Kerry Brown: Darwin chef picks up La Beach Fish & Chips for a song, transformation underway

A respected Darwin chef is looking to sell his popular food trailer and trade up, with his purchase of a shuttered Cullen Bay restaurant. Here is how he will return it to its former glory.

La Beach Fish & Chips at Cullen Bay Marina shut its doors permanently in late 2023. Picture: Google Street View

A respected Darwin chef is looking to sell his popular seafood trailer and trade up, with his purchase of a shuttered Cullen Bay restaurant for a song able to be revealed.

Kerry Brown, the man behind fish and chips food van Rescue Me Food Services, a regular at Nightcliff Jetty, Dripstone Cliffs and Nightcliff Foreshore Park, has purchased La Beach Fish & Chips and is in the process of transforming it.

The NT News previously reported that La Beach closed its doors for good in late 2023, with its trading company, Fisher & Oakley Pty Ltd, having sunk into an estimated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt, including a $255,775 tax liability.

According to the liquidator’s report, the business, plant and equipment of La Beach was sold for $40,000 to a purchaser unknown – until now.

Chef Kerry Brown, who has purchased the assets of shuttered restaurant La Beach Fish & Chips and is in the process of transforming it into Fin & Tonic. Picture: Rescue Me Food Services

Mr Brown, who has been cooking since he left school at the age of 15, qualifying as a chef in 1999, told the NT News the reborn venue will be known as Fin & Tonic.

“We’re wanting to keep it relaxed, family friendly, a little of what it was, but we want to improve service times and quality,” Mr Brown said.

“We’re going to bring that same quality [as Rescue Me].”

Significant money is being poured into the space.

Rescue Me Food Services' fish and chips van is up for sale. Picture: File

“We have a new bar, new equipment, basically we’ve gutted the entire restaurant and started again,” Mr Brown said.

“There was nothing really to work with, everything was very run down and needed to be renewed.”

Mr Brown, who will be the restaurant’s head chef, working alongside an estimated eight full-time employees and about 15 casuals, said he hoped to reveal Fin & Tonic to the public in mid-March.

Fish and chips at Little Mindil Beach, opposite Cullen Bay Marina, was dealt a blow with the closure of La Beach in late 2023. Picture: Facebook

The key to success in the Northern Territory seafood industry, he said, was a relentless focus on buying local and, where that’s not possible, Australian.

Mr Brown said the Territory possessed world-class Goldband snapper and Spanish mackerel.

Since 2019, Mr Brown, who relocated to Darwin in 2012 from Mandurah, where he owned award-winning eatery Cafe Pronto, has been the face of Rescue Me, but that business has now been listed for sale.

Mr Brown said he was liaising closely with a handful of interested buyers.