In Juneau, locally minded chefs are redefining Alaskan cuisine

If there’s one thing you should know about Lionel Uddipa it’s that he forages. The executive chef at Salt, an upscale yet casual restaurant that dubs its food “creative Alaskan cuisine,” gets up early to head to the wilderness. Sometimes, he brings his 2½ -year-old daughter, Juniper, with him. She’s perfect for it, he says. She can spot colors he doesn’t because she’s closer to the ground. He picks mountain strawberries and beach asparagus in the early summer; salmonberries and cloudberries in late summer; spruce tips and devil’s club in the spring; and mushrooms when they’re around.

Know that, and you will know that some of his menu specials are a direct result of his morning walk.

When I visited Salt this month, Uddipa took chicken of the woods mushrooms he picked that day, confit broccolini and Alaskan halibut, and seared it all on a slab of Himalayan salt at my table. Then he excused himself because he was going to New Orleans in the morning to hand over the crown he won last year at the Great American Seafood Cook-Off to this year’s champ. His victory last year was a big coup for him and for the growing number of young chefs who are elevating Alaskan food.

[Alaska illuminations: By night, look for the aurora borealis; by night, discover the joys of making pies, riding trains and seeing wildlife — maybe even a moose]

So what is Alaskan food? It’s trickier to pinpoint than Louisiana food, what with its jazzy Cajun spices and general swagger. It’s more soothing than Texan cuisine, with all its devil-may-care charred edges. And it’s more modest yet just as fun as that of New England, with its lobster rolls and abundant oysters. It’s about using every part of a fish, holistic as a necessity, not a statement. It’s foraging in the morning and serving the bounty at night. It’s smoking fish over indigenous alder. It’s cooking seafood from the wild because fish farms are illegal in Alaska. It’s an interconnectedness that’s inevitable in a capital city with a population of about 32,000 that boasts 250-plus miles of trail but only 42 miles of road, making for a culinary scene that works like linked gears.

Salt is owned by Tracy LaBarge, whose other restaurant, Tracy’s King Crab Shack, has become a fixture on the Juneau Seawalk since it opened last year. Before that, she operated Tracy’s out of an 8-by-10-foot shed on the waterfront near the city’s cruise port, at which nearly 1.5 million passengers disembark seasonally.