ourism in Denali is on the rise. According to the National Park Service, 364,000 travelers made their pilgrimage to the continent’s tallest mountain in 2000. By 2019, those numbers jumped to 601,152 annual visitors to Denali National Park and Preserve.

Since 2000, options have proliferated for meals outside of hotel restaurants. New eateries have joined the old-time establishments, and some have changed owners and rebranded, offering visitors diverse and sophisticated dining options. And, like all the roadside businesses clustered near the park entrance, they specialize in serving busloads of customers at a time.

North of Denali Park itself, hungry travelers can find satisfaction on the shady side of the Alaska Range. In Healy, 49th State Brewing – Denali Park serves classic pub fare centered around sustainable Alaska foods. The restaurant hosts group dining in the dining room and pub sides of the restaurant, as well as the brewery.

“We give them a unique experience where you literally dine in the brewery,” says co-founder David McCarthy. “There are tables in between the brewery tanks and the barrels filled with beer, which is really cool. People just don’t expect it.”

McCarthy works with tour companies to provide groups a custom experience, whether it’s a special menu, a buffet, or something else.

“Every tour group is treated uniquely,” he says. “We want them to experience Alaskan hospitality.”

Hospitality is the name of the game for McCarthy, and the name of his business. Northern Hospitality Group is the parent company of the flagship brewery in Healy and its successful spinoff in downtown Anchorage. It also operates a couple of restaurants 1 mile north of the Denali Park entrance: The Overlook at the Crow’s Next and Prospectors Pizzeria & Alehouse.

Comfort foods with an Alaska twist, along with forty-nine draft beers, at least half of them from Alaska breweries, are on the menu at Prospectors Pizza & Alehouse, which opened in 2010, the same year as the first 49th State Brewing location up the road.

“The majority of people who came to Denali prior to 2010 were basically being fed the same food repetitively to get the ‘Alaskan experience,’” McCarthy says. “What we saw in the market was that people were looking for more comfort food.”

That comfort comes in the form of “hybrid Alaskan-style Italian food” that manages to incorporate Alaska into every dish, McCarthy says. “There’s spaghetti and meatballs, but the meatballs are made of elk. Fettuccine Alfredo is topped with king crab. You might have a pizza with king crab in the shell on top. It wasn’t made as a novelty. It was made as a quality pizza to drink with a craft beer.”

Northern Hospitality Group purchased the Crow’s Nest Hotel in 2014, transforming The Overlook into an elevated dining room with an aesthetic McCarthy describes as “outdoor chic.”

“It’s not quite tablecloth,” he says. “It’s just a more elevated experience with higher-end wine and foods.”

Like at 49th State Brewing, The Overlook offers customized dining options for groups based on what they want to experience in Alaska.

And that experience, just as much as the food, is what McCarthy thinks restaurants are offering.

“What you’re selling is this experience of going to the national park and seeing the greatest Northern American safari,” he says. “The authenticity of what we offer in the restaurant becomes part of their adventure.”

The Overlook’s neighbor on the bluff above the Parks Highway is the Grande Denali Lodge, which contains the Alpenglow Restaurant, serving a spectacular view of the park alongside continental American fare with an emphasis on Alaska seafood.

“The idea up there is great cocktails, good food, in a great setting that overlooks into the national park,” says Chris Scheffer, complex general manager for the Grande Denali Lodge and Denali Bluffs Hotel.

A private banquet room in the lodge is available for groups that want privacy or a more customized experience; group dinners in the main dining room can accommodate up to sixty guests. Scheffer says he works with tour groups in advance to prepare a menu that not only fits the group’s dining budget but gives the kitchen flexibility in case certain items are unavailable and helps expedite production.

What Grande Denali Lodge and The Overlook both overlook is a bend in the Nenana River known as Glitter Gulch. Located just outside the park proper, highway traffic stops for pedestrians crossing between a strip of merchants at the foot of the bluff and the deluxe visitor accommodations on the riverbank, including McKinley Chalet Resort and Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge.

