Boozy Ice Cream Flights at Steamboat Bay Fishing Club

The chef at a remote Alaska fishing club gets creative with his dessert menu making booze-inspired ice cream flights.

Getting to Steamboat Bay Fishing Club, located on Noyes Island, involves a flight to Ketchikan, another flight on a seaplane to Craig, and then a boat ride to reach the lodge. Once there, guests of the luxury fishing lodge spend their days sport-fishing; their nights are for happy hour by the fire, sharing stories of that day’s catch, and dinner.

Steamboat Bay happy hour

Drinks flow from the open bar during happy hour. Guests choose from top-shelf spirits or enjoy that day’s featured drink alongside appetizers. Dinner is a chef-driven meal followed by dessert.

Each day the bar features a specialty drink. During my visit, I usually ordered my go-to favorite of a Manhattan, but one evening tasted one of the specialty drinks, a delicious mix of grapefruit, bourbon, and ginger beer.

Steamboat drink

With a lack of local produce and other fresh foods peril to spoilage, the chef at this remote lodge gets creative in compiling the menu. On the dessert menu, each evening brings a sorbet and two ice creams, different flavors churned earlier in the day. The ice cream flavors he picks each day often revolve around old-time favorites that remind us of childhood but are prepared for adults.

View from seaplane

“I think of childhood memories and anything that I can mix with alcohol. For example, I like to drink hot cocoa, but I want to put a little whiskey in it,”
– Chef Harris

The flavors have gone over well with the adult guests who come to the lodge to log 10 hours a day fishing in hopes of catching mammoth lingcod, halibut, or King salmon, and enjoy the happy hour and formal dinner that follow each evening.

Ferry boat

White Russian, Rum Raisin, Dark Chocolate Cherry, and Mango Sorbet are among some of the well-received flavors.

At the end of the trip, guests return home well fed and with a freezer full of fish to last them until they return the next season.