First look inside the new home of cult restaurant Saint Peter
From sea charcuterie to fish-fat soap, acclaimed chef Josh Niland is about to open the doors on his new venture. “We’ve held out for this, and now we have it.�
If you were to write a timeline of fish cookery in Australia, you might begin with First Nations people wrapping barramundi in paperbark and cooking it in hot coals. After that, there would be an extremely long gap.
You would note the indiscriminate boiling of oysters by early colonists, and mark the birth of multiculturalism with the first Greek fish and chip shop in Sydney in 1879. You’d find a place for the launch of Birds Eye Fish Fingers in 1956, following the advent of the home freezer.
The contribution of the pioneering Doyle family in Watsons Bay would be there, with its distinctly 1970s approach to snapper soup and oysters mornay. Next up, the new-wave kids: Neil Perry and John Susman at Bondi’s Bluewater Grill in the 1980s, and Greg Doyle and Steve Hodges at Pier in Rose Bay in the 1990s.
Josh Niland, with wife Julie, began thinking about the layout of The Grand National’s new kitchen when he first walked into the hotel in 2019. Louie Douvis
Hodges would emerge as a pivotal character, opening the whitebait-sized Fish Face in Darlinghurst in 2001 and cooking wild-caught fish to medium-rare, the skin pressed against the pan with a heavy weight until crisp as a potato chip. His fame would lure in a precocious young chef barely out of his apprenticeship who, in 2009, came to Fish Face for a kitchen trial, and Hodges told him to stand by and watch.
It was on that night the page was turned on a new chapter in the history of fish cookery in Australia. It’s a chapter in which this country gained an evangelical ambassador with a searing ambition to revolutionise how the world catches, processes, cooks and eats fish.
Josh and Julie Niland are the chefs and owners behind Saint Peter, a name that resonates with keen diners in the same way Saint Christopher does with travellers.
Sick with nerves, they opened the modestly sized fish restaurant in Paddington, Sydney, in 2016, with a loan from Julie’s dad. But they were emboldened by their shared mission: to prove there was a better way to treat fish and seafood at every point in the process, so that waste was reduced, integrity preserved and flavour intensified. And they knew that to have a platform, they needed a great restaurant.
The Grand National Hotel in Paddington is returning to its former glory after an extensive renovation. Â Louie Douvis
From day one, dining at Saint Peter was challenging but always thrilling, from the pâté made of Port Lincoln kingfish livers to the crisp chips made from dehydrated and pressed eyeballs. Coral trout fish heads were coated in pastrami spices and charcoal-grilled. Even the chocolate caramel slice was emulsified with fish fat on a biscuit base enriched with hapuka roe. The thrills weren’t just intellectual, but gastronomic as well.
A heavenly fillet of bass grouper on a tangle of enoki mushrooms treated as if angel-hair pasta, in a creamy vadouvan-spiced puddle. A brawny, jellied, fish head terrine. And oh, the joy of the “Peking coral trout�, complete with crisp fish skin, pancakes and Moonlight Flat oyster sauce. These were light bulb moments for anyone with a lifetime of eating steamed Murray cod with ginger and spring onion, and good old fish and chips. As a New Yorker at the table next to mine said as he left: “I haven’t a clue what I’ve just been eating, but I love the whole idea of it.� So did The Sydney Morning Herald, awarding it two chef’s hats in the 2018 Good Food Guide.
This feature appears in the May issue of AFR Magazine out on April 26. Louie Douvis
The same year, the couple opened their first fishmonger, Fish Butchery, with the aim of creating new systems in seafood retail practice. Charcoal Fish, an upscale single-species takeaway fish and chip shop, followed in 2021, and haute fish bistro Petermen opened last year. Their first offshore restaurant, Fysh, also opened late last year in Singapore. Now they are about to become hoteliers as well, opening the doors of the Grand National Hotel in June.
Behind the classic street frontage of the 1890s pub, one of Paddington’s most stately buildings, will be a private dining room – their first – for 15 people, a bar, a dining room for 45 that will be the buzzing heart of the project and, upstairs, 12 individual boutique hotel rooms.
