Indigenous

Some of the best culinary education doesn’t happen in a classroom.

On our last evening in Vietnam, our group gathered for a traditional cooking experience at Toi Toi Vietnam Cooking Center, a kitchen-in-garden setting that felt about as far from a restaurant kitchen as you can get, in the best possible way.

We made banh mi and pho from scratch. Real technique, real ingredients, real joy. And somewhere between breaking down the broth and folding the bread, something shifted. You stop being a chef with opinions, and you become a student again, genuinely curious, genuinely present, genuinely grateful for the place you’re standing in.

Vietnam has a way of doing that. The landscape, the people, the food culture woven into every corner of daily life. There is something deeply grounding about learning a cuisine on its home soil, surrounded by the land it grew from.

That’s the gift of a place like this. 🇻🇳

🌊 World Ocean Day.

The ocean is the reason I do what I do. It shapes our menu, drives our sourcing decisions, and honestly keeps me up at night in the best possible way: thinking about where food comes from, who raised it, and what we owe the water in return.

Being a chef on the Gulf Coast means the ocean isn't abstract. It's right there. And the choices we make in the kitchen -- what we buy, who we buy it from, how we talk about it with our guests...those choices add up.

Today's a good day to think about yours. 🌿

artistry from the crew as they tell stories through our thoughtfully prepared, intentionally sourced dishes. 🫶

🐟✨ From the water to the kitchen, we're proud to be part of this conversation.

Chef Steve and Megan Sorby of Pine Island Redfish recently partnered on a piece about the future of seafood in Florida, and it's one worth reading. Responsible aquaculture isn't just a policy issue — it's a food issue, a community issue, and honestly, a dinner table issue.

We've seen firsthand what it looks like when farmers and chefs work together to bring traceable, high-quality seafood from water to plate. The MARA Act would help make more of that possible — and what matters is how it gets there. Growth only where it's environmentally appropriate, guided by science and data to determine where, how, and whether offshore aquaculture should expand at all. It's the same standard the world's leading aquaculture countries are already applying, and it's the right one for Florida, too.

That's exactly the kind of future we want to be part of shaping — from the coast to the kitchen.

Head to https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2026/03/31/offshore-aquaculture-florida-seafood-mara-act-gulf-indigenous-restaurant-pine-island-redfish/ to read the full piece. 🌊