Spot Prawn Fest 2016 – Finest At Sea

Last week kicked off the start to the 10th annual Spot Prawn Festival. Unfortunately, like King Crab, BC Spot Prawns have become super popular… especially in Asia where 90% of BC’s commercial harvest winds up.

A few years ago, we used to pick these up at Fisherman’s Wharf at Granville Island for $12/lb. These days, it’s not uncommon to see this price doubled, even during the spot prawn season.

We were lined up at Fisherman’s Wharf today around 12:30pm but the boat ran out of spot prawns (there were maybe 5 or 6 people in front of us). We planned to wait for the next boat to come in (usually around 1pm) but they called in saying they were going to be 45-60 minutes later than expected. Not wanting to wait for another hour, we decided to check out some of the seafood shops in Granville Island to get our spot prawn fix.

We managed to find just over 1 lb of these delicious crustaceans in Finest At Sea, next to the Lobster Man, and grabbed their last stock of live spot prawns.

A sweet, delicate flavour is contrasted by a fairly firm texture. Simply boiled with a soy-based dipping sauce. So yummy! Too bad they’ve become so popular and expensive. Are there any underrated (and inexpensive) seafood that the rest of the world hasn’t caught onto yet?