RESTAURANT NEWS | ALASKA
El Green-Go’s Turns a Decade on Wheels Into an Anchorage Restaurant
EL GREEN GO’S | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Mei Chen
5:21 a.m. MT, June 21, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Mei Chen has worked for nearly a dozen start-ups in as many years, taking her to several West Coast cities. While she’s sure her current day job is permanent, she also has her eye on Carmel.
The clearest sign that El Green-Go’s has become a full-size restaurant may be the Cubano.
Crystal and Tyler Howie wanted to serve the sandwich from their Anchorage food truck, but the panini press required more real estate than they could surrender. Food trucks demand ruthless calculations. Every piece of equipment must justify the inches it occupies. At the new El Green-Go’s restaurant, the press fits. So does a walk-in cooler reportedly about the size of the entire truck.
The Howies now have a permanent Anchorage home to a business they’ve operated downtown for a decade. The restaurant follows the truck’s familiar approach, combining Mexican dishes with Caribbean flavors, French cooking techniques, organic ingredients, and an emphasis on local sourcing.
That produces a menu that keeps tacos from becoming predictable. The Green-Go version adds corn fresca and shredded cabbage, while Southern tacos arrive with watermelon fresca. Alaska appears where it should: Diners can order tacos filled with halibut or salmon. There are also chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, breakfast burritos, and the newly liberated El Cubano, pressed with smoked pork, cotto prosciutto, Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickles.
The restaurant was the original plan. Tyler Howie had spent years working in the industry and prepared a business proposal, but financing became difficult to secure. He bought a gutted trailer instead. Crystal Howie, then his new girlfriend, joined him for an early festival that involved an all-night preparation session, a 150-pound pig, and an Alaska windstorm. Their relationship survived. The truck did too.
The couple considered making the leap to a restaurant for years, including a previous attempt halted as the pandemic began. Their new East Anchorage location was small enough to remain manageable and already partly constructed, sparing them some of the cost of building a restaurant in Alaska.
El Green-Go’s now has tables, breakfast seven days a week, and space to store more than a day’s worth of ingredients. After 10 years of proving the idea inside a trailer, the Howies finally have a restaurant large enough to let the menu stretch out.
Cameron Rolka and Sarah Welch opened Umbo, a 25-seat oyster bar in Traverse City.
By MARIA RODRIGUEZ
