Since opening his first Paddington restaurant eight years ago, Josh Niland has been encouraging diners to reconsider everything they know about seafood, from catching and selling, to finding uses for the whole fish.

Flathead mortadella? Fish-eye ice-cream? Murray cod bone gravy? Deep-fried mulloway scales scattered over salt-baked pumpkin? It was all on the menu at two-hatted Saint Peter.

Next week, Niland and his restaurateur wife Julie will take that ambition to the next level, launching the next iteration of Saint Peter at Paddington’s historic Grand National Hotel on August 6. The much-loved pub has been transformed into an elegant 14-room boutique hotel, bar and restaurant to encapsulate the pioneering spirit of Niland’s disruptive fish philosophy.

It’s a project the couple have been working towards for the past five years, and want it to be nothing short of a “world-class” restaurant and dining destination.

“Someone will inevitably say ‘I can’t believe you don’t have anything but fish on the menu’,” says Josh Niland, noting the pub’s previous life as a steakhouse. “But ‘world-class’ to me means having something unique and identifiably different about your product.

“In 2024, you’ve got to have something to say.”

The world has certainly been taking notice of what Niland has to say, too. Saint Peter was the only Australian entry on the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants list announced in May, albeit in 98th position on the awards’ “long-list”.

In June, North America’s prestigious James Beard Award for a restaurant cookbook went to Niland’s Fish Butchery: Mastering The Catch, Cut, And Craft. The 35-year-old was also named Chef of the Year at The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards in November.

“I feel like the Good Food Guide team has been doing drive-bys of the Grand National every week for the past two years, looking for any sign of movement at the new digs,” says Guide editor Callan Boys. “I have one text message regarding that just reads ‘Saw a wheelbarrow out the front today … could be close!’.

“To say there’s ‘a bit of anticipation’ around the opening is like saying Lionel Messi is ‘pretty good’ at football. With Josh’s recent international awards, the global food media will be interested in Saint Peter’s next chapter just as much as Paddington locals.”

Where Niland was once confined to a modest, 18-seat venue with limited kitchen capacity at Saint Peter’s original Oxford Street site, he’s now at the helm of a formidable operation, armed with more than double the number of chefs (including head chef Joe Greenwood) and all the rotisseries, wood grills and burners he needs.

The new-look Saint Peter experience may begin at the bar, a grand affair with heightened ceilings, half-moon booths and a long marble counter at which no one will ever sit, “It’s not that kind of place,” says Niland. Rather, the bar offering is built on table service and a short menu of tuna cheeseburgers and snacks such as preserved shellfish, plus breakfast options exclusively for hotel guests.

Reservations for the bar will not be taken, but you will absolutely need one for the dining room. The striking interior design is evocative of the Australian landscape, with original Ken Done art, earth tones, timber slat ceilings, curved velvet seats, and light filtered through rust-coloured curtains. All of it is anchored in strong symmetrical lines. “Organised, organised,” says Niland.

“Julie and I wanted it to feel like an Australian venue, not like our version of a European restaurant, or one elsewhere in the world. When you come here, it should feel like you’re in Paddington.”

Six heat lamps hang above the open kitchen’s black marble counter, carefully positioned not to obstruct the faces of chefs. “I don’t like the idea of somebody working the whole night and not being seen,” says Niland. “There’s theatre to what we’re doing.”

For a proper front-row experience, guests can book the five-seat “chef’s table” with its embellished style of formal service and exclusive 10-course tasting menu. In the actual dining room, Niland is serving a seven-course set menu in the evening (priced at $275 per person) and a la carte options at lunch. There’s also a 15-seat private dining room with a working pink marble fireplace for the last days of winter.

Set-menu design is based on the classical French format of starters followed by soup, the fish course, the meat entrée, and so on. “I’m using that framework to [showcase] the potential of what you can do with fish,” says Niland.

A highlight will be hand-line caught coral trout and its parts, served with vegetables and smoked butter, and plated with splashes of colour like an abstract composition by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. There is also talk of a 20-day dry-aged “yellowfin tuna Wellington” with potato puree, black garlic and bone sauce, but the final menu is yet to be approved.

Depending on weather conditions for bivalves, diners will also have the opportunity to eat oysters served on custom-moulded plates made from crushed oyster shells, rather than off ice or cold stones. Niland says the common practice of chilling and washing oysters is like “throwing an ice cube into a glass of Burgundy, and then asking why it doesn’t taste nice”.

Chef Charlie Hutton leads Saint Peter’s first pastry kitchen, transforming seafood into “sweets of the sea”.

“It applies the whole fish approach to desserts, so we can flex that muscle and demonstrate how we’ve worked out how to incorporate bones and eyes and all of those things,” says Niland. “We’ve got the ‘Millionaire’s Slice’, which is a fishbone sable biscuit, chocolate, and fish-fat caramel.”

Final touches are still being applied to the boutique sound-proofed hotel rooms, which will open October 10. They’ll have fish-fat soap (which creates a luxurious lather) and fish-fat Hunter Candles.

Meanwhile, the Nilands will continue to oversee the rest of their growing, waste-saving seafood empire, including two-hatted St Leonards restaurantPetermen, Fish Butchery in Waterloo andFysh in Singapore.

“I can’t physically cook everyone’s dinner, but I’m going to make sure that everyone here knows how to cook like me,” says Niland, noting he’ll still be in the Saint Peter kitchen a couple of times a week.

“It’s about acquiring and stewarding a new generation of people, and taking all of their enthusiastic energy and applying it into something that tangibly feels special and unique to this building.”

The Grand National Hotel opens Tuesday, August 6, 161 Underwood Street, Paddington. saintpeter.com.au. The hotel rooms will open October 10.