Daily Sitka Sentinel

Gourmet Cafe Expands Sitka Dining Options

By SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writer

Pan-seared Alaska halibut, chipotle shrimp, and fresh mozzarella cheese may not sound like the foods you would find in a hospital cafeteria.

Let alone on a menu and with table service.

But chef Lexie Smith said she doesn’t mind introducing a paradigm shift in hospital cuisine at Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital by introducing the new Island Skillet Espresso Bar and Cafe.

 Lexie Smith (Sentinel Photo)

“I don’t like the notion that hospital food has to be bad,” she said. “I know it’s a feat but it’s definitely my goal to get people to cross the bridge to eat.”

The Island Skillet is open for breakfast and lunch with a five-week rotating menu in a traditional cafeteria line.

For dinner, table service is offered from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday in a restaurant-like setting.

On the dinner menu are a mix of soups, salads, sandwiches and entrees, with prices on the entrees between $17 for a Sitka Sound Alfredo, to $26.95 for a pan-seared Alaska halibut, with citrus beurre blanc sauce, with grilled asparagus and cranberry walnut wild rice.

“The menu has always been quite playful,” Smith said. “There will be some things you may not recognize.”

The cafeteria is on the ground floor of the hospital.

Smith said the goal of the revamped food service is not only to give Sitkans an additional restaurant offering, but offer something interesting for people who come in from the villages for hospital care or are accompanying a family member.

Smith said the kitchen has a multicultural staff, with Filipino, Alaska Native, Norwegian and Jamaican backgrounds, and she has enjoyed working with the staff to create dishes that reflect that.

“They’re teaching me now,” Smith said.

Smith moved to Sitka last summer from New Orleans to take on the job of chef at the hospital. She grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and studied architecture at art school in Savannah, Georgia.

“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I loved the arts,” she said. 

While attending school, she made ends meet by working in a kitchen.

“I thought why not go to school and make a career out of it?”

She earned her culinary degree from Kendall College in Chicago in 2010, and took restaurant jobs at Cochon in New Orleans, Primo in Maine, the Concordia eco-resort on St. John in the Virgin Islands, before moving back to New Orleans to take a job with Sodexo food services. She was working Sodexo as a regional support chef when she heard about the Sitka job opening. She enjoyed her scoping trip on a sunny 4th of July, and was ready for a new adventure.

“I’ve always been able to travel by cooking,” she said. 

The idea of converting the cafeteria into a table service restaurant for 15 hours a week came from feeling she could add to the current offerings in Sitka, and specifically for the hospital staff and those at SEARHC for a family members’ patient care.

“I’m hoping it will appeal to different crowds,” Smith said. “At the end of the day it’s food I enjoy and I think others will too.”

The feedback so far has been good in the first three weeks, and Smith hopes more will try it out.

“The people who come in are pleasantly surprised,” she said.