CHALMETTE, La. — Preparing fresh local seafood on Good Friday and Easter Sunday is a Louisiana tradition.
If you want to know about seafood, you go to St. Bernard Parish, home to some of the best commercial and recreational fishing in the world.
If you want to know what’s good at the docks, you ask Jeff Pohlmann at Today’s Ketch Seafood and Restaurant in Chalmette.
"We have two different sizes, all fresh shrimp,” Pohlmann said. “Crabmeat is fresh. We have oysters. They are still good. They are good and fat and have a good taste to them.”
Some varieties of fish are also plentiful this time of year.
“Right now, we have the fresh catfish fillets, we have whole flounder and also redfish fillets,” Pohlmann said.
But by far crawfish is the most popular seafood here for Good Friday and Easter Sunday…boiled, live, by the pound, and by the sack.
Leah Domino was buying two sacks for her family crawfish boil.
“It’s something that we do as a family every year,” Domino said.
She said the secret to good crawfish is the chef and the seasoning.
Mudbugs are also on Eileen Coulon’s Easter menu.
“We actually ordered three sacks for Sunday, live sacks from here for Sunday,” Coulon said.
Expect to pay a little more for crawfish this year.
Right now, they are selling for about $100 a sack, $5.25 a pound for boiled and $3.25 a pound for live.
“The demand is so much higher right now,” Pohlmann said. “I think coming out of this COVID thing, people are like in a crawfish frenzy, right now.”
Wherever you buy it, ask if it’s fresh Louisiana seafood. Jeff Pohlmann said if the answer is yes, you know you’re getting a good quality product and helping the local fishing industry as well.
“It’s not easy to be a commercial fisherman these days, but we support them to the highest measure we can,” Pohlmann said.
Right now, oysters are going for about $45 a sack.
Shrimp is selling for about $5.49 a pound for the large ones and $3.49 a pound for the smaller count.
Boiled crabs will cost you about $25 a dozen.
