Tidepool to Table – Foraging with a Chef

At dawn’s low tide, the shoreline becomes a banquet unveiled. With a local chef as your guide, you step across tidepools shimmering with life. The air is sharp with brine, the rocks slick beneath your boots, the sea retreating just enough to reveal its hidden pantry. You gather mussels clustered in indigo shells, pluck emerald strands of bull kelp, and snip delicate sprigs of sea asparagus that glisten in the morning light. The chef explains how each ingredient carries both sustenance and story, used for generations by coastal peoples. Returning to your vessel, the morning’s harvest is transformed into a feast before your eyes. Mussels steam open in white wine, their aroma mingling with garlic and herbs. Kelp is tossed with sesame to create a bright, briny salad. For dessert, wild berries gathered from the forest edge are folded into a tart, their sweetness heightened by a touch of honey. You dine on deck, the table set against a backdrop of mountains plunging into the sea, the northern sky still luminous in late evening light. Each bite carries the essence of place—raw, immediate, unforgettable. More than a meal, it is an immersion in the cycles of land and sea, a tasting of the wild itself.