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SITKA - Even if you didn't kill it, catch it or pick it yourself, Josh Peavey wants to help the state eat all Alaskan.

Peavey, the executive chef at Bayview Restaurant and Wine Bar in Sitka and the owner of Alaskan Kitchen catering company, recently held an all-Alaskan dinner featuring foodstuffs from the local docks to North Pole.

It was an idea he was inspired to after last summer's Sitka Seafood Festival. He'd always tried to source local product but quickly found out how much more was out there beyond seafood.

"I did a black cod dish, and my recipe kind of evolved over the days of the event," Peavey said. "People kept bringing me different herbs and edible flowers. The original dish kept changing. I ended up doing a really cool herb salad with some kale people dropped off. That got me into it."

On a tip from an Anchorage chef he met at the festival, Peavey hooked up with Jeff Johnson of the HomeGrown Market in Fairbanks for potatoes and barley. Other Fairbanks suppliers included apples from Claire's Cultivations and mustards from Moosetard.

The Sitka Local Foods Network supplied rhubarb, salmon berries, tomatoes, leeks, carrots, onions, chili peppers and mint. Simple Pleasures in Sitka provided jellies, kelp pickles and honey. Elsberry Farm in North Pole provided the pork, Alaska Sausage and Seafood of Anchorage provided the reindeer sausage and the Matanuska Creamery provided the butters and cheeses.

Sitka produced the king salmon (Sitka Sound Seafood) and black cod (Seafood Producers Co-op); the F/V Kariel supplied rockfish and the F/V Katie J provided spot prawns.

The Baranof Brewing Co. - named for Sitka's home island - supplied the India Pale Ale.

For Peavey, 31, it's a long way from his first cooking job flipping burgers at a ski lodge in Flagstaff, Ariz.

"That's the last one of those (jobs) I ever had," Peavey said. "Every other job since has inspired me, working for a great chef, in a cool place, something with a little more romance with it. Once I came up to here to Sitka working with seafood, that's when I fell into it and loved it and haven't looked back since. I wanted to be creative and work on my own or work under chefs who were super-inspired and really good at what they did."

After first moving to Sitka and gaining a passion for cooking at a local hotel under an equally passionate chef, Peavey returned to Arizona for culinary school and eventually became the executive chef at Talon Lodge in Sitka when he was 24.

He started his Alaskan Kitchen catering company five years ago and also spent three months living in Tuscany, Italy.

"I studied a lot and ate a lot," he said. "Mostly ate a lot."

During the slow winter months when the tourists are gone and Sitka residents tend to "hibernate," Peavey said events like the all-Alaskan dinner or a recent "ugly sweater" party are creative ways he's exploring to get people into the restaurant.

In planning for his first all-Alaskan dinner, Peavey was surprised to find his shipping costs within Alaska were competitive with the rates he pays to source product from major suppliers in Seattle. Overnight shipping from Fairbanks was $1 per pound.

"It really makes it worthwhile," he said. "Everything was free range and organic of course."

The catering and special events at Bayview Restaurant - which seats 70 in the main restaurant and 30 in the new wine bar - are keeping Peavey's staff on the clock. He has a staff of himself and about five other cooks. A dinner for 300 needs 10 waitstaff and eight or nine cooks.

"Without catering we'd have about half the staff," he said. "It allows us to keep people employed."

Peavey said there are no limits to his all-Alaskan dinners.

"We can really travel anywhere," he said. "If I have a staff and a kitchen, we can cook anything. It doesn't even have to be in a kitchen. We have equipment and we can cook outdoors, in a tent, anything."

Andrew Jensen can be reached at andrew.jensen@alaskajournal.com.