"am Anchorage born and raised, and my family has been going to the Double Musky for nearly two decades. We have, until today, considered it the best restaurant in the Anchorage area and considered it a dependable option for special occasions. For instance, we ate here with friends and extended family to celebrate my high school graduation. We speak of the peppersteak to visitors like it 's a mythical thing, and we recommend the place to anyone we know who is visiting Alaska for the first time. But all that is going to change. We visited the Double Musky today for the first time in about five years, and we were incredibly disappointed with the declining quality of food and the treatment we experienced. Since my previous visits, I have become vegan. I frequently feel embarrassed about the difficulties and inconveniences for others that come with having the diet I have, and I do everything I can to minimize those inconveniences. I try, and according to many, succeed, in being the most easygoing vegan they 've met. Therefore, when I go to restaurants that don 't have apparent vegan options, I will take just about anything the kitchen is willing to give me. Despite the Double Musky 's cheese-and-butter-saturated menu in which meats and seafood are the bedrock for each dish, I felt confident coming in with my family because of a TripAdvisor review that mentioned the Double Musky being totally accomodating to a vegan guest. Not to mention that most high-caliber fine dining establishments are used to accommodating customers with special diets, and happy to do so. But when I asked our waitress if anything on the menu could be veganized, she flatly said no. My dad, ever the one to look out for me, pressed and asked Is there nothing the chef can do? The waitress replied, No, there isn 't. He won 't. Then, with an exasperated scoff as though I was being very unreasonable, she offered me a side of steamed vegetables and a dry baked potato. I accepted this arrangement as my only other option was to go completely hungry. To be clear: The dismal excuse for a dinner that I ate at the Double Musky as a vegan is far less of a problem than the condescension that was part and parcel to it. The waitress, perhaps unintentionally, revealed in her interaction with me that the chef was not incapable, but in fact unwilling to modify any menu item for a vegan diet or produce a special meal for such occasions. This revelation made me feel like I was not welcome in that establishment, and that I was actively looked down on by the very people responsible for making guests feel comfortable and happy and well-fed. A restaurant not having an existing vegan menu item is excusable; contemptuously marginalizing special diets at a restaurant charging such high prices for entrees is not. I am far from the only vegan in the world nor will I be the last to visit the Double Musky, especially those of us who have families and friends that do not share our diet, and it depresses me to think that a restaurant that I used to hold in high regard is unabashedly dismissive of guests like me. I almost wish I had invented some health excuse for my special diet (lactose intolerancy, perhaps? just to see if the chef might then deign to stoop to my culinary level. We were determined not to let this poor treatment ruin our evening, though, so I did my best to grin and bear it and hope that my non-vegan family members would each thoroughly enjoy their meals. Seeing them happy would have made the visit more than worth it for me. Unfortunately, I also found myself disappointed in this respect. My family ordered the crawfish dip and the potato skin appetizers, and found the former to be notably less tasty than in the past, with each of them noting the strange difference of the jalapeños in the sauce being pickled. For entrees, they ordered the halibut, the filet, the shrimp pasta, and the peppersteak. There was at least one complaint about every dish. The halibut was served with too little sauce, the filet was served with vegetables that were undercooked, and the shrimp pasta was so disappointing that my mom hardly ate it. She said that it was barely seasoned, oily, and had little flavor or garlic despite being advertised as a garlic-heavy dish. Even the peppersteak, which was by far the most well-received meal, was overcooked. My boyfriend, who ordered the peppersteak, told me, This is good. But I 've eaten at Michelin-star restaurants before with prices like this, and it 's not that good. In the face of all this disappointment, we were all left with the same distinct feeling: The Double Musky has gone downhill. Whatever made it special wnd worth the exorbitant price years ago was now somehow gone. Looking around the restaurant, I was struck with the feeling that this was not truly a fine restaurant, but an overpriced and stuffy mainstay held up by the patronage of aging locals and transient tourists. I grabbed a Subway sandwich on the way out of Girdwood to supplement my non-meal. I doubt we will be coming back."
