Pepe's North of the Border

The best Mexican food I have ever had on US soil was in a very unlikely place, Barrow, Alaska.

After two weeks at our camp on the tundra we had flown back to Barrow. All the kids lived in town and hurried home to show their parents the crafts they had made and tell them of their adventures.

Our flight to Anchorage was not until the next day so my comrades and I were spending the night at the the local youth club. We got settled in and decide to see the sights. We walked along the beach and through the town. It was getting late and we decided to have dinner before calling it a night. We walked over to restaurant which from the outside was just a gray building with no distinguishing features. We were not prepared for what we would see when we opened the door.

Our senses were immediately assaulted by color, mind boggling, eye-popping color. There were pinatas, paper flowers and rugs. Everything in true Mexican style, except for the whale bones. We had just entered Pepe's North of the Border.

Pepe's was opened in the late seventies by Fran Tate. Her story is an adventure all it's own. She came to Barrow in 1970, leaving behind a string of ex-husbands, and worked a variety of jobs including truck driver and oil field roustabout. What she started as a small restaurant which seated about forty people now seats over two hundred and has become a tourist destination.

In 1984 Fran appeared on the Johnny Carson show. She presented Johnny with a special Alaska souvenir, an oosik. You see these from time to time in the Alaska gift shops, they are usually highly polished and sometimes carved. They were sometimes used as clubs. An oosik is the bone from a walrus penis and is about three feet long. After Fran explained to him what it was Johnny said, "Somewhere, there's one unhappy walrus!".

Fran herself served our dinner and sat and talked with us for awhile. It was pretty obvious we were not locals. After hearing our story she gave each of us a Pepe's mug and invited us to come back anytime.

Want to know more? Click on the link below.

ODE TO AN OOSIK