Australian chef Josh Niland served customers fish eyeball crackers to save his failing restaurant. It rocketed his career into the stratosphere and now the world's top chefs can't get enough.
Australia's Josh Niland is 'one of the most interesting chefs on the planet'. This is his secret ingredientAt the heart — and the liver, intestines and eyeballs — of chef Josh Niland 's venture into "use everything" fish cuisine was his restaurant's survival.
So Niland started thinking. His mind went back to those days when he was fresh out of his apprenticeship and working at Fish Face, the now-closed restaurant of well-known Sydney fish chef Stephen Hodges. Saint Peter survived. It's become not just a restaurant that serves a quality fish fillet, but a place where foodies flock to try the next weird but wonderful dish Niland and his team has created with fish scraps.At 35, Niland is right up there with celebrated Australian chef Shannon Bennett of Melbourne's Vue De Monde, whose poster he stuck to his bedroom wall as a boy growing up in East Maitland, near Newcastle.
Surgery to remove his right kidney followed, then intensive care, a stint in hospital and about 18 months of treatment. The sharp turn to face mortality left its mark on Niland. At times, he'd wake to find the bed where another child had been was now empty. "You definitely start seeing things through a new lens," Niland says.But this formative time also impressed on him the kindness of people, from the medical staff to the artist who painted Niland's favourite joggers into a hospital mural.
It was life changing. Niland remembers being awe-struck; the feel of the beautiful chairs, the sight of champagne trolleys rolling by, the procession of mind-blowing dishes. "I can remember the smell of mushrooms, chanterelles … the smell of toasted brioche coming out with the foie gras," Niland says. "How cold the martini glass was with the green tea soba noodles and raw kingfish with finger lime."It set Niland on a culinary education of fanatical scope.
Come 2016, after a stint at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck in England and other restaurants, he and Julie opened Saint Peter — and finessing that balance between yields and losses became acutely personal.For a sense of how obsessive Niland is with inventing mouth-watering ways to eat fish bits, the creation of his eyeball ice cream is illuminating.
"It definitely took a lot of experimentation to find something meaningful and consistent to get from the eye," Niland says. But he did, and with a dash of yoghurt and salt, eyes cream is now on the menu. Niland and his wife Julie are building a culinary empire. They are about to open the new location of their restaurant, Saint Peter, in the Grand National Hotel building in Sydney.The Nilands are going bigger now, deciding to close two venues to focus on an ambitious venture, the conversion of the Grand National Hotel. It's a fresh home for Saint Peter — and much more. Says Nourse: "It's the restaurant. It's bar snacks. It's the hotel.
Chef Josh Niland Chef Michelin Star Fish Fishing Culinary
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