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JUNEAU - The Zagat Survey seems never to have ventured as far as the Alexander Archipelago. Dining out in Juneau is a hit-or-miss affair, and any guidance for where to find a decent meal is usually relegated to word of mouth.

That was, until Mr. Feedbag came along.

The Fantastic Mr. Feedbag is a new website celebrating and enumerating Juneau, Alaska's food culture. The blog is the brainchild of sister and brother Patrice and Leo Helmar. Under the monikers "Mr. Feedbag" and "Margot Tenenchop," the duo shines a bright lantern into how and where we eat in the capital city.

Their noms de plume are derived from the canon of filmmaker Wes Anderson, and of course you couldn't describe Juneau eating habits without the ubiquitous "feed."

The most striking feature about the reviews of local eateries - besides the fact that they are hilarious - is how honest they are. Through effulgent sentences filled with inventive euphemisms and portmanteaus, Leo describes what he sees as the issues those who eat out in Juneau face. The places are, of course, graded on a local curve.

The blog isn't simply a platform to ridicule sub-par dining experiences, and the trenchant insights might be sourced back to Leo's diet, which consists of food prepared for him by other people.

"If I wrote a review every time I ate out, it would literally be two or three a day," he said. "For me this is something that's near and dear to my heart. This is my life we're talking about."

The blog was created in part in an attempt to name the unnameable that is local dining.

"It basically comes from a situation where you're sitting there with some friends trying to figure out where you're going to eat, and like this eternal question, you know, it has no answer," he said. "I think everyone who lives here has been in that situation before."

Leo said that he thinks it's good to highlight the places that are worthwhile to patronize.

"It's not that Juneau is devoid of anything edible," he said. "There are a couple of weird places that are actually pretty good."

Providing the counterpoint, Patrice has begun chronicling her gastronomic feats. She eschews going out to eat in Juneau, and sticks to her own kitchen, the most reliable place for a solid meal.

"More than one person has said to me that the best food you'll have in Juneau is at other people's houses," she said. "There's an amazing amount of talented home cooks in town."

Patrice's recipes range from haute cuisine like tarragon feta kalamata pignolia stuffed rolled porkchops, to healthier and tastier versions of coleslaw and tuna noodle casserole.

Her confidence as a chef has been engendered by the new website project.

"I was always really nervous about it," she said. "I never thought my cooking was good enough. When Leo told me about the blog, that gave me confidence to cook more."

She can find some of what she needs at local venues, but has to import some items. Having a well-stocked larder is imperative for any cook in Juneau, she said.

"If Dante wrote 'The Divine Comedy' today, he might devote a circle of hell to the five o'clock scramble down to Foodland for the odd clove of garlic for a recipe," she laments.

The siblings grew up in Juneau, which has seen its share of comings and goings in the restaurant business. Though they rarely ate out when they were young, the one place the family would frequent was BaCar's, a former downtown eatery Leo describes as a "wonderful, weird place." There was fresh baked bread, fresh vegetables, meals made from scratch. There was always classical music playing to "class it up."

Because of the cooking grease and cigarette smoke filling the atmosphere, the restaurant would leave its legacy.

"If you ever wore a polar fleece there, it would smell like it for the rest of eternity," Leo said.

A few chain restaurants have now migrated to town and offer up an array of mass-market prepackaged meals, but fast food and the capital city have had a rocky relationship over the years.

"It seemed so perfect and it seemed as if it would last until the end of time, the marriage between Juneau and Taco Bell," Leo recalls. "Things fall apart and it's impossible to assign blame. We've both moved on, although it is still pretty raw for us here in Juneau. It's hard to forget things here in Juneau because we're always weaving the same strand of narrative."

Patrice and Leo were raised with an appreciation of food, with a focus on vegetables from the garden and fresh fish.

"One of my earliest memories is futzing around in the garden with my dad," Patrice said, "probably not helping, but just playing with worms while he planted seeds. He really had a green thumb."

Patrice still keeps a garden in town.

Family dinners were always important in their home. Six o'clock was "dinnertime," and attendance was requisite.

"In our family, that was the one real requirement, that we were there to eat as a family at the table and talk about stuff," she said. "I don't think a lot of Americans really get to experience that anymore."

"It's almost like they were really Old World about it," Leo added. "In a lot of ways we grew up in an anachronistic way."

They also didn't have access to cable television, but they both admit to being mesmerized by the hypnotizing toucans in cereal commercials when they received dubbed videotapes of cartoons.

"I didn't have sugar cereals till I went to college," Patrice said.

A mix of diverse heritage and ancestral pride is the root behind the deeper appreciation of what it means to eat well, being able to provide for one's loved ones. Patrice reminisced about visiting her Greek grandmother as a child.

"She made this pan of spanikopita," she said. "She was so happy to be able to feed her grandchild, and she just stuffed me. It was just the best thing I'd ever had."

At its heart, the blog almost seems like a love letter to anyone eating anything in Juneau, for better or worse. There is a silver lining to every meal, even if it is comprised of a greasy, ghostly outline left on the plate. After describing the repulsion following the consumption of what he declared to be the worst slice of pizza in the city, Leo closes one review with these romantic thoughts:

"That's Juneau on a sunny day in the summer where all the shaggy hippies come down from their mountain dens to congregate in the sun and the town swells with a sense of hope and optimism, or a day with warm rain and a charged feel to the air in the late Spring where the mountains start to become green and hulking with spongy layers of peat and tall grass. The ground aspirates a sweet smell of dank, verdant growth and everything springs to life after a long and lifeless winter in what seems like only one or two of these transformative days. We take whatever small pleasures we can get in Juneau. Yar! I'm starting to feel like Garrison Keillor here, but you get my drift."

For those who want to follow the culinary trials and tribulations of the Fantastic Mr. Feedbag and Margot Tenenchop, or find those golden nuggets in the rough, check out their blog online at thefantasticmrfeedbag.com.

Richard Radford may be reached at richard.radford@capweek.com.