The bold move has necessitated radical consolidation of the business. On April 1, the Nilands closed their retail-facing Fish Butchery in Paddington, moving all butchery work to the larger commercial premises in Waterloo. They closed Charcoal Fish in Rose Bay the same day, citing slow winter sales as the catalyst. It’s sad news for fish lovers, but it allows them to concentrate on the core business.
Of all the big openings listed for 2024, the new Saint Peter at the Grand National is one of the biggest. “Everyone, everywhere, is fascinated by Josh right now,� says Alexandra Carlton, the well-travelled academy chair for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ Oceania region. “When he opened Saint Peter in 2016, I think we all knew there was genius within, but no one could have predicted he had so much superstardom ahead.�
How did these two childhood sweethearts, aged 36 and 33, come to own three restaurants in two countries along with a fish store, write three bestselling cookbooks and somehow squeeze in the time to have four children? We need to go back to the mission. It’s all about the mission.
A dish from Niland’s new menu: line-caught alfonsino and vegetables “Kandinsky�. Christopher Pearce
I’m touring the new site, to the sound of drills and the smell of fresh paint, as The Australian Financial Review Magazine’s photographer is angsting about where to take the portrait. Julie looks like she’s playing dress-ups in her high-vis safety outfit, which is possibly not the look the photographer was hoping to achieve. As workers scurry up and down stairs, she poses for the camera in front of her husband. This is a departure. Julie prefers to be in the background. “I’m very happy to not be the one everyone wants to meet,� she says, laughing.
The hotel, she says, will bring Saint Peter a level of elegance and opulence it has never had. “When you walk through the doors, there’s a sense of calmness,� she says. Huge windows in the front bar frame the Victorian terraces and shimmering gum trees opposite. “There is an instant mood.�
Monumental brass doors open from the bar into a dining room flooded with natural light from glass inset into the high ceiling. The kitchen is a stage; wood-fired hearth at the back, black marble counter at the front, and curved sheets of gleaming brass above. Floors are herringbone parquetry or terrazzo, walls are textural plaster and stucco, corner booths add to the strong sense of symmetry and alignment.
Every detail has been accounted for; every need of the service team written into the script. Floor staff will pick up plates of food from the right-hand side of the marble counter, and move clockwise throughout the dining room, something Josh first noticed at New York’s Eleven Madison Park. “Runs like a Swiss watch,� he says.
“There’s an instant mood,� Julie Niland says of the front bar with its huge windows framing the Victorian terraces opposite.  Louie Douvis
The private dining room has its own entrance. “But the front bar is for everyone, not just for diners or the few who know,� says Josh. “And we have real bathrooms,� says Julie, referencing the original Saint Peter’s modest backyard loo. Working with Studio Aquilo, she set the brief for the guest bedrooms, wanting contemporary interpretations of how they might have appeared in the late 1800s.
There are marble mantelpieces over fireplaces, sleek bath tubs, and brass wall lights illuminating the soft green tones. A key inspiration was the Roca brothers’ chic Casa Cacao boutique hotel in Spain. “The hotel rooms there are an extension of their hospitality,� says Julie, adding that the chocolates in guests’ rooms are made by the chef, Jordi Roca, with a little note on cacao sourcing and flavour profile.
The “mission� is part of the narrative, of course, with fish-fat soaps by Grace Steven of The Soapstress in bathrooms, fish-fat candles by Hunter Candles, and fishbone ceramics by third-generation potter Sam Gordon.
For the hotel rooms, Julie Niland wanted contemporary interpretations of their late 1800s look. Â Louie Douvis
“There are certain places that carry beautiful feelings with them, just because of what they are,� says Josh. “We haven’t had that in the past, but we’ve held out for this, and now we have it.�
The scale, finesse and degree of comfort also suggest they have a new level of ambition. Josh hasn’t actually said he wants three chef’s hats for the new 45-seater Saint Peter, but I can hear the words hanging in the air. He wants – they want – to be the best in the world. When I say as much, he gently corrects me. “We aspire to be world-class,� he says. Don’t believe a word of it.
