Eating at the New York Café feels like a world food tour but, at the same time, deeply Alaskan. The restaurant has big, almost floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over Stedman Street and the boats moored in Thomas Basin. The menu features things like gnocchi with local seaweed pesto, or a recent special: kimchi and king salmon stew.
“One of our most popular dishes is arroz con pollo,” said Elizabeth Johannsen, the café’s co-owner. “It’s like a Puerto Rican, Caribbean-style chicken and rice dish. It’s a surprise because Caribbean food is not big in Ketchikan, but that particular dish is very popular.”
Johannsen and her partner Raffy Tavidagian took over the restaurant about a decade ago. Johannsen said it’s not just theirs though.
“This is a community building. Like, it’s gorgeous,” Johannsen said, adding that fostering that community is a big part of their business plan. “Lots of our former employees have gone on to do their own small businesses here in town. We want to keep the ball rolling for that. Permanence is what we’re after.”
According to Johannsen, the $50,000 grant they just received could help with that. The New York Café was one of 50 historic restaurants nationwide, and the only business in Alaska, to receive the grant. It was part of a program called Backing Historic Small Restaurants, which is doled out by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.
Johannsen said they plan to use the money to rehab the historic storefront and restore the plaques that honor the work of the minority groups that built the neighborhood, like the Japanese families that founded the New York Café.
“I think that the Japanese contribution to this community is maybe a little understated sometimes, and it deserves a little more light on it for sure,” Johannsen said.
The New York Café was founded around 1903 by a Japanese adventurer named Jasmatsu “George” Ohashi. The Ohashi family still owns a building down the street. After a few years, the restaurant was purchased by another Japanese immigrant family, the Shimizus. At the time, it was located a little further up the road, in the heart of the downtown waterfront.
Stephen Reeve, a local architect and historic preservationist, said the New York Café is the longest running restaurant in Alaska. He’s the one who entered the café into the running for the National Trust for Historic Preservation grant. He was Ketchikan’s first city planner, and he owns the historic building that now houses the New York Café.
He said in the 1920’s the Shimuzu family and their café were forced out of downtown Ketchikan.
“So, around 1924, like what happened in a lot of places in the U.S., immigrants and non-locals were asked to be somewhere else south of the Stedman Street Bridge,” Reeve explained. “A very sad moment in our history.”
So the family moved to the current location, just over the Stedman Street Bridge next to Creek Street. They built the building that currently houses the New York Café, as well as the adjoining hotel, which they named after the café.
According to Reeve, after the family got established and successful in the current building, something else happened: World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans to be forced from their homes and interned in concentration camps.
The Shimuzus, the Ohashis, and other Japanese families in the city were systematically cataloged and displaced. In a 1994 interview with the Ketchikan Daily News, a member of the Ohashi family said the families were split up and spent the next few years between internment camps in New Mexico, Washington, and Idaho.
At the end of the war, the Shimuzu’s returned to Ketchikan. Reeve said that when they got back to the island, they were surprised to find that their neighbors had kept the café running. They had even saved the profits made during the war years, which they returned to the family to help get them back on their feet.
The Shimuzu family ran the café until the 1980’s. Reeve said that the spirit of community support has stayed with the café ever since. Getting the grant wasn’t difficult.
“We’ve known for a long time that this is a historic classic in Alaska,” he said. “A year or two went by of observing the program, and we thought, well, let’s just make an application and go for it.”
This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the current building. Johannsen said they plan to celebrate by bringing together the original Japanese families of Stedman Street, many of whom are still in Ketchikan. Johannsen has been researching recipes for the event.
Get in touch with the author at jack@krbd.org.
