Josh Niland has won many accolades for his Sydney restaurant. But it’s on the global stage that he’s really making waves

Josh and Julie Niland have a process for working through issues. They talk about them non-stop for weeks until they’ve driven themselves crazy. They then hit on a decision and act on it. It’s been this way since mid-2016, when the then 20-somethings were contemplating opening a fish restaurant on the site of a former sushi train in Oxford Street, Paddington, in Sydney’s east. About 12 months earlier, they’d discussed pursuing just such a dream. “If we ever open anything, I don’t want to own it,” Niland had said firmly.

With this in mind, they’d been planning their Oxford Street restaurant with another chef, who would be their silent backer. The industry wisdom was that fish restaurants don’t work, so the chef was giving them sensible advice on what they’d need to put on the menu to remain busy and, well, stay in business. Some salmon, maybe even a steak. Niland knew the chef had lots of experience. He also knew he didn’t want to compromise his own vision for what the restaurant would be. “Looking around the globe, it was clear the top chefs had a point of view. Mine would be fish.”

It all came to a head the night before the trio were due to sign the lease. “Julie and I were walking around the apartment, looking at each other, going, ‘ Argh, I don’t know what we should do ,’ ” he tells me. They spoke to Julie’s father, a hand surgeon, who said he could lend them $250,000 to get going on their own.

The couple agreed to write to the chef, saying, essentially, thanks for all your help but we’d like to go it alone . Niland wrote the email, pressed send, then turned and told Julie he’d done it. “She looked at me and was like, ‘ WHAT?! ’ ”

The would-be chef investor was gracious, wishing them luck. Niland recalls looking at the lease in the lawyer’s office the next day, with the other chef’s name blacked out. When the lawyer went to get him a pen, he vomited into the rubbish bin. “After signing, I sat in my car for about half an hour, heart racing, thinking, ‘ What the f--- have I done? ’ ”

Ten years on , that fish restaurant, Saint Peter, is one of Australia’s most acclaimed, and Josh Niland among our most revered chefs. Saint Peter was one of only eight Australian restaurants to snare three Good Food Guide hats in 2025 , a year in which it was also voted Gourmet Traveller ’s restaurant of the year . Indeed, it’s been awarded multiple Australian accolades, both in its original, modest 34-seat Oxford Street digs and after its 2024 move around the corner to the Grand National Hotel. Here it’s evolved into a 40-seat dining room offering $395-a-head 10-course dinners, a 15-room hotel, a private dining space and a 30-seat bar where you might pair your tuna burger with an oyster shell martini or an Archie Rose x Saint Peter G&T.

On top of all that, there’s a Fish Butchery across town in Waterloo, which processes fish for Saint Peter and also sells to the public. Also on offer is a range of merchandise, from fish weights, tongs, fish-oil soaps and fish-bone ceramics through to socks and, now, a Niland-designed fish pan.