Shellfish Diner is a speculative dining suggestion; a depiction of a possible, watery near future in which Angelinos eat in an algae-forward, regenerative, mollusk inspired way.

Friend and collaborator Andrea Xinyoung Kim and I embarked on a year-long research project about homemade food, ritual, Southern California kelp forests and regenerative menus, funded by an Arts and Climate Collective grant. To learn more about our research, you can visit Andrea’s beautiful website.

At the Roski Ceramics Studio at USC, I made a dinner set based on the California kelp forests visited on weekend free diving trips around greater LA and during my scientific diving course this semester at Catalina Island. All of the ceramics are made individually and based on a specific regenerative, sustainable seafood dish.

The gallery version includes an audio scape made up of sounds collected while Andrea and I explored aquaculture food ways, fish markets, dive shops and underwater landscapes in Santa Barbara and LA. This version was exhibited at the iMappening PhD Exhibition at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California in April 2024.

We also held a homey but elevated “story tasting” dinner party hosted by Jessica Pham and Andrea. In Andrea’s words: “Andrea prepares dishes from her mother’s favorite childhood snack, deep-fried seaweed, to live urchin, abalone sashimi, and spicy sea pineapple salads inspired by her cultural heritage using ingredients primarily sourced from aquaculture farms. Shellfish Diner is paired with a booklet How to Save the World by Eating Snails, which proposes Kelptropolis as a shared social imaginary and an invitation to consider alternative approaches to LA sea food systems that foreground community and artistic approaches to research.”

We plan to continue hosting Shellfish Diner eating events and conversations surrounding localness, eating, and the ocean.