Brad Quartuccio refused to allow fate to disrupt a Christmas Eve tradition — prepping for his family’s Feast of the Seven Fishes, an Italian-American celebration revolving around succulent seafood.
The Morningside resident and his son Sal, 7, marched proudly around 10 a.m. Wednesday through Wholey’s packed aisles, bags of shrimp and fresh mussels in hand.
“Our feast this year got canceled due to some illness in the family,” said Quartuccio, 44, as Sal gazed at a nearby fish tank light on rainbow trout. “But we’re cheating a little and having a light version of things.”
The pair were among a throng of Christmas Eve shoppers who snatched up holiday fare — everything from smelts, snow crab and scallops — at the iconic seafood market and grocery store in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
A security guard manned the entrance to Wholey’s, where customers lined up around the block before the shop even opened at 7 a.m. Nearly three hours later, lines still stretched down Penn Avenue to get in the door at Mancini’s for freshly baked bread.
They weren’t the only Strip District businesses with increased foot traffic.
People clustered around hot-food trays outside Sam Bok Asian Specialty Store, where a woman was dishing veggie lo mein and chicken fried rice into takeout containers.
By 11 a.m., about 25 people were still waiting in queues for their morning coffee outside La Prima Espresso Co. on 21st Street.
A dozen more customers stood in line for tables to open at Pamela’s Diner.
Still, when it came to holiday traffic, Wholey’s was in its own class.
The Penn Avenue shop sells so much fish around the holidays, in fact, that it’s hard to illustrate the size of the operation.
Wholey’s handles about 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of fresh seafood deliveries daily.
On Wednesday, the number topped 15,000.
Mike Zook, Wholey’s general manager, helped a stream of holiday customers Wednesday by weighing and bagging fresh lobster tails.
Zook only could ballpark numbers about Wholey’s Christmas Eve sales, which he called on par with recent years.
Wholey’s, for example, had 15 cases of sea scallops delivered Wednesday morning, before the shop opened at 7 a.m., Zook told TribLive.
They were sold out within two hours.
On Tuesday, Wholey’s burned through 17 cases of snow crab legs. On Wednesday, Zook measured lobster tail sales in units of 10 — not 10 tails, but 10 cases of tails.
“We’re going to sell about 320 pounds of smelts a day. The calamari? We’re doing 60 cases a day — of each kind,” Zook laughed. “I love this atmosphere, the excitement. It’s electric in here.”
What sold the fastest as crowds formed queues outside Strip District shops on Christmas Eve?
A little bit of everything, “measured by the boatload,” laughed Wholey’s seafood manager John McNally, who was working his 31st Christmas Eve there in a shirt marked “Bah Humbug.”
McNally arrived to Penn Avenue before sunrise Wednesday — around 5 a.m. The first employees already had been there nearly 90 minutes.
“It’s busy, but it’s fun,” McNally said, as a staffer at elbow distance sliced what looked like black bass. “And it’s fun because we know it’s almost over.”
Wholey’s kicked off its holiday hours, opening an hour early, last week. They were set to close Wednesday at 3 p.m.
“Last Monday, it was getting busy in here,” Zook said. “But Friday? Friday was busy.”
Scott Johnson didn’t mind the lines.
The Monroeville man, standing in a line outside Mancini’s with his son-in-law, Chris See, was succinct about his family’s Christmas Eve shopping list: a loaf of Italian bread from Mancini’s, fresh rigatoni from nearby Pennsylvania Macaroni Co., and a bag of Swedish fish from Grandpa Joe’s candy shop.
Johnson said he tried to beat some of the Christmas Eve rush on seafood, buying snow crab legs and shrimp days earlier.
“But we need that Italian bread for the dipping oils,” said Johnson, 65.
“We knew, though,” added See. “We knew what we were getting into coming in today.”