Chefs step it up with innovative, high quality dishes at The Hotel Alyeska

Introducing the Kobe beef burger and fresh, organic local produce

By Ken Smith
Turnagain Times

The butcher, the baker and the chef, that’s who’s in the kitchen at The Hotel Alyeska, and they’re making the food look and taste better than ever.

Jason Porter is the head chef for the Aurora Bar and Grill, the upscale, and somewhat recently renovated lounge and bar on the third floor of the hotel. He is joined by butcher and chef, Emerson Delucia, who started working at Alyeska in March of 2009, and new pastry chef, Judy Palmer, who was hired just before the summer season.

The menu at the Aurora has also been revamped, starting with the lunch menu and introducing the Kobe Blend Burger ($13), which they began serving a couple of months ago.

Yes, Kobe beef burgers. And you can taste the difference in this very lean, high quality burger made up of 75 percent Kobe beef and 25 percent Angus beef.

“Before you couldn’t order it (Kobe beef) except as a special order,” said Porter, as we sat down in the Aurora bar along with Delucia. “There are certain levels of Kobe. At the seven Glaciers you get a higher level.”

The Kobe beef comes from Snake River Farms out of Idaho, a sustainable green ranch where Porter also gets his pork.

The half-pound Kobe beef burger served at the Aurora is a good combination of lean beef, especially for the health conscious trying to watch their cholesterol, like this reporter. And the taste is out of this world. Grilled to perfection with a nice charbroiled flavor.

“It’s a heritage breed,” Porter said of the cattle raised at Snake Farm. “It’s a single bloodline and not overbred like some American beef. The original beef came from Japan, and they brought animals over gradually over the last 10 years of introduction.”

On the entrée menu at the Aurora, you can also order the Kobe Beef Steak—a New York strip ($26).

Along with the beef, the pork chop served is also from pigs bred at Snake River Farms and of the highest quality. The Kurobuta Pork Chop ($22) is a bone-in 10-ounce pork chop grilled medium rare, as I requested. Leave it a little pink in the middle, Jason suggested. And he was right. Perfection. And the best pork chop I’ve ever had. It’s a combination of a high quality pork cut along with a great brine. That’s right, brine—12 to 18 hours brined in salt, water, peppercorn, bay leaf and some other good ingredients, which will remain secret.

But it all starts with the quality of the meat and the cut—and it’s pork from the highly sought after Black Berkshire pig.

“There’s a better marbling of the pork,” Porter said. “Kurobuta is also a single bloodline American pork. It’s noticeably a better cut of meat.”

Enter Delucia, who was asked to start training and learning how to be a butcher.

“My prime focus has been as a chef,” said Delucia—a chef for 30 years. “As a butcher, I’m still taking lessons, learning the skill of butchering.”

Prior to coming to Alyeska, Delucia, 46, worked in Lake Tahoe at Ridge Tahoe Resort and a the highly popular and famous Chart House Restaurant in Lake Tahoe, well known as a top quality seafood and steakhouse restaurant.

Now he’s bringing his talents to Alyeska while keeping his expectations as a butcher simple.

“My goal is to utilize everything, so we’re not wasting anything,” he said.

Delucia prepares food for all the outlets at the resort, making stocks, chili and seafood chowder for the Daylodge and Tramway café at the top of the mountain. He contributes on all fronts, not just the fine cuisine.

“We make our own fresh stocks,” Delucia said. “Beef stock, chicken stock, de-bone the chicken for Teppanyaki cooking.”

By the end of the summer, he hopes to have a sausage making machine to make links in the kitchen, but for now he’s only making patties by hand using Italian, caribou, chorizo and reindeer sausage. He also cuts all the steaks individually and fillets whole fish, like kings salmon, and makes use of all the scraps.

Also exciting this summer at Alyeska is the fresh produce being served, bought from local growers in the Palmer area. Lettuces and potatoes are all Alaskan grown.

“As it becomes available, we’re going to use it,” Porter said. “It’s the first season, so we’ll see how it goes.”

He said the bulk of the produce comes from their distributor, DiTamosso, but the opportunity to add locally grown produce is a big selling point on the menu and makes for fresher food, while supporting local farmers.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to really showcase that,” Porter said. “They’re talking to us about setting up side plots like squash if we have a need for it.”

Finally, Alyeska welcomes its new pastry chef, Judy Palmer, who joined the Alyeska cooking team this summer. She has been creating culinary confections for over 33 years and arrives in Girdwood from Scottsdale, Ariz.

She has been the coordinating pastry chef at the Cannes Film Festival in France and Sundance Festival for five years. As an Executive Pastry Chef of the Arizona Biltmore, Palmer was a featured chef at the James Beard House in September of 2004, and previously worked as the Executive Pastry Chef at the five-star Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. for six years after transferring from the five-star Princeville Resort on the North Shore of Kauai.

She even operated her own bakery, Ganache This!, in Scottsdale, supplying such clients as the Hotel Del Coronado, San Diego, and the Ritz Carlton in Palm Desert, Cal.

It’s an impressive resume, and so to are the expectations of what Palmer can produce in the back kitchen.

Currently Palmer makes wedding cakes and all the desserts for the Tramway Café and the Teppanyaki Sakura restaurant. From large bulk orders of chocolate, she also makes truffles, a variety of candy and chocolate moraine cakes, and many more sweet delights.

It’s the start of something special at The Hotel Alyeska. Fine food in what has long been one of the state’s finest hotels. And now Alyeska is living up to the expectations of a four-season resort, not only on the mountain and in the hotel, but at the dining table as well.