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Most churches only see a full house on Sunday morning, but there’s an unassuming stone church in South Australia that doesn’t need miracles to fill the pews. It reels in a daily congregation – and blesses them with golden crumbed fish, crispy calamari, fresh salads and salty chips.
It’s on a road trip from the Flinders Ranges back to Adelaide that I find myself making a pit stop in Port Pirie. Less than three hours from the state’s capital, this historic seafood hub is the third-largest town north of Adelaide and a popular gateway to the Outback. To be honest, I’d never heard of Port Pirie and wouldn’t have stopped if my grumbling belly hadn’t insisted that lunch was in order.
Home to around 14,000 people, Port Pirie is exactly what you’d expect from a humble seaside town – think a decent-sized supermarket, a road-tripper petrol station, a handful of old-school cafés, and a waterfront park overlooking the port. With most kitchens shut by the time I rolled in at 1.30pm on a Sunday, stumbling upon Spirou Seafood and Salad felt like a true miracle.
Known as the “Church of Fish and Chips”, this local family restaurant is quite literally housed inside a former 1879 Uniting Church. Kevin and Kim Spirou bought the historic stone building almost two decades after it ceased operating as a place of prayer – saving it from demolition before reopening it as a fish and chips shop in 1998 under the Barnacle Bill franchise.
Almost three decades on, the church’s Gothic Revival stone exterior looks largely the same. If not for the blue-and-white sign out front reading “The Church of Fish and Chips”, you’d easily assume locals were shuffling inside for Sunday service. Instead, the original pulpit has been repurposed into the deep-frying and counter service station, while the pews now seat hungry takeaway customers.
It was a big hallelujah moment discovering the seafood itself is just as heavenly as the architecture! While you can order classic fish and chips in all sorts of value packs and platters, the massive menu also offers up burgers, honey chicken, veal parmigiana and steak – all served with chips and salad.
The $17.90 lunch special is the hottest catch of the day, featuring a crumbed or battered butterfish, plus three prawns, three calamari, one small salad, small chips, tartare sauce and a soft drink. My serving was generous, and delivered pure Aussie takeaway nostalgia, blessing my tastebuds with deep-fried, salty goodness.
So, if you’re searching for the holy grail of fish and chips, this is it. Spirou Seafood and Salad is open daily from 11am to 9pm in Port Pirie.