He’s been called a “creative disruptor”, a “fish alchemist” and a “trailblazer”. Jamie Oliver says he’s “one of the most interesting chefs on the planet”. He’s acknowledged in the hospitality industry for redefining the way the world views seafood, his boundary-crossing restaurants forging new waters in the high-stakes world of global fine dining. Why? Because, unsettlingly with an ever-warming planet, Josh Niland’s “scales-to-tail” food and sustainable fish philosophies feel extra important right now.
At Niland’s restaurants, fish guts are treated with as much reverence as the flesh itself. Aged 27 and with a financially haemorrhaging fish restaurant, Niland realised he was throwing away half his product — offal costs the same when buying fish by weight. While Niland was working at Sydney’s now-shuttered Fish Face, the chef Stephen Hodges had suggested that Niland think of tuna as meat, switching him on to traditional butchery techniques, including offal and dry ageing, applied to seafood.
And so began the world’s love affair with Niland’s wacky, ingenious and scientific signature creations, such as puffy prawn-cracker-esque “chips” made from the eyeballs of mirror dory and mortadella made from milt, the seminal fluid of certain water-dwelling creatures, including fish.
Now 36, Niland is a plucky, straight-talking lad from Maitland, New South Wales, whose capacity for work is astonishing. He’s a character you want to see on screen, his life rich with filmic arcs and his imprint on the world’s food scene a testament to his resilience, tenacity and the love of a good woman.
That good woman is Julie Niland, a chef in her own right, his co-creative and business partner, and the mother of their four children. Together, they own Saint Peter fish restaurant in Paddington, Sydney; Petermen in the city’s St Leonards district (a “solid two-hatter” according to the restaurant critic Callan Boys); FYSH fine-diner in Singapore; and Fish Butchery in Waterloo, Sydney, a retail outlet selling dry-handled fish and top-end takeaway.
So far, Niland has played a blinder 2024, and it’s only October. The year opened with news that Saint Peter was the only Australian restaurant to make the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, placing 98th on its “long-list”. He has appeared on ABC’s “Australian Story” and Network Ten’s “MasterChef Australia”, and cooked at the Coachella music festival, California’s Malibu Pier and the Whitsundays resort qualia, passing through the portal into global celebrity chefdom. If that wasn’t enough, in August, after a year of delays, the relocated Saint Peter opened in Paddington’s The Grand National Hotel.
T Australia speaks with Niland three days after Callan Boys awarded Saint Peter three hats in a Sydney Morning Herald review.