Sitka’s culinary scene will be coming to television screens around the country this spring. Former child actor and film producer David Moscow recently visited the island community to film an episode of his show “From Scratch” in collaboration with Beak restaurant. Between jaunts pulling bull kelp out of Sitka Sound and foraging for cranberries, Moscow sat down with KCAW’s Meredith Redick to talk about food, foraging, and filming in Southeast Alaska.
MOSCOW: I produce and host a show called “From Scratch.” It is a travel and food documentary series, and we meet with a chef somewhere around the world. They make a meal, I taste it, figure out all the ingredients, and go out and source all those ingredients – harvesting, hunting, fishing, foraging. I come back and then I have a week and try and remake the dish with the chef.
KCAW: Can you tell me about your experience hunting, fishing and foraging in Sitka so far?
MOSCOW: Well, so that’s at the heart – I mean, I kind of went high-minded, but at the heart of the show is the adventure of food sourcing. I’m here working with Renee at Beak, and she made two incredible dishes for me. And as soon as I walked out the door, like, reality hit me. It is November in Alaska. Not a lot of green stuff in the ground. What am I going to get? And then it turned out that one of the fish I couldn’t even get because non-Alaskans can’t harvest at this time of year. [KCAW: what was that?] Rockfish. But we heard rumors that there were still wild cranberries up in the bogs on the mountains. And then we had mushrooms. And we couldn’t find a guide to take me to go get the mushrooms. So for the first time on the show, I went, and I’m not a mushroomer. I went by myself to try and find mushrooms, which was scary for me. And luckily, we got some that were the right kind. And yeah, the whole thing was kismet. First of all, you know, Beak is an incredible restaurant. Sitka is a gorgeous town and incredible place. This is a food destination.
KCAW: So you weren’t allowed to harvest rockfish because of regulations. What did you end up with?
MOSCOW: Well, people have to watch it. Maybe I got it. Maybe I didn’t.
KCAW: Oh, okay, right.
MOSCOW: Yeah. The scariest moment was when we went out for bull kelp on two little boats in like – I don’t know what was going on with the water at that point, but the swells were like nine-feeters. It was crazy. And we had professors from the college over here, and they are insane. These three women were wild. My crew was huddled on the bottom of the boat.
KCAW: You said something about Sitka being a food destination. And that surprises me because, you know, I think about our grocery store prices. And I think a lot of people here subsist because it feels like there aren’t a lot of options.
MOSCOW: But that’s special, right? Like the fact that everyone has, all winter long, an insane amount of protein in their freezer, and then you come to a place like Beak or a number of the other restaurants in town, and they are using ingredients from right here on their menus. And so it’s of the place, it’s of the time, and it’s interwoven.
KCAW: Is it accurate to say that food, then, is sort of a vessel for a bigger message you’re trying to communicate?
MOSCOW: Yeah, I think it really is about how community is tied together. And to show that we all need one another. I think Americans sometimes think that, you know, I did this by myself, I’m on an island, I pull myself up by my bootstraps, and it’s frankly not true. Like, if you eat a slice of pizza, it took 68 people to make that pizza. So there’s a web. [KCAW: Is that specific, that number?] That’s when I made my pizza, it took 68 people to make it. There is a web of community that holds us all up and feeds us the most important sustenance. And so, you know, one of the things we realized on this journey is that it’s not just about community. It’s also about how we treat the planet. If we keep going in this direction around food production and around pollution, we’re in very serious trouble. And you see that in, food producers are at the frontlines of global climate change, of economic justice, of social justice. And so it becomes clearer and clearer everywhere I go.
The episode featuring Sitka and Beak restaurant is scheduled to air in February 2024. You can learn more about the show at www.discoverfromscratch.com.