You’d have to be mad to commit your entire business strategy to cooking with a product that you can’t source in bad weather, needs constant refrigeration, is actively disliked by a great number of people, can be expensive, laborious and fragile, and is vulnerable to warming seas and climate change. But “mad� doesn’t fit as a descriptor for Josh Niland. Uncompromising, yes. Logical, yes. Fanatical, possibly. Stubborn, undoubtedly.
Josh, the son of an Anglican minister, grew up near Maitland, between Newcastle and the wineries of the Hunter Valley. Four days after celebrating his eighth birthday at McDonald’s, he was diagnosed with Wilms tumour, a form of cancer that, cruelly, is more common in young children than adults. There followed 18 months of chemotherapy and related treatments. His right kidney was removed, along with the tumour.
“I couldn’t understand, at that age, what I had done to deserve being diagnosed with cancer,� he says, crediting his father, Stephen, and mother, Marea, for their positivity and patience. “The fear of the cancer returning lived with us for years.�
Food became a comfort during his convalescence, and the hours of daytime television soon started to revolve around celebrity chefs and cooking. It ignited something within. “As I grew older, I started reading Gourmet Traveller and Delicious magazines, and covered my bedroom walls with photos of chefs and their dishes,� he says. “There was an opportunity when I was 14 to do a hospitality course at school, but I just asked Mum and Dad if I could fast-track to becoming an apprentice instead.� The Redkite cancer support foundation paid for his first set of knives and uniforms, and he started at a brewery kitchen in Newcastle. He loved it.
Six months later, chef Peter Doyle and the team from Est restaurant in Sydney came to Newcastle to cook a fundraising lunch for the cancer foundation. Doyle heard Josh speak to the crowd about his cancer and his ambition to be a chef, and suggested he look him up. Josh travelled to Sydney the next day, in his best clothes. The team at Est gave him a free lunch but the job took longer, so he trained with Luke Mangan and Joe Pavlovic at Glass Brasserie. Within two years he was working in the Est kitchen.
Josh Niland and Steve Hodges in Fish Face in 2014. Janie Barrett
Doyle, who Josh counts as a mentor, has watched the trajectory of many a young chef across his starred kitchens at the celebrated Le Trianon, Cicada and Merivale’s Est over four decades. “He’s just a great craftsman,� says Doyle of Josh. “Technique is one thing, but he has taken it to a whole new level. He’s an original, and there are not many originals around.�
Julie also worked for Doyle for 18 months at Est, in the pastry section. “She’s a really good technician,� he says. “They’ve both worked hard to build a strong foundation for their careers, without thinking they know everything after the first six months, as so many do.�
The pair met at an apprentice cooking competition (Julie in her first year, Josh in his fourth) and both won their categories. On their first dinner date, Julie leaned forward and said spontaneously, “our fridge is going to have so much good food in it�, before realising that they hadn’t yet talked about a second date. They didn’t have to.
When they married, they took on simultaneous “stages� (unpaid internships) at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck development kitchen in England. “It was actually meant to be our honeymoon,� laughs Josh. Their superpower, says Doyle, is their relationship. “They’re just really good friends,� he says. “Driven, but not egotistical. They have good manners and good family backgrounds, which keeps them calm and grounded, and helps them progress in their business.�
What does he think is behind all that drive? “Having cancer as a child has to impact you deep down,� he says. “And must make you want to achieve at a much faster rate.�
On that first evening at Fish Face, in 2009, Josh’s trial was a disaster. “We were told to cook each fish medium-rare, and the diners were advised to start eating at the thin end, to allow the fish time to cook through at the thick end,� he says. “One diner cut right through the middle immediately, and sent his fish back. Steve [Hodges] got mad and threw the plate at the wall, shattering it, then walked out.�
With dockets piling up for 15 orders in the kitchen, Josh threw himself in. By the time he got through service and everyone was fed, Hodges walked back in. “So, do you want the job or not?�
Niland’s salt-and-vinegar King George whiting in Gordal olive brine. Christopher Pearce
Josh said yes, because “that service was one of the most addictive I have ever done. It was madness, ever-changing, crazy. Everything could go wrong.� What he loved was that the room was so small, he could see people eat the food he gave them, and they came over and said thank-you when they left. The connection was immediate and real.
