Christmas Seafood on the Gold Coast: When to Order and How Much

TL;DR: Order in the first week of December, collect on the 23rd or 24th. Allow 400 to 500 grams of mixed seafood per adult if it is the main event. Bugs and lobster sell out first, prawns last.

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Christmas in Queensland means seafood, and seafood at Christmas means a market that is calm in November and chaotic on the 24th. The people who get exactly what they wanted are not luckier than everyone else. They ordered earlier.

Here is how the run actually works and how to plan around it.

The order things sell out in

Every year follows roughly the same pattern.

First to go: Moreton Bay bugs and lobster. Supply is limited, demand is concentrated into three weeks, and there is no second delivery that fixes it. If bugs are on your table every year, they are the thing to lock in first.

Next: large and jumbo prawns. There are plenty of prawns at Christmas. There are not plenty of the biggest grades, and those are the ones people picture when they think of a Christmas platter.

Then: oysters and mud crab. Both stay available longer but the quality of what is left narrows in the last few days.

Last: medium prawns, fish fillets, squid. These are generally available right through, which is why a flexible plan almost always eats well.

The timing that works

First week of December: place the order. This is the single decision that changes the outcome. An order placed early is stock set aside, not stock collected early.

Mid December: confirm numbers. Guest lists move. Adding two people on the 20th is easy, adding them on the 24th often is not.

23rd or 24th: collect. Cooked prawns and bugs are at their best inside two days. Anything bought on the 18th and held in a home fridge is worse on Christmas Day than something collected the day before.

Christmas Eve is the busiest day of the year at any fish market. An order with your name on it turns that from an hour in a queue into a few minutes at the counter.

What actually goes on the table

Cooked king prawns. The centrepiece for most Queensland households. Buy them cooked, keep them cold, peel some in advance and leave the rest for people to do themselves.

Moreton Bay bugs. Cooked and split in half, they are the best value premium item at Christmas because there is no work left to do.

Oysters. Freshly shucked on the day. Order them for collection on the 24th, never earlier.

Mud crab. The showstopper. Cooked and cracked, or live if someone in the house is confident about cooking it.

Smoked salmon. Cheap relative to its impact, and it fills a platter beautifully.

Whole fish or fillets. For the households where hot seafood is part of the day, or for Boxing Day when the platter is finished and there are still people in the house.

How much to buy

The most common mistake is over-buying by a wide margin, usually because people count on the platter feeding everyone for the whole day and forget the ham, the salads and the pudding.

Seafood as the main event: 400 to 500 grams of mixed seafood per adult, half for children.

Seafood as a starter before a roast or ham: 200 to 250 grams per adult.

For cooked prawns specifically, remember that roughly half the weight is head and shell. A kilogram of whole cooked prawns yields around 450 to 500 grams of meat.

A worked example for twelve adults with seafood as the main event:

• 3 kilograms of cooked king prawns
• 1.5 kilograms of cooked Moreton Bay bugs
• 3 dozen oysters
• two cooked mud crabs
• 500 grams of smoked salmon

That is roughly 6 kilograms of seafood for twelve people, which lands inside the 400 to 500 gram guide once shell weight is accounted for.

Storing it until the day

This is where a good order gets ruined.

Cooked prawns and bugs go in the coldest part of the fridge, which is the bottom shelf at the back, ideally over a tray of ice with the drain hole in the tray so they never sit in meltwater. Keep them in the bag or a sealed container so they do not perfume the whole fridge.

Oysters sit cup side down, covered with a damp cloth, never in water and never sealed in plastic. They are alive and they need air.

Live crab stays in a covered box with a damp towel, in the fridge, never in fresh water. Fresh water kills them.

Fish fillets go on ice, on the bottom shelf, and should be cooked within two days.

If your fridge is already full, which at Christmas it always is, an esky with ice in the coolest room of the house works perfectly well for a day. Drain the meltwater and top the ice up.

The Boxing Day question

Buy for Christmas Day and buy a little for Boxing Day separately, rather than buying one enormous quantity and hoping it holds.

Cooked prawns are past their best by the 26th. Whole fish, fillets and squid all keep better and cook into something people actually want on Boxing Day, when nobody wants another cold platter.

A whole fish on the barbecue on Boxing Day is a much better second day than tired prawns.

Quantity Planning

Per adult, seafood as the main event: 400 to 500 grams of mixed seafood. Per adult, seafood as a starter: 200 to 250 grams. Children: roughly half the adult figure.

Cooked whole prawns: allow 300 grams a head as a main, 150 grams as a starter. Oysters: 3 to 6 each. Bugs: half to one bug each, depending on what else is out. Mud crab: one 1 kilogram crab feeds two to three people.

Where to Source It

Tasman Star takes Christmas orders from the start of December and cooks its own prawns and bugs, so what you collect on the 23rd was cooked in store rather than trucked in cooked. Tell the team your guest numbers and whether seafood is the main event or a starter, and they will size the order rather than selling you the maximum. Book oysters for collection on the day you are serving them.

Find us at 5 to 7 Olsen Ave, Labrador or 20 Casua Dr, Varsity Lakes, open 7 AM to 6 PM, 7 days.

Browse prawns, bugs and oysters and order online for Gold Coast delivery.