Photo by ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News
Executive Chef Darryl Matanane displays pan-seared halibut topped with Asian pesto crust, served over Thai stir-fried snowflake noodles and drizzled with sweet chili and Thai basil, at The Bridge on Nov. 23, 2005.
The Bridge Salmon Bake & Grille
Restaurant over creek caters to creative, conservative palates
Published: November 30, 2005
Last Modified: June 29, 2006 at 03:58 AM
You may try it for the novelty, but you'll come back for all the rest: the creative menu, the attention to detail, the comfortable feeling and the stark beauty of the frozen creek out the window.
The recently opened Bridge restaurant squats off the edge of the city, over the bluff and down in the railroad yard, what managing partner Ashi Samarasingher calls "down-downtown."
The fact that it's built on a short old bridge over Ship Creek has earned it the glancing gee-whiz that eccentric ideas attract. The fact that it's clearly designed to pack in tourists from the nearby Comfort Inn during the season might put off some serious diners. Both facts are irrelevant. This is a restaurant you'll want to add to the list of places you consider whenever you go out to eat.
Ashi -- he encourages people to use his first name -- was born in Sri Lanka and came to Alaska in the 1980s after living for years in Hawaii, a place many Alaskans know as a couple of dots in the middle of the Pacific where foods from East and West meet and mingle. This trail from East to West, from ancient culture to the Alaska nouveau, has produced some interesting food combinations.
The Bridge menu is classic fusion (familiar dishes infused with ethnic ingredients): crab and mango roll; grilled pork ribs with raspberry-guava-chili sauce; fettuccine, spinach and Roma tomatoes with lemon grass ginger sauce; soy marinated salmon with mango salsa; curry Hollandaise filet mignon.
Not into new thrills? No problem. There's also chicken and rice soup, burgers on kaiser buns, a barbecued shredded pork sandwich and crab legs with vegetables and rice.
Ashi worked in the Anchorage food industry for 20 years, starting at the now-defunct Northern Lights Inn, later at the Hilton as food and beverage manager and at the Westmark Hotel. He catered events at the 4th Avenue Theatre, worked on contract for the railroad and at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, all the while studying the market and designing the restaurant he planned to run someday.
"I wanted something very different from anyplace else in town," he said. "The food concept ... it just hit me. I wanted something bridging cultural food, the old and the near."
In contrast to the complexly flavored food, the interior of the restaurant is almost austere: warm, muted colors, historic Ship Creek photographs on the walls -- from the railroad's collection, Ashi said. The furniture is made of wood, square and solid. The silverware is heavy in your hand. The sound echoes the food: so-called world music, loosely defined as ethnic music infused with American jazz and even some rock.
Despite the carefully crafted concept, The Bridge is unexpectedly comfortable. Not kitschy fern, faded upholstery comfortable. But relaxed, friendly, competent comfortable. Solidly comfortable.
And out the window (be sure to ask for a window table) is the creek, wearing its winter dress of sculpted ice, cold, black water still racing through open leads. No, the concrete pillars of the Government Hill bridge aren't all that aesthetic, but it doesn't seem to matter.
As for food recommendations, it depends on whether you prefer familiar or adventuresome. On a lunch visit, we had Thai chicken with coconut curry sauce, then cooled off with cardamom and pistachio ice cream; we also tried grilled asparagus and tomato salad with fireweed honey vinaigrette and caramelized cashews, followed by chocolate pyramid for dessert.
The mix of coconut and curry, of sweet layered with just a little heat, was pleasing. Portions were what a normal human needs for a meal -- not supersized but also not a beautifully arranged radicchio stem with two perfect lima beans favored by some hoity-toity fine-dining establishments around town. (All right, that's an exaggeration. But you know what we mean).
On a dinner visit, we dug into the curry Hollandaise filet, a neat and tasty combination of familiar and unusual.
The food was all good. Maybe the Thai grilled pork ribs we tried as an appetizer on one visit were a little fatty. But, hey, ribs ain't no diet food, and the flower-topped presentation was great.
The chocolate pyramid was very chocolaty but a tad too reminiscent of the silk pie company that used to supply most of the restaurants in town with its odd desserts. We're looking forward to the creme brulee and the pineapple-macadamia nut bread pudding on our next visit.
The truth is, complaints about The Bridge food are just nit-picking, in the category of nobody's perfect with everything all the time.
The prices range from $8 to $14 for lunch entrees, with the $14 attached to the pan seared halibut and the $8 to a Caesar salad.
Appetizers at lunch and dinner run from $8 to $13.
Dinner salads are $8 for greens and $11 for those with meat. Dinner entrees are priced from $17 (Tandori chicken) to $30 (filet mignon). Beer and wine are available.
If you're someone who doesn't go downtown much, don't let The Bridge's location deter you. It's actually simple to get to: Go down E Street, past the Hilton, down the hill past the Eisenhower memorial, and just follow that road. Head for the Comfort Inn, which is big and visible, or the Ulu Factory. The Bridge is behind them.
(Diane Kaplan contributed
to this review.)
• Got a restaurant tip, a new menu, a favorite dish or a chef change? Contact Daily News food reviewer Sheila Toomey at stoomey@adn.com.
The Bridge
**** $$
Location: 221 W. Ship Creek Drive
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday.
Phone: 677-6771 for reservations, recommended for dinner.
Web: www.thebridgesalmonbakeandgrill. com