“It was difficult working with Steve [who was in and out of rehab at the time] but I wouldn’t have had anybody else train me. He was so technically gifted, and I was spoiled with the diversity of wild fish coming in the door.“
One night, Josh told Hodges he was frustrated by doing different garnishes for eight different fish, when all he wanted to do was showcase the unique qualities of the fish itself. The way Josh tells the story, Hodges said, “well, why don’t you treat the fish as meat?� He went on to point out that swordfish looks like pork, and mackerel looks like pigeon.
“I didn’t have the knowledge then to build that into anything tangible, but it changed everything,� says Josh. He credits Hodges with this key moment in his learning as a chef, in spite of the fact the older chef has no recollection of it.
It wasn’t until the launch of The Fish Butchery retail store that it all came together, where he reimagined the craft of working with fish, and recontextualised it as meat. This, he realised, gave people a reference point that made them comfortable with unusual cuts and fish offal.
Josh estimates that half the fish caught in the world is wasted. “What’s worse is that 50 per cent of the fish we do utilise is overlooked by the Western world, which overwhelmingly prefers to consume only the fillet,� he says. “But there is no butcher in the world who would strip the loins off a pig and throw the rest away as waste.�
To achieve the maximum return on a given fish, the Butchery might need to produce a terrine, a ham, pâté from its liver, centre-cut fillets, bone-in chops, consommé from the bones, salted and smoked hearts and spleens. A lot of the trimmings go into more accessible products such as fish sausages, burger patties, fish fingers, fishcakes, pâté, mortadella and bacon. “These things have recognition factor and that brings comfort,� he says.
While the epiphany – to treat fish as if it were meat – appears radical, there is a precedent in the work of �ngel León, a Spanish chef from Cadiz, who has devoted his life work to the produce of the sea. His restaurant Aponiente has garnered three Michelin stars for the dining experience, but it’s his research work that sets him apart as he seeks new sources of marine proteins (phytoplankton, marine fats and marine cereals) and new techniques, including albumin-free clarification using microalgae, marine collagens or “live� salt.
Josh hadn’t heard of León when he started salting and preserving fish. It came as a shock when his first cookbook was translated into Spanish in 2020 and a handful of Iberian chefs took umbrage, pointing out that he was not, as The New York Times suggested, the first to do so.
Nor did Josh invent sea charcuterie; that person is lost in the sea mists of time. The Phoenicians were salting and drying the roe sacs of grey mullet from around 500 BC to form an intense preserve known as bottarga. More recently, American chef David Burke is credited with coming up with the first recorded salmon pastrami at Brooklyn’s Park Avenue Cafe in 1988.
A selection of Fish Butchery charcuterie. Christopher Pearce
Chef Moreno Cedroni of Madonnina del Pescatore in Ancona, Italy, opened a Fish Salumeria in 2003, with sea bream sausages, tuna bresaola and hot dogs made of prawn. Unlike León, Cedroni embraces Josh and his work. “Moreno Cedroni is great,� says Josh. “When I met him, we really bounced off each other’s knowledge. He thinks like me; if your work is valuable, then you should share it.�
For Josh, it’s all about scale. He looks at a fish in the same way a tech industry entrepreneur looks at a new venture, sizing up its possibilities to exponentially grow. Take the recipe for fish fingers on page 218 of his third and latest cookbook, Fish Butchery. “I grew up eating fish fingers from a box, not having any idea where they came from,� he says.
If you or I set about cooking fish fingers, we’d probably buy fillets and trim them into oblongs, binning the scraps. Josh’s recipe repurposes three kilograms of picked fish from the gelatin-rich heads of fish such as cod or coral trout; seasons it well and presses it into a tray, weighing it down overnight. Then he cuts the set mixture into identical fingers, coats them with flour, egg and breadcrumbs, and fries until crisp and golden. Scale that three kilograms up to 300 kilograms, or 3000 kilograms, and you start to see how this sort of thinking could be used to feed millions.
The books are a part of that mission, sharing the techniques and recipes that will enable others (including his own chef employees) to reproduce them. It’s a generous act, to share his learnings as he goes, rather than use them to achieve a competitive edge. For Josh, it simply speeds things up. Having faced death as a child, he’s not here to waste time as an adult.
