2020 James Beard Winner - Writing

From the aquatic world’s Michael Pollan a former fisherman’s memoir, manifesto, and vision for the future of food: seaweed farming.

Easy to grow, sustainable, and a solution to climate change, ocean vegetables are plentiful (there are more than ten thousand edible varieties), nutritious, and delicious (as recipes from James Beard Award-winning chef Brooks Headley included here will show). A miracle food if ever there was one, seaweed is a perfect ingredient—exotic yet local—particularly in the face of rapid environmental upheaval, rising populations, and finite food resources. In Eat Like a Fish, Bren Smith—former commercial fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer—advocates getting seaweed onto American plates, reimagining our ideas about ocean eating, and taking readers on a journey from his childhood at sea to fishing trawlers to the frontier of the food movement. Written with the humor and swagger of a fisherman telling a late-night tale, this is a monumental work of memoir-turned-food policy that will change the way we think about what we eat.