Aussie’s best fish ’n’ chips
Rob Maetzig and his family grab a Holden Acadia and cruise to a cute Aussie fishing village – and discover it’s full of fishy business.
San Remo. No, not the place in the Italian Riveria which is famous for its tourism and extra-virgin olive oil. We’re talking about the San Remo 122 kilometres southeast of Melbourne, a cute little coastal village famous for its pelicans and fishing.
And fish ’n’ chips. This village, population 1200, is home to the San Remo Fisherman’s Cooperative which these days operates a flash fish ’n’ chip shop overlooking the water at the end of Marine Parade, the main street.
The co-op is one of Aussie’s best-known fish ’n’ chip shops, on a popularity par with the likes of the shop over the water at Mangonui in New Zealand.
We had to try it. So we grabbed one of Holden’s new Americanbuilt seven seater Acadia SUVs,
loaded it up with four adults and a 2-year old, and headed there.
The journey from Melbourne to San Remo is an easy one. Once you exit the Melbourne suburbs you are into rolling Victorian countryside and about an hour later you arrive at your destination.
The Acadia makes the journey an easy one, too. This big SUV is powered by a 3.5-litre V6 petrol engine mated to a nine-speed automatic, and it offers plenty of comfort and a lot of space as it lopes along the motorways and secondary roads.
If all three rows of seats are in use the Acadia’s rear load area is a fairly compact 292 litres. But drop down the third row – as we did, because there was easily enough width across the second row of seats to accommodate two adults and a child’s seat – then the cargo area increases to 1042 litres.
So it was a comfortable drive to San Remo, and it wasn’t long before we hauled up in front of the village’s famous fish ’n’ chip shop.
The San Remo Fisherman’s Cooperative has an interesting history. Formed in 1948, at one stage it operated up to 60 boats that each day would head out to sea to catch what the Aussies call couta, which is actually a species of mackerel known in other parts of the world as snoek.
Anyway, at the height of the couta fishing industry, so many of them were landed at San Remo that up to two semi-trailer truckloads were delivered to Melbourne fish markets every day. Every day. No surprises then, that it all ended in the 1970s when couta stocks had reduced to the extent they were unable to be caught in commercial quantities.
These days the co-operative operates a much smaller number of boats – six of them – but it is still a major undertaking, with the boats combining forces to be Australia’s largest shark fishing fleet. They catch gummy shark, also known as flake – and it is highly likely that this is the fish you will eat if you pop into the restaurant at San Remo for your fish ’n’ chips. It’s tasty, too.
Overall, San Remo appeals as a