How to enjoy a seafood festival when you can't eat shellfish

October 2011. At my NBCUniversal internship, I ate a microwavable bowl of shrimp and pasta from a now-defunct grocery store for dinner and then headed home. While battling traffic on the 101, it hit me: a wave of nausea I’d later learn was the beginning of my shellfish allergy.

I’ll be real with you — it sucks!! I was devastated. I spent my late teen years and early 20s devouring all the lobsters, oysters, shrimp, mussels, uni, clams, etc. I could find. And now, I could only look at them from afar and also Google “Is [insert shellfish name here] considered shellfish?” (the answer is usually yes, Mallory, it is.)

Even over a decade later, it still makes me sad, but I’ve discovered a whole world of seafood I can still have. Salmon. Tuna. Yellowtail. Mahi Mahi. Sand dabs. It’s fine.

Fast forward to October 2024. When I got invited as a VIP1 to the Off the Hook Santa Monica Seafood Festival, benefiting Heal the Bay and returning after a 5-year hiatus, I jumped at the chance. It’s also a Spin PR Group event and I’m a big fan of their work — I had a blast at MAINopoly: A Taste of Main Street Santa Monica in May.

But I didn’t think about my allergy until…well, when I got to the event site on the Santa Monica Pier and thought, “Oh no, what about the shellfish?”

But this story has a happy ending. Spoiler alert: it’s me eating lots of seafood and successfully avoiding shellfish!

I constantly asked, “Does this have shellfish in it?” and declared my allergy to everyone.

I learned this from my mom, who has a major food allergy of her own — when in doubt, just ask what a dish contains and make your allergy known. I’m also a journalist; I have no qualms about asking even the simplest of questions, including ones about shellfish.

So many vendors were accommodating and offered me alternatives. And that makes sense, because shellfish allergies are among the most common in adults and children, affecting about 2% of the population, according to the non-profit Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE). Some religions also refrain from eating shellfish.

The folks at Michael’s Santa Monica were my first stop in the VIP area and after I declared my shellfish allergy, they gave me the spicy tuna, trout roe, scallions, and ponzu without the oyster. And you know what? It was delicious.

It was also helpful that most vendors in the VIP area had the ingredients listed on their signs, so I could scan them to see if I had anything to worry about. However, a lot of vendors out in the public area didn’t always have signs, so again, I just asked. Lots of non-shellfish bites to go around!

Emporium Thai, an excellent Thai place in Westwood, served up Southern Thai curry with veggies and crispy tofu, which was one of the few non-seafood dishes and it was vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and nut-free. More non-seafood items were the meringues from Malibu Meringue and a cup of Cold Brew with Chantilly Cloud from Santai.

Another vendor, Al Dente Pasta Shop, was willing to scoop some pasta for me that didn’t have shrimp in it2 and I got a free bag of pasta to try at home! At the Layla/Coco Club table, they offered me their delicious pineapple soft serve.

All in all, it was a great seafood festival and it was accessible by LA Metro! A rarity in LA. I took the train there because, if you haven’t heard, the LA Dodgers are in the MLB playoffs and as of this writing, headed to the World Series. It’s been a traffic nightmare.