Fairbanks, Alaska, home to 31,000 residents plus military personnel, has emerged as an unexpected food mecca despite its remote location six hours inland from Anchorage. The city offers a surprising variety: Thai, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Cuban, and even one of the few Moldovan restaurants in the United States.
Thai Roots in Alaska
Charlie Boonprasert and Tutu Navachai arrived in Fairbanks in the 1980s to work at a gold lease, mining and cooking. Originally from northern Thailand, they found a small Thai population yearning for home flavors. In 1989, they opened Thai House, initially a hole-in-the-wall downtown. Today, Boonprasert's wife Laong runs the restaurant, serving gai yang, tom yum kung, and pad thai, using recipes from their region but less spicy.
Navachai later opened Lemongrass Thai restaurant in 1996 on the other side of town, now run with his two sons. One son operates a Lemongrass in Thailand. They source ingredients from trips back to Thailand, bringing herbs, utensils, and a specific yellow curry powder from Chiang Mai. US customs often questions the powder, according to son Natt.
Adapting to Local Conditions
In early days, restaurants got basics from Carl's Foodland, now the Co-op Market Grocery & Deli, Alaska's first retail food cooperative. When supplies ran low, they used substitutes or adjusted recipes. Lemongrass now uses locally-grown vegetables from Ann's Greenhouses, benefiting from 70 days of midnight sun from April to August that create good growing conditions.
Lemongrass was an early adopter of fusion with Alaskan seafood, recommending chu chee scallops sauteed in red curry and coconut milk with green beans, kaffir lime, and bell peppers.
Drive-Thru Thai Huts and Coffee Culture
Drive-thru Thai huts have emerged around Fairbanks, often started by friends and relatives who followed others to the city, trained in restaurants, then opened their own. Alaska runs on coffee, and Fairbanks has many coffee huts offering espressos all day.
Hong Kong-born Jenny Tse founded Sipping Streams Tea Company in 2009 after learning tea-making in China. Her award-winning blends attract video gamers and anime fans who dislike energy drinks. Sipping Streams also works with a hydroponic greenhouse, sending small batch teas to elder groups in villages across Alaska as part of a food sustainability scheme.
Moldovan Cuisine in Fairbanks
Perhaps the most surprising restaurant is Soba, the only Moldovan restaurant in Alaska, opened by Alla and Stanislav Gutsul. Stanislav loved his time as a summer student in 2007 and persuaded Alla to move in 2009. They started with the Acasa food truck in 2016, driven by nostalgia for home. A bricks-and-mortar restaurant followed in 2018. During the pandemic, regulars overpaid for takeout and offered support. They bring back traditional clay pots from biannual trips to Moldova and get spices shipped from Europe via the lower 48.
Fairbanks' culinary diversity stems from geography: big corporations avoid high transport costs, leaving niches for independent family-owned restaurants. A diverse migration population, attracted by Alaska's boom economies, brought tastes of home. There are 15 Thai restaurants in and around Fairbanks, offering hot and spicy food especially welcome when temperatures plummet—in January, it hit minus 50F, the coldest winter in Fairbanks history, according to the National Weather Service.
