In my home town is a very famous seafood restaurant/takeaway called Cicerellos. It’s right by the water, inside Fisherman’s Harbour in Fremantle. One day a few weeks ago, I was there for lunch with some girlfriends, and I had my toddler Liam with me.

Cicerellos is great because it is so much in the theme of seafood. Not only do they have old nets and floats and pictures of old fishing boats on the walls, they have really impressive aquariums for you and your kids to look at.

Although Cicerellos is an Italian family business, the way they prepare food is heavily influenced by the British tradition of “Fish and Chips”. The fish is deep fried in batter, and the chips are thick, short wedges of potato, also deep fried. Traditionally, both the fish and the chips were served wrapped up in several layers of old newspaper, because it was cheap, it absorbed the grease, and also kept the food warm.

Nowadays, you can still get it wrapped in paper for take-away, but the paper is nice and new and clean! But you can also get it served on a plate, if you want to eat-in.

Not many people know this, but almost all of the fish that is eaten in “Fish and Chips” is actually SHARK – because it is much cheaper. And whenever I order Fish and Chips at Cicerellos, I think of sharks in a different way.

Summer time in Australia always brings news reports of giant sharks appearing near popular swimming beaches, and beaches are often closed for hours at a time. And serious incidents DO happen. About ten years ago, a man was tragically killed by a huge Great White shark (in waist deep water) at Cottesloe, Perth’s most famous beach. And a couple of years after that, two men in a surf kayak were attacked at the same beach. The shark bit the kayak literally in half between where the two men were sitting!

Presumably because the shark didn’t like the taste of fibreglass, it just swam away. And the two men lived to tell the tale. No wonder they are smiling in the picture.

Cicerellos now have the bitten-in-half kayak mounted on their wall for everyone to see.

My picture doesn’t really do justice to it. When you are there, you look at the size of the bite mark, and you really think twice about swimming in the ocean ever again. It’s like a cartoon.

But this is REAL. And it happened at my FAVOURITE beach. Where I take my KIDS!

So at Cicerellos, you can sit and eat your shark, while you think about a shark eating you.

Liam and I ordered Calamari and Chips on a plate (out of respect for the sharks).

Yum!