Restaurants in Knik-Fairview

After years of managing other people’s restaurants, Tinker Berson realized a long-cherished dream by opening her own deli, where a menu of lunches and all-day breakfasts stuffs diners amid verdant potted plants and climbing vines. Clients opt for the simplicity of staff-conceived deli creations or engineer their own, choosing a bread base, favorite condiments, meat such as pastrami or roast beef, cheese, and veggies to match the size of their appetite or one-up a lifelong rival sandwich eater. Breakfasts beckon morning diners with similar creative possibilities as well as quick bites, such as a veggie burrito or belgian waffle drizzled with syrup and topped with strawberries. Fresh salads and real-fruit smoothies with optional Red Bull boosters infuse meals with sweet vitamins, and the onsite espresso bar jump-starts brainwaves with handcrafted caffeine hits that ready minds for Jeopardy tournaments or memorizing the dictionary. Tinker's Rainforest Deli stocks catering trays with vegetables, sandwiches, or assorted meats and cheeses that can feed up to 35 partygoers.

Every month at Paris Bakery Cafe, French chefs lay out a six-course tasting dinner, one for each faux pas Ben Franklin averaged when attending Parisian salons. They draw inspiration from France’s diverse culinary hubs, from the fluffy crepes of Saint-Malo to the seafood and piment d’espelette devoured in the coastal city of Biarritz.

Those monthly dinners are the most lavish display of the eatery’s commitment to authentic French cuisine, which chefs enhance with fresh, local seafood and seasonal veggies. Additionally, master pastry chef Antoine Amouret bakes crusty loaves of French bread daily and pipes meringue onto flaky French pastries.

Amid the cinnamon-laced aroma of deep-fried sopapillas and scent of beef simmering in spicy red sauce, the chefs at Ernesto's Grill bustle about the restaurant’s kitchen assembling traditional Mexican dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The team takes pride in creating the most authentic eats possible—from house-made pork tamales to tortas mexicana. They send platefuls of their culinary creations into the dining room laden with wholesome produce, such as green chilies and juicy tomatoes. Servers assemble orders of guacamole tableside, impressing diners with the dip’s freshness and proving to skeptics that it actually doesn’t come from the guacamole bush.

Executive chef Jimmy Zhou lends his name and almost two decades of sushi-rolling experience to Jimmy’s Sushi Restaurant. His menu of japanese teriyaki entrees and creative sushi rolls garnered praise from Anchorage Press, which described the rolls’ presentation in particular as “incredibly beautiful, almost to the point where it pained me to dig in and ruin Jimmy's work of art.” The Pink Lady roll conceals a core of crab and avocado in a wrapping of fresh salmon, tobiko, and mango sauce, while the Smart Man Alive roll wraps eel under a cover of peppered tuna, scallion, and yuzu sauce. Jimmy’s hand rolls let eaters forego chopsticks with wrapped flavors that include the tuna tataki with seared tuna and ginger radish sauce inside a cone of nori. Anchorage Press reporter Susy Buchanan also commented on the building’s decor, which borrows wooden-dragon carvings from its past as a Chinese buffet while adding an aquarium full of goldfish and plush velvet-trimmed booths with throw pillows to its dining room.