Pismo Beach Recipes
Two collections: a mid-century community cookbook, and today's cooks.
Pismo Beach has been feeding people from its own coast for a long time. This section holds two collections of recipes centered on the harvest of the Pismo clam and the seafood of the Central California coast.
Yesteryear
The complete run of a 1970s-era Pismo Beach community cookbook: 123 recipes contributed by 43 named local cooks, transcribed verbatim. Clam chowders and fritters, souffles and casseroles, plus crab, abalone, tuna, and other Central Coast seafood.
Modern
Recipes from today's Pismo Beach clammers, cooks, and Central Coast home kitchens. A growing collection sitting alongside the historical archive — first recipes and a submission system on the way.
A taste of the yesteryear collection
Every recipe in the Yesteryear collection carries a photo of the original cookbook page as it was printed, and four printable formats: full page, half page, and 5×7 and 3×5 recipe cards. Recipes are searchable and filterable by protein, method, cookbook section, and contributor.
To learn to catch these clams yourself, see How to Clam at Pismo Beach and the gear guide. For legal requirements — size limit, season, licensing — see the Regulations page.