One Anchorage restaurant keeps getting caught serving with expired cards

A routine sweep of Alaska bars and restaurants turned up a familiar problem this spring: servers pouring drinks with expired or missing alcohol-server cards — and at one Anchorage restaurant, it's a problem regulators have flagged five times in four years.

State law is straightforward. Anyone serving alcohol in Alaska must hold a current server-education card. The cards exist for a reason: the training teaches workers to spot fake IDs, recognize when someone's had too much, and refuse the sale.

Between November and May, the Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office cited six businesses across Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Kenai for letting cards lapse — some for months — and issued a seventh notice that drew no citation because it fell inside the grace period.

The standout is Seoul Casa, a Korean-Mexican spot on East Dimond in Anchorage.

An AMCO investigator watched an employee serve alcohol during a May inspection, then confirmed the worker's card had expired back in January — lapsed more than four months. What makes it notable isn't this single citation but the pattern behind it: it's the fifth notice the establishment has drawn since 2022, a record that spans repeated server-card violations, licensee-responsibility findings, and an unauthorized license transfer.

Owner Andrew Cho told AMCO he's now filed all the cards in one place and will check them monthly — a corrective step that appears in none of the four prior records. With a history like that, the business risks a hearing before the Alcoholic Control Board, which can suspend or revoke a liquor license.

Kenai's Playa Azul shows a milder version of the same recurrence, cited again after an employee's card expired in earlier this year, on top of prior notices in 2023 and 2025.

The rest were first-time or one-off lapses: Asia Gardens in Anchorage, the Back Door Lounge in Kenai, Silver Gulch in Anchorage, and The Cabin in Fairbanks.

Little Italy in Anchorage got the no-citation notice and proved current training four days later.

None of this is criminal — the notices say so plainly. Cited businesses have 10 days to respond with a fix. But the consequences escalate for those who don't: ignore the notice, and a business can be hauled before the board that controls its license.

For a five-time flagged establishment, that's the direction this eventually points.