Fairbanks, Alaska, is an unexpected food mecca. A city of just 31,000 people – not counting military personnel on two nearby bases – it lies six hours inland from Anchorage and is better known as a gateway to the Arctic and a hotspot for the northern lights. Yet visitors find themselves spoiled for choice: crepes, empanadas, tacos, ramen, barbecue, Cuban, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Filipino cuisine, and even one of the few Moldovan restaurants in the United States. The story of how this remote interior city became a culinary destination begins not with the northern lights, but with a gold lease and two migrants from northern Thailand.
The roots of Thai food in the Arctic
Charlie Boonprasert and Tutu Navachai arrived in Fairbanks in the 1980s after a friend offered them jobs mining and cooking at a gold lease. The pair, originally from northern Thailand, soon realised there was almost no south-east Asian food available in Alaska’s remote interior. They did, however, find a small Thai population yearning for a taste of home – and a chance to meet up and gossip.
In 1989 they opened Thai House as a hole-in-the-wall in downtown Fairbanks. Today, Boonprasert’s wife, Laong, runs the restaurant, which serves an extensive menu that includes gai yang (grilled barbecue chicken), tom yum kung (hot and sour soup with shrimp) and, of course, pad thai. The recipes come largely from their home region, though the spice levels have been dialled back slightly.
Navachai, who had worked as a server at Thai House, opened Lemongrass Thai restaurant on the other side of town in 1996. He runs it with his two sons, one of whom now operates a second Lemongrass in Thailand. The family’s commitment to authentic ingredients is a recurring theme. Finding some supplies in Alaska can be a challenge, so they stock up during regular trips back to Thailand – often during the worst of the winter months, when opening hours are reduced. “We take alternate trips,” says Tutu’s son Natt, “and bring back herbs, sometimes utensils and always a yellow curry powder that my father insists we get from a market in Chiang Mai. US customs always stop me and want to know what it is.”
In the early days, they got basics from Carl’s Foodland, a large grocery in downtown Fairbanks that has since evolved into the Co-op Market Grocery & Deli, Alaska’s first retail food cooperative. When supplies ran out or deliveries were held up, the restaurants used substitutes or adjusted recipes. Today Lemongrass uses locally grown vegetables from a local organic farm called Ann’s Greenhouses – a practical adaptation to the geography. The midnight sun season lasts from April to August, and for 70 days the sun never sets, creating excellent growing conditions. Lemongrass was also an early adopter of fusion with readily available Alaskan seafood; Natt recommends the chu chee scallops, sautéed in red curry and coconut milk with green beans, kaffir lime and bell peppers.
There are now 15 Thai restaurants in and around Fairbanks – a number that reflects both the demand for spicy food when temperatures plummet (it hit minus 50F this January, the coldest winter in Fairbanks history, according to the National Weather Service) and the “chain migration” effect. Almost all of the newer drive-thru Thai huts that have sprung up in a wider radius around the city are the result of friends and relatives following others to Fairbanks, cutting their teeth in existing restaurants, then setting up on their own.
A melting pot by necessity
The geography of Alaska has played a crucial role in shaping this food landscape. The state has traditionally been difficult for large corporations from the lower 48 to dominate, partly because of the cost of transporting goods across such a vast region – even to Fairbanks, a crossroads transport hub for the Arctic and the rest of the interior. Instead, independently and family-owned restaurants have found lasting niches. A diverse migration population has also been central: Alaska’s boom economies have attracted people from around the world for decades, and they wanted a taste of home.
Alaska famously runs on coffee, and Fairbanks is festooned with coffee huts – cute little drive-by booths that serve espressos all day, snow or shine. Tea, on the other hand, was traditionally less popular. But Hong Kong-born Jenny Tse, founder of Sipping Streams Tea Company, is changing that. Brought to Fairbanks with her family at a young age, she drank only black coffee for years due to undiagnosed lactose intolerance, but became interested in the benefits of tea. “When people saw me drinking tea – even just Liptons – they often stopped, and told me how tea had been a part of their lives,” she says. After a trip to China to learn the process from earth to cup, Tse opened the first Sipping Streams Tea store in 2009. “It was like the universe was pushing me.” Today her blends are award-winning, and she and her husband Brian have found a new audience: video gamers, cosplayers and anime fans who dislike the buzzing effects of energy drinks or too much coffee, and appreciate the tactility and quiet of the tea-making process.
Sipping Streams also works with a hydroponic greenhouse outside town. After early setbacks, the results of their small-batch leaves have been excellent, and the teas they grow are sent to elder groups in villages across Alaska as part of a food sustainability scheme. The company is developing Alaska’s first tea farm – which will also be the world’s first geothermally heated tea farm, in partnership with the nearby Chena Hot Springs.
The broader food system in Alaska is heavily reliant on imports – around 95 per cent – making it vulnerable to weather, global supply chains and transportation problems. That scarcity and high cost of imported goods creates both challenges and opportunities for local producers. The Co-op Market Grocery & Deli, established in 2013, focuses on local, organic and fair-trade foods, aiming to support the local economy. Despite the short growing season, several greenhouses – including Ann’s Greenhouses, Risse’s Greenhouse, Hawk’s Greenhouse and Midnight Sun Greenhouse – supply local produce. Fairbanks also has a burgeoning food truck scene, with dedicated spaces such as the “End of Line” food truck park designed to bring the community together.
Moldovan hospitality under the midnight sun
Perhaps the most surprising restaurant in Fairbanks is Soba, the only Moldovan restaurant in Alaska, opened by Alla and Stanislav Gutsul. Stanislav had loved his time as a summer student in Fairbanks in 2007 and persuaded Alla to move there in 2009. “I remember that first winter was one of the coldest. It hit minus 50, and you couldn’t take a deep breath outside,” Alla recalls. But they stayed and began a family. In 2016, motivated by nostalgia for home, they opened the Acasa food truck – the name translates as “home”. “That’s how Moldovans share their love to other people – with food,” says Alla.
A brick-and-mortar restaurant followed in 2018. When the pandemic hit, their regulars overpaid for takeout and offered endless words of support. “We had grown up right under their eyes, and the community wanted us to survive,” Alla says. One of the few Moldovan restaurants in America, they bring back traditional clay pots and decorations from their biannual trips home, and get spices shipped from Europe via the lower 48 – a delivery issue that often means higher prices in Alaska, but that most feel is worth paying for living in such natural beauty.
Moldovan cuisine, as served at Acasa and Soba, features dishes such as mămăligă – corn polenta with stewed pork, scrambled eggs, sour cream, feta cheese and garlic sauce – along with cheese-filled pies, cabbage rolls and slow-cooked stuffed cabbage leaves. When the original reporter returned to Los Angeles, they craved mămăligă and looked up Moldovan restaurants in that metropolis of 3.8 million people. They found precisely none. Score one for the Golden Heart City.