Fannie Q’s Saloon opened in 2019 in the former site of Denali Wilderness Lodge’s dinner theater. A redesign transformed the restaurant into a sleek, well-lit space with large windows, a candelabra chandelier and, befitting a saloon, a long bar that stretches along the back wall, says the lodge’s general manager, Michael Cook.

“The menu is American fare, not casual but not formal,” he says. “Fish and chips, a burger, fried chicken sandwich, but we also have some nicer entrees, like a braised pork shoulder and Alaska rockfish with chipotle lime.”

The saloon’s full bar offers twelve Alaska beers on tap and craft cocktails focused on Alaska-sourced products, whether a Southeast Alaska or Talkeetna distillery or local Alaska flavors, Smith says.

Next door, Grizzly Burger was revamped in 2019 into a full-service, self-seating restaurant, so groups can rearrange tables and chairs or head to the deck above the Nenana River, Cook says.

He likens the burger-based menu to Five Guys or Smashburger, with “fresh grill top patties on a brioche bun.” Grizzly Burger has a full bar and a milkshake machine that can make kid or adult-friendly treats.

“We do boozy milkshakes,” Cook says. “So, if you wanted a s’mores milkshake with a shot of peanut butter whiskey, we can do that.”

Within the McKinley Chalet Resort, Karstens Public House serves casual Alaska fare—burgers and sandwiches, pasta and steak, and some great shareable appetizers—in a fun, open space that can accommodate large groups.

“It’s just like a public house feel,” says Tracy Smith, general manager at McKinley Chalet Resort, Holland America Princess Alaska-Yukon. “It’s open and has lots of energy, and we do have the ability to make large tables in there.”

Like Fannie Q’s (both are owned by Holland America Princess), Karstens offers twelve Alaska beers on tap and craft cocktails featuring unique Alaska ingredients.

When Prey Pub & Eatery opened in 2012 as Prey, its one-word name created confusion.

“People didn’t really understand what it was,” says Chris Hudson, general manager. “It was just Prey, so people thought it was a church.”

A name change and exterior facelift in 2019 make clear the pub nourishes the body, not the soul. The American-style pub fare menu features sandwiches; caribou meatloaf; a burger made with a mix of bison, Wagyu beef, elk, and wild boar; Alaska seafood; and prime rib.

The 68-seat dining room can accommodate small to mid-size groups with advance notice. Groups can order straight off the menu, but Hudson says most request a pared-down menu that coincides with the group’s prepaid dining budget.

Without advance notice, Hudson’s advice is to be flexible.

Everything at The Perch Restaurant is made in-house from scratch using local ingredients as much as possible, like these handcut pappardelle noodles using Alaska barley flour.

The Perch Restaurant

“We have to be very calculated about it,” he says. “Small groups, ten to twenty people, are a bit easier. But for the larger groups, we recommend coming very early, when we open, or late in the evening.”

Prey Pub & Eatery is about ten miles south of Glitter Gulch, near the airstrip outside of the park. Farther south, perched above Carlo Creek about twelve miles from the park entrance, is The Perch.

Karstens Public House features casual Alaska fare with appetizers perfect for group sharing.

Holland America Princess

Fannie Q’s Saloon serves American fare that hits the sweet spot between casual and formal, along with craft cocktails featuring Alaska spirits and beers from Alaska breweries.

Holland America Princess

The restaurant has undergone “a bazillion different iterations” since co-owner Jessica Rinck’s mother-in-law opened it in the ‘90s. The most recent, which Rinck and her husband settled on when they purchased The Perch five years ago, is American bistro-style fare. The menu focuses on scratch cooking using fresh, local ingredients.

“The bread, the sauces, the pasta, everything is made from scratch in-house with a really small team and people who are just committed to the art of making really good food,” Rinck says.

The restaurant often welcomes small, independent tour groups, which are booked months in advance. Rinck says the restaurant accommodates groups without advanced notice when possible, but they must call ahead of time rather than just walking in; the restaurant switched to reservation-only during the pandemic.

The Perch’s sister restaurant in the Carlo Creek area is Panorama Pizza Pub, which Rinck and her husband also own. The couple renovated the restaurant in 2018 and debuted a menu that was the same, but different.