According to Simon Davis of publisher Hardie Grant, Josh’s international book sales measure in the hundreds of thousands, translated as they are into a dozen languages. The English language version of The Whole Fish has been reprinted 12 times. “It’s that singularity of vision and ability to think radically differently and creatively about a key protein source that has changed the conversation,� Davis says. “Not just here in Australia, but globally.�
One night at Fish Face, Josh forgot to cover a tray of fish before packing it in the cool room. “I left at 1am and came back at 8am as usual, and Steve Hodges was there, fuming, because the fish could have dried out,� he says. “But when I cooked them that evening, the skin was much crunchier when it was pan-fried, and the partial dryness of the exterior flesh made everything so much easier to cook.�
Years later, he applied that learning to whole fish, hanging them in the cool room. Each fish is scaled and gutted in the butchery without using water, which can hasten deterioration, and stored in specially designed static refrigerators. “Dry-ageing is the process of intentional and controlled moisture loss, which promotes more of the fish’s natural fats,� Josh says. “It adds a profound amount of flavour, enhances the texture, and results in a superior outcome.�
The technique is not only changing the way many progressive chefs treat their fish, it has given Josh a platform to effect real change on a global scale (remember the mission). An invitation to talk at the international chef conference Madrid Fusión in 2020 resulted in industry headline news on the dry-ageing of fish. Josh went on to win Best Chef Innovation Award at the Best Chef Awards in 2022, and is the only Australian to be on the board of the innovative gastronomic university Basque Culinary Centre.
Last December, Josh and Julie went international in a different way, opening their Fysh restaurant in Singapore at the invitation of the new Edition hotel, Marriott International’s chic designer brand. It is key to future plans. “This is a way of extending the conversation about fish into a whole new market,� says Josh. “Singapore is a great food city, and I want people there to eat at Fysh and see what it’s about.�
“We’ve held out for this, and now we have it,� says Josh Niland, with Julie at the Grand National Hotel. Louie Douvis
Josh is now an Edition hotel brand chef partner, with various incentives to develop the business. He has also taken on ambassadorial roles with Audi and Swiss watchmaker Zenith. Every business step is intentional, like building a pyramid stone by stone. He’s looked at the life cycle of his chef peers, and thinks there’s a better way.
“Chefs have a certain trajectory,� he says. “I’ve analysed all the patterns and paths in which chefs can evolve their careers, and the various choices they can make, and basically, they all suck. There is no ideal way to grow old in this business.�
The key thing for team Niland, he says, is to maintain control. “When it comes to the quality of what we purchase, and the social responsibilities we have as employers, we hold ourselves accountable,� he says. “Julie can’t just hand payroll over to somebody else. We’re not letting go, because we’ve seen what can happen when you lose control.�
Industry gossip suggests most of the major restaurant groups have already approached the couple waving chequebooks (if such things still existed), but they have deliberately retained their financial independence. “If they have any sense, they’ll keep building the brand on their own, and set an ultimate price to work towards,� says one insider. “My guess would be around $150 million.�
But first, there’s the whiteboard on the kitchen wall that is every parent’s working week nightmare. On one side are the children’s names – Ted, aged 10, Lucy (eight), Sophie (five), and Georgia (two) – and on the other are the days in the week. The middle is a frenzy of choir, gym, swimming, netball, library, soccer, piano and “take out bins�.
Julie, as chef-turned-CEO, does the payroll and HR, project-manages restaurant builds, runs social media, feeds Honey the angora rabbit and, on Thursdays, does indeed take out the bins. Basically, they’ve spreadsheeted their entire lives.
George Penklis, who co-founded Quadrant, a private equity firm, and now runs Odyssey Private Equity, walked into Saint Peter off the street on a weekday four years ago, and said to Josh: “I have an idea.� He had just bought the Grand National Hotel around the corner at 161 Underwood Street, Paddington (“all my friends were buying boats; this was my boat�), and wanted Josh and Julie to run the restaurant and rooms.
