LOS ANGELES, Calif.: the top prize at this year's California Food Art Biennial went Saturday to “California Breakfast,” a piece by Winnipeg chef and sculptor Delphine Arsenault, built entirely from resin and acrylic paint.
The work centers on a slab of grilled sourdough spread with smashed avocado and topped with two poached eggs and a tangle of pickled red onion. Judges singled out the eggs, which are rounder and smoother than any egg has ever managed to be. One juror stood in front of them for twenty minutes and then left without speaking to anyone.
Arsenault says she has been to California twice, both times in February, and built the piece from memory and roughly four hundred Instagram posts. The char marks on the toast took eleven weeks. The chili-dusted cantaloupe took one afternoon, because she admits she has never fully understood why Californians do that to melon and did not want to pretend otherwise.
Critics called the kale the most convincing element. Arsenault said she painted it to look slightly too tough to finish.
The gallery has since posted a guard. Three visitors have tried to cut into the toast, and a fourth asked whether it could be made without the onions. A Silver Lake café entered a real avocado toast in the same category as a protest. It browned during the judges' lunch break and was disqualified.
“California Breakfast” sold for $14,000, which several Los Angeles residents described as about right for avocado toast.
FTN BULLETIN: This report is fiction.