Previous SlideNext Slide

Chef Josh Niland and his wife Julie relaunched Australia’s most famous fish restaurant on a Paddington backstreet in August, and, well, the new joint is really something.

“Come and enjoy the magic of scale-to-tail cooking across a 12-room boutique hotel and fine diner,” is what the brochure might say. “Let your journey begin with a martini and oysters in the table-service bar, before moving to the elegant dining room.”

Lunch is an a la carte offering of seafood caught by the best fishers in the country; dinner is a seven-course tasting menu. Expect a tart of silky John dory liver pâté with port wine jelly, dry-aged bigeye tuna wrapped, Wellington style, with mushroom duxelles, and pearlescent wood grilled coral trout with a garden of bull kelp and snow pea flowers bolstered by a butter emulsion.

Meanwhile, pastry chef Charlie Hutton’s command of technique is on display in caviar-crowned caneles, and sommelier Houston Barakat’s wine list oscillates between NSW and Piemonte with panache. Much congratulations to our Restaurant of the Year.