Mother-daughter duo hopes homestyle food will be a hit in Wasilla

WASILLA — Frills aren’t on the menu at Wasilla’s newest burger joint.

“We believe in the food,” said manager Gwen Harbuck on Tuesday, one day after the Loose Moose Cafe held its grand opening in the Value Village strip mall along the Parks Highway.

The restaurant specializes in gourmet burgers and sausages made from buffalo, reindeer, beef and pork supplied by Indian Valley Meats. The meat (there’s also a chicken sandwich, halibut sandwich and black bean burger) is served up cooked to order on a plain bun with a side of French or sweet potato fries. All the fixings — lettuce, onions, tomatoes, pickles, relish, jalapenos, sauerkraut and condiments — are kept at a build-your-own-burger bar near the counter for customers to add themselves. It’s a system owner Kathryn Wuitschick (Harbuck’s mom) said works much better for both customers and employees.

“Economically I figured out that my loss was minimal, because no waste,” Wuitschick said during a post-lunch lull.

And with two burger bars, traffic jams shouldn’t be a problem, she said.

“If I have a party of 25 people it might back up a few minutes, but we stagger the food where most of the time there’s not too much of a line,” she said.

The restaurant’s bright interior is decorated with pictures of moose and furnished with wooden tables and chairs. Between the burger bar and the family-friendly Alaskana vibe, the women hope their restaurant makes customers feel like they’re guests in someone’s home.

“We want people to come on in and sit down and talk and eat,” Harbuck said between flipping a burger in the restaurant’s sparse, shiny kitchen. “That’s how Alaska feels to us. We want everyone to feel like we know you.”

The duo’s down-home demeanor isn’t an act. Wuitschick started busing tables and washing dishes as a 12-year-old growing up in Indiana in the 1960s. It didn’t take long for her to make an impression.

“They had me on the floor within five days,” she said. “I was a big 12-year-old.”

She’s been working in the restaurant business ever since, running a variety of ventures from food carts to restaurants. Often with her daughter helping out, Wuitschick has run everything from kabob stands at fairs and carnivals to food trucks at bluegrass festivals.

“We’ve tried it all,” Harbuck said.

She would know. If anyone has spent as much time in restaurants as Wuitschick, it’s her daughter.

“I started younger than she did,” Harbuck said.

For the past five years, Wuitschick ran the original Loose Moose Café in Fairbanks, which she closed earlier this winter to move to the Mat-Su in order to be closer to home. She and her husband, Doug Drum, live in Indian Valley south of Anchorage, where Drum and his daughters own Indian Valley Meats. The first Loose Moose restaurant built up a loyal following in the Golden Heart City, and between its success and her existing familiarity with the Mat-Su, Wuitschik figured Wasilla would be a good place to start another restaurant.

“The Valley has always wanted more of our products out here,” she said. “We’ve been coming here for years.”

Harbuck and Carolyn Ladue will manage the restaurant and Wuitschick will stop in from time to time to help out as well as do much of the ordering.

“I’m free labor,” she said.

The family’s philosophy on food is based on freshness and simplicity.

“If it’s not good I don’t want it on my bar,” Wuitschick said.

Having the fixings in a chilled burger bar, she explained, both cuts down on waste and keeps the kitchen clean. And without cooks having to prep the buns, the food comes out quicker and allows people to dress their burger or sausage any way they like.

In addition to the menu items, the restaurant also sells a variety of Indian Valley sausages, salmon and jerky in both shelf-stable and frozen packages. They’ve also got Wuitschick’s specialty mustard, t-shirts and aprons for sale featuring the restaurant’s goofily-grinning bull moose mascot.

Wuitschick credited her daughter and son-in-law with providing much of the manual labor needed to get the restaurant ready for business.

“They spend hundreds of hours in here,” she said.

Harbuck’s work ethic is a trait she inherited from her hard-working mom — who she hopes to make proud with the family’s newest venture.

“I want it to be successful for her,” Harbuck said.

After watching and helping her mom feed hungry Alaskans for much of her life, Harbuck said she thinks she’s figured out the secret to success.

“No matter what if you’re willing to work hard you can make it in life,” she said.

Contact Frontiersman editor Matt Tunseth at 352-2268 or news@frontiersman.com

Loose Moose Café

431 W. Parks Highway

Open 7 days a week, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

(907) 373-3332