The barn
A pizza oven in a mate’s backyard, and a town of twenty people.
Fil and Jami took the barn on in December 2022, but the story starts earlier than that, and it starts with pizza. It began in a friend’s backyard with a pizza oven. The pizzas got popular around town, so they saved up, bought their own pizza oven trailer and took it on the road to Fowlers Bay, a town of twenty people.
From there they went wherever there were people to feed. As Fil puts it, “we would travel back and forth to locations where there was more people, utilising the tourists when they were there. We would travel to Ceduna, Penong, Streaky Bay, any other towns that we could get into.” The five star reviews piled up, and eventually they were able to open the Oyster Barn here in Ceduna.
The idea was never to build a chain. “That’s what the vision was in the beginning,” Fil says. “That when you go and visit a small town, and you have your fish and chips from the local Oyster Barn of that town, it becomes part of your experience.” Local seafood, familiar faces behind the window, and a price that does not make you wince.
The little shack itself has been sitting on the side of the road here for around twenty years. In the early days it ran on an honesty system: big wheat bags of oysters left in a shed out the back, and the truck drivers would leave their cash and take their oysters. These days there is a window, a menu board and a roof you can eat on, but the idea has not moved very far.
Local oysters
Grown in the bays around Ceduna, shucked here at the barn rather than turning up in a tub.
Sushi made daily
Rolled fresh each morning. Occasionally we sell out of sushi and cold rolls at busy times.
A seat on the roof
Take your tray up the stairs and eat looking out over the highway and the bay.
