Saint Peter review: ‘Quality unparalleled’ in Australian dining

Chef Josh Niland’s reimagined restaurant in Sydney’s Paddington offers an experience unlike anything else in the nation.

Josh Niland at Saint Peter at The Grand National.

Josh Niland had a long wait to open the Saint Peter of his dreams. Between when he conceptualised launching the seafood fine-diner inside the Grand National Hotel in Sydney’s historic suburb of Paddington, and when he actually opened it, a plethora of obstacles stood in his way. Among them: the Covid pandemic, lockdowns and travel restrictions, two years of rain, inflation and cost-of-living crises and an explosion in building costs.

Now, 5½ years later, Saint Peter at the Grand National has opened, seating 40 in the dining room, 30 in the bar, and 14 in a private dining room. By contrast, the old Saint Peter, in modest surrounds on nearby Oxford St, fitted 18. In October, the conversion of the Grand National’s upstairs rooms into a boutique hotel of 14 rooms will also be complete.

Diners may find much that is familiar at the new Saint Peter, and yet so much more has been reinvented it is almost impossible to compare this version to the last.

Food-wise, much on the menu is known. There’s the salt-and-vinegar line-caught blue mackerel, a gorgeous dish in which this salty, oily fish is sliced and arranged in a circle on the plate with its little tail flipping into the air as it swims in a golden pool of Gordal olive brine. It’s eaten simply and deliciously with crunchy bread from Fiore bakery and cultured butter.

You may also have seen Niland’s ingenious “spaghetti bolognese”, conjured as an umami-rich tuna ragu hidden underneath silky ribbons of exquisitely tender calamari. The diner mixes the calamari noodles with the sauce underneath; combined, they taste improbably of spag bol, only a lot better.

Then there are other regulars: 14-day dry-aged yellowfin tuna caught off Mooloolaba and served with spring vegetables (plump asparagus and fresh peas) with green peppercorn and macadamia; a spectacular lemon meringue tart with “very good cream”; and even the final course, a selection of chocolates made of fish by-products (have you ever tried creme brulee made from nannygai eyes? Well, you should.)

But to focus on what’s familiar at the newly reopened Saint Peter is a mistake. That’s because the latest and ultimate version feels so different and so vastly superior to the previous iteration that you may begin to wonder what all the fuss was about in the old venue.

From the moment you push through the doors of what used to be the pub, there’s a sense of entering a grown-up world of dining that’s about to put Sydney food on the international culinary map in a way that hasn’t happened since the heady days of the 1990s when Neil Perry and Tetsuya Wakuda were at the peak of their youthful creativity.

The space itself has been beautifully and painstakingly realised by Studio Aquilo as a contemporary dining space that feels luxurious but never stuffy.

The food is a worthwhile investment at Saint Peter at the Grand National.

Don’t go thinking that for all the $275 cost – food only, the beverage pairing is an additional $200 – for a nine-course degustation, this is going to be a formal dining occasion. There are no spotlights artfully hanging over the food, no dead spaces around the tables, no hushed tones, and diners aren’t required to be in formal attire.

Rather, the space is dominated by a gleaming kitchen to one side of the room with its dangling sheafs of drying seaweed. The open kitchen delivers energy to the room, which is fashioned otherwise simply in tightly packed tables along a leather banquette. The colour palette is of the Australian bush, a sense enhanced via bunches of Australian wildflowers at the welcome desk.

You may feel as though you are in an upmarket brasserie but this is a place for educated diners who appreciate that modern luxe is not about cheap flashiness; rather, it’s about a deep and thoughtful sense of quality. And what you’re going to get is a ride through quality unparalleled in Australian dining at the moment.

Niland mentions on the menu that “once our fish leaves the water at the point of capture, it never returns to the water again”.

“The fish are broken into primary and secondary cuts, processed and distributed to maximise each fish’s individual yield,” he explains. “Historically, this yield sits between 45 per cent and 65 per cent depending on the species. Based on our dry handling and unique techniques to use the whole fish, we achieve a return of approximately 90 per cent.”

How this is expressed throughout the menu is extraordinary. The chef himself presents most tables with dishes that he explains, taking pride in each and every morsel on each and every plate, down to the salt flakes, the fish scales and the plates themselves.

Oysters, for instance, are presented on a plate purpose-built from oyster shells left over from previous diners, and there’s more ground-down oyster shell in the wonderfully subtle mignonette; at another point comes a plate made of discarded fishbones.

Niland and his smart young staff can explain the origin story of every part of every composition, with each dish a collection of ideas, research, technique and sustainability finely honed across Niland’s almost two decades in restaurants.

A delightful opening plate comprising little slices of two different seafood tarts plus a skewer of seafood charcuterie, for instance, is a deceptively simple collection of delicious bits and pieces that have been made with meticulous grace in the business’s Fish Butchery outlet in Waterloo.

The blue mackerel, meanwhile, is caught by hand by Craig Lukey at Ulladulla; a wedge of coral trout and “its parts”, offered with vegetables, bull kelp and native thyme, comes from Chris Bolton of Kurrimine Beach in Queensland; the southern calamari from Bruce Collis in Corner Inlet, Victoria.

Saint Peter at The Grand National, hotel entrance and bar.

For a degustation heavy on fish innards, the eating is surprisingly effervescent; the dishes are by turns playful and whimsical, then serious and surprising. The dry-aged yellowfin tuna, for example, is an experience in parking expectations: try it and discover it tastes like lamb roast.

The cooking is confident, of course, the food deeply delicious, and the wine list and service have also stepped up. There’s an easy Australian way of communicating here that is direct yet friendly. Having honed skills in the 18-seat room on Oxford St, the team feels well oiled, ready for the challenge of the 40-seat dining space and perfectly drilled on all the moving parts of a complex menu.

Saint Peter was the only Australian restaurant this year to appear on the world’s most influential hospitality list. The World’s 50 Best Restaurants put Saint Peter at 98 (the list goes to 100). If the judges considered Saint Peter great then, you can only imagine what they will make of the newly recalibrated space.

This is faultless contemporary Australian dining. Some might consider it expensive, but the money spent is an investment in an experience that is unlike anything else in the nation.

Saint Peter at the Grand National Hotel, 161 Underwood St, Paddington, Sydney, NSW