Midgi Moore loves food, and she loves Juneau. Less than two years ago, she started a business that allowed her to focus on both — Juneau Food Tours. She gave her first tour in May 2015.
Moore, a food columnist for the Capital City Weekly, used to work at the Juneau Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“So I took the knowledge I learned in the visitor industry and my passion for food and writing, and combined it into the tour,” Moore said in a recent interview.
She was standing on the seawalk near Twisted Fish, holding orange reusable gift bags and waiting for her next group to arrive. Inside the bag, which she gives to every customer, was a bag of toffee from Chef Stef’s, cookies from the Taku Glacier Lodge, recipes and coupons for local businesses.
On that particular day, an additional item was in the bag — an orange T-shirt that said, “#1,000happybellies.” Moore was celebrating the occasion of feeding her one-thousandth customer.
“It’s a big deal to me. I’m so excited. I thought it’d be three years until I got to this point,” she said.
[Meals with Midgi: Local scallops inspired by a local chef]
Moore’s idea of bringing visitors to sample food at local Juneau businesses took off faster than she anticipated. Last season, she fed about 560 people. This season, sales have increased by 50 percent, she said.
Stops include sampling rockfish tostados at Salt, fusion nachos at V’s Cellar Door and charcuterie at Panhandle Provisions. Moore pays every business she visits and people on her tour often return to those places for meals later in the day, she said.
“My business is built on the success of other businesses.”
Moore’s is growing as culinary tourism gains in popularity around the world. She said the reason is simple — food allows a visitor to connect to a place.
“We go into the heart of the city. We get off the main visitors’ area. I tell my customers, ‘I’m going to take you on a non-touristy tour. I’m going to take you where the locals go, where I go, where I hang out with my husband and my friends, and where we go to eat and drink,’” Moore said. “That’s what visitors are seeking; they want to be immersed in the community.”
Mike Edgington, who visited Juneau from the St. Louis area, said he and his daughter were on the tour because “we love to eat.”
Edgington lived in Germany for seven years and traveled Europe sampling the cuisine. For his first cruise in the United States, he said the priority was food. He considered visiting the Mendenhall Glacier, but when he saw Juneau Food Tours as an excursion option, he was sold.
“You can go and look at all the sites and they’re nice, but getting a taste of something is really fun,” Edgington said.
Love for food and the people who make it
Each tour (which lasts 2 1/2 hours) begins at the Alaska Commercial Fishermen’s Memorial.
“The reason we start here is because there’s a lot of seafood on the tour and I want people to know where their food comes from and about the men and women who bring it to us,” Moore said.
One of Moore’s favorite things about her business is converting fish-haters to fish-lovers with stops like Tracy’s King Crab Shack and Deckhand Dave’s.
[Making Local Work: New fish taco stand opens in downtown Juneau]
“I’ve had so many people who say, ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like that,’ and the minute they get Tracy’s bisque, their world is rocked and now they’re like, ‘Bring me more food.’ Bisque is like the gateway seafood, and then they’ll try whatever else,” Moore said, laughing.
She doesn’t blame people for thinking they don’t like seafood. She attributes the phenomenon to people having bad fish at some point in their lives, likely in their childhood.
“You need good fish, and Alaska has the best,” Moore said.
On that particular tour, which included four passengers from the cruise ship Princess Crown and two travel bloggers, it didn’t seem like anyone was adverse to seafood. They eagerly sampled the crab bisque with comments like, “Wow, it’s so good.”
Besides the sampling, the tour is part local history, part Juneau restaurant trivia. Moore also interjects her own general food opinions, like, “Put it on a stick and it’s going to be fabulous,” and, “If you put bacon on it, I’m all in.”
Her love for Juneau’s food and the people who make it is evident. At the second tasting near the downtown public library, she fondly introduced Dave McCasland of the food truck Deckhand Dave’s, then looked at him and said, “I wish I had another daughter I could marry you off to.”
Love life aside, McCasland said he’s “stoked” to be a stop on Moore’s food tour.
“It’s been super helpful. I get more business, I get people that are super into food and they’re all happy, and that’s what it’s all about,” he said.
As the group bit into panko-crusted Coho salmon bites dipped into scratch-made tartar sauce, there were sounds of satisfaction.
“That’s amazing,” one customer said.
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
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Tourist Mike Edgington bites into a panko-crusted Coho salmon bite at Deckhand Dave’s, the second tasting on a Juneau Food Tours tour.
Juneau Food Tours features local food cart Deckhand Dave’s panko-crusted salmon bites and scratch-made tartar sauce. Owner David McCasland said the Coho was just caught two days prior.
