We’ve had too much doom and gloom around here lately so as promised, we’re continuing with more gratuitous photos of our Alaska and Canadian food on the Alcan highway. 

Start Drooling: Here’s Our Favorite Alaska and Canadian Food on the Alcan

While taking in the sights on our Alaska RV cruise, we ran into an interesting local who gifted us freshly caught salmon. 

Jim and I are 90% vegetarian but we do consume some dairy and indulge in a rare meal of fish. Since we are committed to only eating U.S. (or Canadian) caught fish now, this was a rare treat.  

Store bought salmon cannot compare to fresh caught. Later we learned that Chinook salmon over-fishing is killing the world’s last surviving orca whales, so it looks like our salmon indulgences will be extremely limited now.

After leaving Haines we zipped up to Braeburn to enjoy some of the Alcan’s best and biggest cinnamon rolls. They weren’t kidding. These suckers were huge and they were good!

During our southward jaunt to Hyder, Alaska, there was one restaurant we knew we had to try. Actually, it was the only restaurant in Hyder. 

“The Bus” as it’s dubbed, is run from this charming location off the main Hyder drag. It’s been around for 20 years, making the best fresh fish meals on the planet. Or at least in Hyder.

The Bus is literally a one-woman show, and she’s been cooking for customers for 20 years. Word on the street has it that Diana is going to call it a day next year, so the future of this little eatery is uncertain. We are so thankful we got to enjoy her meals.

Her family members are lifelong anglers in the waters off Hyder. They catch all the fish for the bus and in the old days would sell to the public. But over-fishing of salmon and halibut in Pacific waters has changed all that and they can no longer keep their retail operation going. We were lucky to enjoy halibut on the day we arrived. 

The cost of halibut in grocery stores has gone up so much that now we only buy it when we eat out. This fried halibut burger was such a treat!

The fish and chips was just as tasty. Now do you see why we put on a couple pounds on this journey?

Diana makes her own tartar sauce, which was dreamy. We blew it and forgot to buy some to go. 

Of course being the frugal RVers that we are, we didn’t always eat out for seafood. Jim made me this yummy birthday dinner of Prince Edward Island mussels and clams over pasta. I loved that we stuck to only eating “local” seafood. No more eating toxic shrimp from Vietnam or overfished white fish from India and South America. I’d rather not have any at all than continue to keep poisoning our bodies and polluting the planet with that crap.

Ready for more mollusk love? Check out this meal that we enjoyed at The West Coast Grill in Nelson, BC. 

We didn’t mean to have such a fine meal that day. Their $1 oysters promotion brought us cheapskates in. We were only going to drink and down the oysters, but by the time we arrived, they were all gone so what else could we do?

West Coast Grill has a great appetizer menu so we sat barside and dove into calamari. This batter was incredible: so light and non-oily, and sooo good. But there was one thing missing . . . 

Ah, we found the healthy side to our appetizer meal. And that strawberry balsamic dressing was almost as good as dessert. But not quite. . .  

And the end of our date night, we capped it off with some local BC ice cream.

I know it looks like we ate out the whole time, but we really held back. It wasn’t too hard, because our Alcan road trip was mostly in remote territory with few restaurants that actually appealed to us. When we did eat out, we went big. And consequently, got big too. The booze we drank didn’t do our bodies any extra favors, but Jim will tell you about that on Friday.