It wasn’t advertising or word of mouth that brought me to Joe Friday’s Alaskan Café. It was, rather, luck (a walk-by) and a healthy dose of depraved curiosity (there are antlers and fireplaces visible from the street). Tucked behind JJ’s Bohemia with a Houston Street address, the building itself is a recently renovated labor of love: a two-story house with porches top and bottom that once suffered from significant structural damage. Today, it’s tidy, and a worthy home for a buttoned-up theme café. Enter the bears.
For whatever reason, Alaskan cuisine hasn’t hit it big, nor has true Alaskan culture. To this, Joe Friday’s turns up its well-kempt nose. The narrow, impressively furnished and perfectly situated space is packed with antlers, vintage outdoor photography, snow shoes and bear memorabilia. On the first floor, decked out with bar stools and high tables, the Alaskan-ness is secondary to the place’s slickness, but up a spiral staircase to the second floor, full of low, plump loungers, it’s a little more apparent that some significant theme injections have been made.
The pièce de résistance, the thing that makes the theme bearable, however, is just outside: a porch with a view down East M.L. King. Imagine your favorite Alaskan tree house. Welcome to Joe Friday’s upstairs deck.
But the food is what matters, no? Joe Friday’s offers some decent weekly specials: $5 sandwiches on Monday; $2.50 breakfast sandwiches on Wednesday, and on Thursdays, (this being Alaska) there’s $6 sushi — a dubious, though admittedly unexplored option. The full menu is less than courageous, but good nonetheless: a nice smoked salmon and bagel plate, homemade soups, and a long list of fancy coffee drinks. Avalanche smoothies (we tried Pineapple) are not necessarily worth the $4.25 in taste, but their presentation is only just shy of that.
Apparently Joe Friday’s is on a well-endowed trajectory to success. Its got an amazing location that’s comfortable if distracting, with a reasonable menu and a killer view. And it inspires the restaurant-frontierism we all get in new, unexplored joints; it’s still got that new car smell. So what’s the catch?
It’s a college dig, no question about it, and the hours are a testament to that: 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday only. While a casual lunch is a noble way to honor this place, the special pleasure of setting up camp in the Alaskan frontier is reserved for the part-timers, students and telecommuters among us. Or perhaps you could pencil in some time to meet the bears? Give them my best, and enjoy.
Veronique Bergeron
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