Easter Seafood Feast: The Ultimate Guide to a Good Friday Fish Spread

TL;DR — Order by Wednesday, do all the prep Thursday night, and on Friday itself you're doing nothing more than arranging a cold platter and cooking fish for 15 minutes.

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The Menu for 8 People

This is a menu that works. It's been tested across many Gold Coast Easter tables. The quantities are for 8 adults eating well.

Cold platter to start: 2 kg of whole cooked king prawns, 2 dozen Pacific oysters on the half shell, 300g of smoked salmon with crackers and capers. This goes out first while people are arriving and the kitchen is warming up.

Main course: 8 barramundi or snapper fillets at 200g each, baked on sheet trays at 200°C for 15 minutes. A whole roasted snapper of 1.5 kg alongside if you want a showpiece — score the skin, stuff with lemon and flat-leaf parsley, bake at 200°C for 35 minutes. Sides: a large green salad with a lemon-olive oil dressing, and a bowl of crusty bread.

Sauces prepared the night before: cocktail sauce (ketchup, mayo, horseradish, Worcestershire, lemon), garlic aioli (mayo, crushed garlic, lemon), tartare (mayo, cornichons, capers, dill). All three in ramekins on the table.

Total seafood: roughly 5 kg across the whole meal. Generous but not wasteful.

The Timeline

Order by Wednesday at the latest. Good Friday is the peak trading day of the year for every fish market on the Gold Coast. Popular items — whole snapper, king prawns, fresh oysters — sell out. Ordering by Wednesday guarantees you get exactly what you want, at the right quantity, ready for pickup or delivery on Friday morning.

Thursday evening is when the actual work happens. Make all three sauces and refrigerate them. Prep the salad greens and store in a damp tea towel. Wash and dry the smoked salmon crackers and set them on a tray covered with cling wrap. Set the table completely — plates, cutlery, water glasses, wine glasses, serving utensils. Put the serving platters in the fridge to pre-chill. This is 60 to 90 minutes of work that removes all pressure from Friday.

Friday morning: collect or receive your seafood order. Store everything immediately in the fridge. Buy 3 bags of crushed ice on the way home. Line the serving platters with ice and arrange the cold items — prawns, oysters, smoked salmon — up to 2 hours before guests arrive. Keep the platters in the fridge, covered with cling wrap, until 20 minutes before service.

Two hours before: assemble the cold platter. Portion the fish fillets onto oiled sheet trays and season them — they sit in the fridge until the oven is ready.

Thirty minutes before: preheat the oven to 200°C. Open the wine. Put out the condiments and bread. Light a candle or two if you're inclined.

At service: pull the cold platter from the fridge and set it on the table. Put the fish trays in the oven. Fifteen minutes later, the fish comes out. Rest for 2 minutes. Serve.

Setting the Cold Seafood Table

The table looks right when the ice is deep enough that the oyster shells sit level, the prawns are in a circle with tails outward, and the smoked salmon is fanned across a separate board rather than folded into the corner of the prawn platter. Keep things separated. Three distinct zones on the table — prawns, oysters, smoked salmon — reads as abundance. One crowded platter reads as an afterthought.

Replenish the ice under prawns and oysters every 45 minutes. April on the Gold Coast is warm; by AEST noon the ice is working hard.

Wine for a Seafood Table

You don't need to overthink this. A dry sparkling wine or Champagne with the oysters and prawns at the start. A white wine — unoaked Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, or dry Riesling — with the baked fish. Both bottles need to be cold: 6 to 8°C for sparkling, 10 to 12°C for the white. A large esky with ice handles this without any fuss.

Cold beer works alongside everything. A light lager, a pilsner, or a pale ale. For a relaxed Good Friday lunch, cold beer and fresh seafood is a perfectly complete combination.

Order from Tasman Star Seafood

Tasman Star Seafood at Labrador (5–7 Olsen Ave) and Varsity Lakes (20 Casua Dr) stocks everything on this menu. Order your Good Friday seafood online or call ahead to place a custom order. Wednesday is the deadline for guaranteed Good Friday availability.