“The restaurant’s stayed pretty steadfast, but when times change, we try to stay on trend as much as possible,” Rinck says. “So, the menu’s been the same, but changing.”

Translation? Pizza is the star, but more adventurous than basic cheese (though that’s on the menu, too), like the Banh Mi-Oh-My, inspired by the Vietnamese sandwich, or the Berry White, which consists of whipped goat cheese, berries, and caramelized onions and topped with arugula and microgreens. Like The Perch, everything is made from scratch using local ingredients whenever possible.

The pub’s pizza-centric menu simplifies operations, which makes it easier to accommodate large groups, Rinck says, though she still recommends calling ahead.

Panorama Pizza expected to open a spinoff location in the Palmer/Wasilla area last fall, but a fire damaged the building. Their plans for winter cashflow dashed, Rinck and her husband decided to risk opening the Denali Park shop in February, if only on weekends, in defiance of the area’s usual off-season shutdown. They’re counting on shoulder-season recreational travelers. But first, they had to make sure the building’s plumbing would work at all before spring thaw.

“There are so many challenges on a daily basis in food services in remote Alaska,” McCarthy says. “There are so many moving parts, and everything has to be coordinated correctly.”

From the diner’s perspective, it may not be immediately clear why one table of twenty diners is more difficult to serve than five tables with four diners each. Twenty people is twenty people, right?

Not exactly.

“Kitchens are never built, unfortunately, to actually feed every table at the same time,” Scheffer explains. “The grill space or the number of burners that you have, and the number of staff that you have, is really aligned with how much food you can produce at once, so a lot of times we’re controlling the flow.”

Controlling the flow ensures that diners at individual tables get each course at the same time and that a steady stream of food is coming out of the kitchen. Restaurants manage this by staggering seating (which is why you may have a 15-minute wait even though there are empty tables) and spacing food production. Groups of diners interrupt that steady stream by pulling the kitchen’s attention away from the entire dining room and focusing it on a single table.

“We’re trying to provide a great experience for all of our guests, and if a kitchen is focusing on a table of twenty, the rest of the restaurant’s tables are waiting for that food to come out,” says Smith. “The line, each station, is focused only on that table for the most part. There isn’t a trickle of food coming out.”

To alleviate that bottleneck, restaurants typically require that groups make reservations well in advance of their arrival, often long before tourist season even begins. That helps guarantee they’re not overextending themselves on any given night.

“At the beginning of the season I just have to map out where these tour companies are going to go and check availability,” says Rinck. “Then we pin them in where we can.”

Getting seafood, meat, produce, and other essentials to Denali Park has always been a challenge. National food supply chain issues haven’t helped.

“Unfortunately, there are only so many purveyors that supply Alaska,” Scheffer says. Last season, he says Alpenglow Restaurant was on a two-week hold for gluten-free panko, went ten days without bananas, and, when they did have produce, the quality was less than desirable.

“These are constant things that we’re trying to source by running to Fairbanks, driving two hours in a vehicle to buy all the bananas at Costco,” he says.

Logistical relationships with vendors have helped. For example, since 2010 Northern Hospitality Group has been getting its halibut from Kachemak Bay delivered via DiTomaso Produce Company in Anchorage, alongside regular orders of vegetables and fruits. But McCarthy says sometimes the items are unavailable, forcing his restaurants to adapt the menu.

Staffing shortages have also complicated restaurants’ ability to get supplies.

“Trucks weren’t able to get to the location to make the delivery because they didn’t have drivers or hours,” Smith says. “So we would not be getting product at all.”

Due to difficulty with their own staffing, too, restaurants had to adjust, whether it was increasing wages, modifying hours, paring down the menu, or switching to a buffet breakfast because there wasn’t enough staff to provide plated service.

The restaurants’ response in the face of these challenges, and the nimbleness with which they continue to handle them, serve as good advice for diners.

Smith says, “Being flexible and knowing it’s all part of the Alaskan adventure are part of the requirements.