day we went was chicken larb. I got the green curry with chicken, which was good, but not very spicy. Among my local friends the Pad Roum Mid with beef seems to be popular, which is basically mixed vegetables and beef, although they like pretty much everything, except the cashew chicken, which is too salty, and the sweet and sour, which is too strong. There are so many choices for Thai Food in Anchorage, that Tok Thai seems pretty average by comparison, but it is the only Asian food for at least 150 miles, so you should stop by if you're in the neighborhood.
The other place I ate while I was in town was at the Princess Copper River Lodge Two Rivers Restaurant. Princess cruise ships bring thousands of tourists up to Alaska every summer, and a local I know said that they like the Copper River Lodge because, while it is seasonal, it employs a ton of locals, so they want them to do well. The first thing I noticed about the restaurant was the view of the Copper River Valley and the Wrangell Mountains on the other side. Even though the tops of the mountains were covered in rain clouds, it was still beautiful. They had a pretty typical wine list, with a variety of grapes but not any really good wines, but it didn't really matter because I had to drive back to Glennallen afterwards. Of course, being so near the Copper River, which is widely known for its salmon, and not far from PRince William Sound and its abundant seafood, fresh Alaskan seafood dominated the menu. Alaskan appetizers include Alaskan crab cakes and smoked salmon spread. Other appetizers included Tiger Prawn cocktail, baked brie, and sausage stuffed mushrooms. For soups they had Alaskan salmon chowder and the beef noodle soup of the day, and for salads they had a mixed green salad and a caesar salad. They also had some tasty warm rolls- one good plain one and a great kalamata olive roll. I got the salmon cakes, which were the appetizer special, and a casear salad, in my attempt to keep it light. You'll see later how that turned out. I got the side caesar salad, which was small, and made me think at the time that I should have gotten the entree size. It was fine, but wasn't the best salad I've had. The salmon cakes were great though. They were amazingly light were really flaky. I'm kind of amazed they actually stayed in cakes long enough to be cooked and served, because they totally fell apart and melted in my mouth when I ate them. They were coated in a very light later of bread crumbs, and came with a light herb aioli.
Entrees were also mostly Alaskan seafood, and made me wish I could come back, this time with lots of people so I could try things. They had Alaskan halibut, Alaskan salmon (done a couple of ways), Alaskan caribou, Alaskan scallops, and Alaskan crab legs. Other entrees to round out the field included sirloin, New York strip steak, prime rib, lasagna, and chicken.
And of course, there was dessert. This was really the reason I wished I could have eaten there again before I left. Naturally, I went for the chocolate option, but I really wished I could have tried some of the other things. They had a raspberry white chocolate cheesecake, key lime pie, vanilla creme brulee, green tea creme brulee (whaaaa??), Alaskan blueberry pie, or vanilla or blueberry ice cream from Matanuska Creamery. I got the "chocolate lovin' spoon cake."While the menu described it as "chocolate pudding" between two layers of cake, it was basically a really dense chocolate cake, into which they have crammed an amazing amount of dense chocolate frosting. I seriously think there was at least as much frosting as cake. And it was good frosting, not some crazy sweet store bought frosting. The only problem was that it didn't come with ice cream, so after two bites I ordered some of the vanilla ice cream so that I could actually finish it. By the end of that cake, I wasn't sorry at all that I'd just gotten the appetizer and small salad. It would be a minimum of $50 for two people to eat here - most of the entrees were around $25 - but it was good and it was really great to see so many fresh, seasonal Alaskan foods on the menu.
So if you go to Glennallen, especially in the summer, you have a pretty great selection of places to eat, considering that you are passing through a town of only 500 people. I would recommend going to Tok Thai or the Princess Lodge in the summer, and to the Copper Center Lodge in the winter for a good meal on your road trip.
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