Denali Dining: Roadside restaurants serve customers by the busload.

• Author: Newman, Amy

Tourism 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.

Northern Hospitality

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...