I can't tell if all the reindeer in Alaska, such as the $5 sausage served with pickles and grilled onions in downtown Anchorage, is a gimmick for summer tourists or a traditional part of the Pacific Northwest table. But it sure is everywhere, in fusion dishes like the reindeer chili, served with corn chips, and in reindeer salchipapas, grilled reindeer sausage served on a bed of grilled potatoes and chimichurri sauce.
There's also oodles of smoked fish and fried fish, such as the popular beer battered, fried halibut, every type of jerky you could possibly imagine, and Russian treats like piroshky, yeast dough with ground beef and cheese sold at street fairs.
Some advice: If you go to Alaska, better bone up on your salmon factoids, as it's all Alaskans talk about (at least the tour guides). There are apparently five types of Pacific salmon, chum, coho (silver), chinook (king), sockeye (red) and pink (humpy). I won't pretend to fully understand the "life cycle," but I'm told salmon start as eggs, hatch into alevin, start swimming around as fry and either spend a few years in the river or go straight out to sea as smolts, where they grow into adults for 1 to 6 years before heading back to their birthplace to breed.
