Marine designer Matt Kirk-Buss works on a floating dining room on Granville Island in Vancouver Monday.Brett Beadle/The Globe and Mail
If a massive crane succeeds in hoisting a raft made of bug-kill pine and 1,700 plastic pop bottles into Vancouver's False Creek, tonight, 12 dinner guests may have the seafood feast of their lives.
Sustainable seafood, that is.
Open for just 60 nights, the Plastic Dining Room is a floating showcase for the culinary explorations of chef Robert Clark of C Restaurant, who has made a career out of introducing gourmands to the charms of bottom feeders such as abalone, geoduck and octopus.
The ephemeral dining room is a fundraiser for the Vancouver-based School of Fish Foundation, which aims to make expertise in sustainable seafood a requirement for all professional chefs.
Each guest is shelling out $195 to $215 for six courses with wine pairings - and the novelty of sitting with 11 others at a large oval table surrounded by the views and ocean breezes of False Creek.
The discarded plastics used to buoy the platform are a metaphor for a rarely seen threat to marine life, says Shannon Ronalds, co-founder of School of Fish. The world's oceans are polluted by five giant vortexes of plastic litter and chemical sludge, which combined, form twice the size of B.C., he says.
"A lot of people don't know they're out there."
Mr. Ronalds will wait the table every night for the next two months and personally serve a total of 720 guests to raise $100,000, he says. Already, the dining room is more than 50 per cent booked for the 12 spots available each night until the vessel is fished out of the water in September.
Like a growing number of wild seafood species, it's here today, gone tomorrow.
For reservations, call 778-997-6977.