While I liked the feel of Fairbanks, a small town, I wasn’t loving the food. I am sure there are wonderful places and menu items places, just not really what I happened to order.
Bahn Thai – We heard that Fairbanks had a lot of Thai restaurants, its a common cuisine there. And there were for its size. After a longish day when we were tired, we decided to stay local/walking distance to dinner. We chose Bahn Thai. We were seated quickly and presented a large menu. There was a section for vegetarian making it easier to select something to eat without having to look at the whole menu. Justin got Pad Thai with Chicken and I got Pad See Ewe with Tofu. Justin also ordered some sort of iced tea, but it was more like a bubble tea, he didn’t like it, but I didn’t mind it. Dinner arrived and it was large portions. It wasn’t bad, I ate most of it, but I think mine was just missing a little something. It needed a tad more flavor. But it was loaded with vegetables, the most variety I’ve ever had with this dish. There was a little bit of broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, zucchini, onions, carrot, mushroom, and snap peas. Maybe bok choy.
Silver Gulch Brewing & Bottling – We were looking forward to going the the US northernmost brewery and should have thought twice about eating there — but all the breweries with food so far in Anchorage were good. It was a large building with lots of seats, and we were sat quickly in the bar area. It look maybe 15 minutes or more before a waitress came over. We ordered drinks (review here). Since we were doing an earlier dinner we picked the spinach artichoke dip as an appetizer which came out really fast and was really good, but the dinner fell short. Justin’s Halibut Fish and Chips were both cold and tiny- it reminded me of the frozen filets in the freezer section of the grocery store but for $35. My vegetarian chef’s choice had potential but missed, it was a little pasta and a big variety of vegetables in a soup like alfredo sauce. The sauce was mild, but too thin to eat with if it was a pasta dish. If it was supposed to be a soup dish, then it would have been easier with both a spoon and smaller pasta shape. We left extremely disappointed and got a big milkshake on our way back to hotel. Click here for the drink review.
Oasis Restaurant and Lounge – On the recommendation from a bartender, she said that Oasis is where locals go when they want a good greasy/heavy breakfast. We thought it would be great to try a place a local recommended, so we headed here on our way to the airport. The waitress was sweet and friendly. I ordered the Spinach & Tomato Benedict and Justin had the Two Egg breakfast with bacon and toast. A few others came in, and one was clearly a regular and it was great to hear the back and forth among them. Our orders arrived quickly and was hot and smelled good. The potatoes were the real star, I’ve never seen the presented this way as a perfect rectangle, but boy oh boy were these potatoes great. I think this is where the ‘greasy’ comes in, but they were cooked to perfection. We’d say this one was of the better meals we had in Fairbanks.
Marlo’s Bakery – Walking distance from downtown, was a small bakery with amazing looking treats. So many delicious it was hard to pick just two to try. We got a spinach cheese pastry that was really good. And a rhubarb torte that we ended up eating the following night. It was sweet and delicious, but not heavy feeling. If we had more time, I would definitely have gone back to pick up other treats to sample.
Other meals: Three of our meals were during long excursions. On those days, up north we ate at the Coldfoot Camp where we had sandwiches for lunch, Yukon Camp where we had fish tacos and a burger for dinner and then down south in Healy we ate at 49th State Brewing eating what we had when we were in Anchorage. One night we got takeout from the restaurant at the bottom of the hotel no need to mention that because they went out of business the next day.
We heard lots about the Cookie Jar, the Pumphouse, Sunrise Bagel and Cappuccino were all good, but we didn’t get to try them.