DAPHNE, Ala. — Will Hughes, the culinary arts director at Faulkner State Community College in Gulf Shores, will prepare sushi seafood platters on Tuesday for the grand opening of a New Orleans commissary.

Hughes will be one of numerous chefs along the Gulf Coast attending the event.

“They’re trying to expose Gulf Coast seafood and get it sold at military bases,” Hughes said.

Commissaries are the standard grocery store for military families, and Hughes will be part of the grand opening as he brings his own flavor to a city whose cuisine is well known.

Hughes said he would have an assistant, John Trawick, helping him prepare the dishes, and he would prepare around 900 pieces of a sushi platter, which will comprise a variety of southern sushi with shrimp and tuna as some of the ingredients.

The sushi rolls have collard greens on the outside with a fried green tomato and grits on the inside. Some of the sushi rolls have tempura shrimp and others will have taso ham. Hughes will also cook a seared yellow-fin tuna made of avocado mousse with sweet chili ginger sauce on a crispy wonton. There will also be a spicy firecracker sauce sitting in a hollowed-out onion.

“Sunday and Monday we will prepare for the VIP party on Monday night,” Hughes said. “But we’ve opted to do the same menu so we don’t have to make two different platters.”

Hughes said he’s done some catering, and he has made this southern sushi recipe for some catering events, but he’s never been part of something “this scale” and “for a military base.”

“I’m really excited about it,” Hughes said about the outdoors event that will take place at the commissary and Navy Exchange shopping center in Belle Chase, an outskirt suburb near the Crescent City. “There will be a lot of people coming from all over the United States.”

The commissary is owned by the Defense Commissary Agency, which Hughes said called Faulkner State Community College, requesting his participation.

Hughes said the event kicks off the agency’s campaign to increase the selling of local seafood in the Gulf Coast, and there will be more events like this at other commissaries. The agency’s program works to help the Gulf Coast seafood industry rebound from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disasters.

The event is not public.

Only military families and personnel, elected officials and media may attend.