In Bocca Al Lupo

The Restaurant

In Bocca Al Lupo — Italian for "into the wolf's mouth," the traditional phrase used to wish someone good luck — opened in March 2016 at 120 2nd Street in downtown Juneau, Alaska. From the moment it launched, Chef Beau Schooler's kitchen operated with an ambition entirely disproportionate to its geography: handmade pasta, wood-fired pizza, seasonal specials built around whatever the fishing boats brought in and the foragers found on the hillsides above the city.

Chef Schooler has received six James Beard Award nominations — four of them at Lupo. In 2023, the New York Times sent food critics to Alaska and named In Bocca Al Lupo to its list of the fifty best restaurants in the United States. The recognition confirmed what anyone who had eaten there already knew: this is not a great restaurant "for Alaska." It is simply a great restaurant.

The dining room is warm and intimate — exposed brick, candlelight, and the kind of carefully assembled detail that speaks to a chef who cares about everything that happens before and after the plate arrives. The menu centres on handmade pasta — pappardelle dressed with local king crab, ricotta-filled shapes with wild mushroom, long noodles enriched with the brown butter and sage that Italy perfected centuries ago. Wood-fired pizza from the same dough tradition adds char and simplicity. The specials sheet changes with what is available, and that is where the cooking becomes genuinely extraordinary: fresh Alaskan seafood prepared with Italian technique, seasonal produce from the Alaskan growing season, flavours that could only come from this specific confluence of place and preparation.

In Bocca Al Lupo is open for dinner only, Tuesday through Saturday, from 5 pm to 9 pm. Reservations are required and fill quickly in summer. The restaurant does not take walk-ins during the peak cruise season from May through September. Plan ahead — this is worth planning for.

Best Occasion Fit

For a first date in Juneau, In Bocca Al Lupo is the answer without question. The restaurant is intimate without being claustrophobic, warm without being cloying, and the quality of the food generates effortless conversation — you will spend the evening talking about what you're eating, and that is the best conversational lubricant there is. Telling someone you're taking them to a New York Times 50 Best restaurant in Alaska is itself a statement about the kind of person you are.

For impressing clients, nothing else in Juneau comes close. A business dinner at In Bocca Al Lupo signals taste, knowledge, and the confidence to take someone somewhere unexpected. If you're conducting state government business, lobbying, or entertaining a visiting executive, this kitchen makes you look sophisticated in any city on earth — the fact that you found it in Juneau makes you look extraordinary.

For a proposal, the intimacy of the room, the calibre of the cooking, and the improbability of the setting combine into something genuinely once-in-a-lifetime. Say it over the handmade pasta. They will never forget it.