You might not think a town Juneau\u2019s size could support two food tours, but as Karen Wright, one of the new owners of Alaskan Food Tours pointed out, there are nearly 80 eating establishments in just the downtown corridor.<\/p>\n
Maybe two is too few.<\/p>\n
Alaskan Food Tours, originally started by Gwen Rivas and Dana Richards in 2012, was bought by Wright and her sister-in-law, Lucy Nelson, last year. They started taking bookings in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a new tour essentially this year,\u201d Wright said. \u201cThe tour that we bought was very different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tour they decided on is composed of nine stops, some the ones you would expect such as Taku Smokeries, Tracy\u2019s King Crab Shack and the Alaskan Fudge Company, but there\u2019s also some you wouldn\u2019t. What could a food tour possibly be doing at the Glacier Salt Cave and Spa? And why is the last stop Sealaska Plaza, where no restaurants are located?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that goes into choosing the different stops. One of the things that you\u2019re looking at is a mix of heavy and light tastings, you\u2019re looking at sweet and savory,\u201d Wright said. <\/p>\n
They were also looking for \u201cthose things that aren\u2019t easily duplicated or replicated\u201d and fresh food served by local businesses was a must.<\/p>\n
The Glacier Salt Cave and Spa? Their mineral-rich salt water made from Himalayan Pink Salt cleanses attendees palates and balanced their pH before heading for the sweet treat of rhubarb sherbet next door at Coppa.<\/p>\n
And at Sealaska Plaza, Nelson shared a bit of her Tlingit background and culture before sharing some dried seaweed and halibut with the guests. The seaweed was harvested by Edna Jackson of Kake, and the halibut smoked by her husband Mike. <\/p>\n
The Alaskan Food Tour is as much about the stories as the edibles, whether it is the salty tale of Juneau\u2019s founding or a stop at Manila Square to point out the Filipino history in Juneau and contributions to the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really important that we incorporate the cultural portions into our tour because they\u2019ve not been talked about. Nobody\u2019s talking about the Filipinos,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n
Some of the stories are impromptu. A visit to Twilight Caf\u00e9, now located in the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff building, included a brief history of the building by Bob Banghart after the deputy director of the State Libraries, Archives and Museum stopped in for a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n
Wright and Nelson pride themselves on getting \u201cnothing but five star reviews\u201d on every reviewing website, and also on the fact that for every tour a portion of proceeds are donated to the Glory Hole and other organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFood is something that\u2019s absolutely essential for living,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n
To prep for their new business, Wright and Nelson took a food tour in Chicago and did four tours in three days in Seattle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like market research,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cWe had kind of gone with the idea that we\u2019re going to go and do (tours by) different companies within the same area and see if it is possible to get different experiences with the food tour because we do have another food tour company here in town.\u201d <\/p>\n
The other is Juneau Food Tours, run by Capital City Weekly food columnist Kelly \u201cMidgi\u201d Moore. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually learned different things at each tour,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cI loved every one of them and I had a blast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright said the tour leaves people with new food memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery place that you go has a different flavor and when you eat (while) you travel, it really creates lasting memories because you\u2019re using all five of your senses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright and Nelson are looking forward to providing food memories for years to come. As 2016\u2019s tourist season winds down, they are already looking forward to developing some new tours for 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You might not think a town Juneau\u2019s size could support two food tours, but as Karen Wright, one of the new owners of Alaskan Food Tours pointed out, there are nearly 80 eating establishments in just the downtown corridor. Maybe two is too few. Alaskan Food Tours, originally started by Gwen Rivas and Dana Richards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":11148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11147"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}