“It could not have been anyone else,� he says. “This is about putting Saint Peter on the world stage, and giving the Nilands a home base that will draw people to the beautiful suburb of Paddington.�
Josh listened politely. He and Julie did a walk-through of the somewhat dilapidated site. They weren’t convinced. Team Niland has been tightly controlled since its inception, with few allowed into the inner sanctum. Apart from family, there are only a handful of long-term collaborators, including an entrepreneurial, broadly accented, Scottish communications adviser called Monica Brown.
Lemon meringue tart. Â Christopher Pearce
But every mission needs a home, and as they kept talking and planning, the Grand National seemed more and more like a good idea. Paddington, a strong tourist destination, has no high-end boutique accommodation. “People underestimate chefs as a tourism drawcard,� says Penklis. “Think of what you do when you travel overseas – you go out of your way to dine somewhere special that you’ve heard about. The Nilands’ growing exposure on the global stage will have a positive effect on tourism to Australia, on Sydney and on Paddington.�
Asked for an estimate of restoration and renovation costs, he laughs. “Plenty,� he says. “It’s painful. But as we say in private equity, it’s always going to cost twice as much and take twice as long.�
Neil Perry of Double Bay’s Margaret restaurant recalls Josh telling him the plans for the new Saint Peter. “That was years ago,� he says. “Mind you, the pandemic probably didn’t help.� As Perry knows, there are no certainties in the restaurant game. A brilliant chef can burst on the scene like a flaming bombe Alaska, only to burn out and disappear. Others can glow like coals, slow and steady, but never do any more than that. Josh’s genius, he says, is to create his own mission, and believe in it. “He has a real point of difference, and made it visually appealing,� he says. “I’m not a fan of dry-ageing fish, but it’s very real to Josh, he lives it and breathes it.�
When it finally opens, the Grand National will be a new benchmark for the burgeoning Niland empire, and a springboard for the future. “Its larger, grander footprint is exactly the right move for a chef who is owning the food landscape now more than ever,� says Carlton of the World’s 50 Best. “I reckon he’s barely getting started.�
Josh is the first to admit the project has been a long time coming, with various delays due to cash, COVID-19 and council approvals. “It feels like we’ve been 3½ months from opening for the last three years,� he says, visibly elated that the soft launch, expected in June, is finally within sight. Above the bar and dining room are two floors of hotel rooms, ornately kitted out with different wallpapers.
Roll-top baths and ornate fireplaces mesh with old-school-pub style carpets and views onto the neighbouring Paddington terraces, a mix of humble and high end that Josh describes as “Paris-ington�. Trusted friend Chris Karvelas will run the hotel for them, after managing Charcoal Fish in Rose Bay for the past two years, freeing up Julie to run the overall business.
And so to the food. “I can now do all the things I have previously been too limited to achieve,� says Josh, referencing the commanding kitchen, the layout of which he’s been thinking about since 2019 when he first walked in with Penklis. There’s a combination oven, deep fryers, wood grill, French-top target stove, larder bench and a sizeable space for pastry. In the corner is a cool room for the fish, and a bench for shucking oysters, with six drawers below, each for a different species.
The tasting menu will be a tour de force of the techniques and strategies perfected over the years, starting with fish charcuterie, going on to a delicate assiette of coral trout saddle, cutlet, head and tripe; a tangle of fishbone noodles, and salt-and-vinegar King George whiting in olive brine, fanned out like a ferris wheel. Note the lack of scary fish eyeball ice-creams. “I want to remove that seat-gripping fear people have,� says Josh, “and let them enjoy the secondary cuts, almost as if they are meat and not fish.�
The meal culminates in an immaculately conceived main course that puts the prime centre-cuts of two of the most exceptional fish in Australia in the limelight. Line-caught blue-eye trevalla from Tasmania and aged yellowfin tuna from Queensland form a perfect yin-yang of ruby red and pearl white, joined by collagen, bound in nori and presented with a sauce made from the tuna bones.
The point, as staff will gently make clear, is that diners can only enjoy the luxury of these premium cuts because they have already digested the tertiary and secondary cuts, repurposed as salami, sauce or pasta. “We can only justify this now,� says Josh, “because we have given you the rest.� It’s like a reward for good behaviour. It’s the mission, on a plate.
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