Is it fish or is it meat - exciting eating at Josh Niland's St. Peter

Tonight's meal was in St. Peter at the Grand National Hotel, the recently opened venue for the St. Peter Restaurant which has been on the Sydney food scene since 2016.

The Chef Patron of this place is Josh Niland, a well known Australian chef and restaurateur. He is a pioneer of whole fish cookery, who has gained renown for the nose-to-tail approach to seafood he promotes. 

Photo from the National Geographic Magazine

Niland's career helped him develop fish-cutting skills and he focuses on cooking a variety of fish in very different ways. He has worked in world-renowned restaurants like Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck. 

He says of himself:

“My mission is to bring desirability to the whole fish. It is neglectful, ignorant and plain ridiculous that across the world, over half of fish is tossed in the bin.”

Josh Niland has been in the top 100 Chefs in the World for the last three years.

It was my sister who told me about Niland and encouraged me to try his restaurant - I'm so very glad she did. Given it was Friday, fish day, it was just the right place to be this evening. The food was exceptional and mind-bending, in a good way.

Fish or Meat

What is most exceptional about Niland's style of cooking is that he plays with what fish can be, to such an extent that your eyes and your mind seem at times to be at conflict. Sometimes they seem in agreement - and are both wrong - astounding.

We began with Coral Trout Noodle Soup. It was gentle, warm yet meaty in flavour, yet no meat had been used in its production!

Then came, what may be the pièce de résistance of the night, his Queensland Fish Butchery Charcuterie dish.

This was:

• Queensland Fish Butchery Charcuterie Murray Cod Chorizo
• Swordfish Toulouse Sausage
• Yellowfin Tuna Salami
• Rock Flathead Mortadella
• Yellowfin Tuna 'Nduja in an olive
• Smoked Bar Cod Roe Tart with nori gel
• John Dory Liver Pâte Tart with fig gel

with a pickle and chilli added

Yes, read that list again, and look at the photo below. Every one of those things that looks like something else, and tastes like something else is fish not meat.

The food is clearly designed to play with your mind!! Each one distinctive and delightful and you can play with my mind, sight and palette as much as you like if it is all going to be this exceptional. My sister asked me if it was as good as it looked - I replied: "No, better!". Astonding.

St. Peter's offers a non-alcoholic drinks pairing for which we opted. The first drink was a non-alcoholic Vermouth with wormwood and ginger, sadly my phone decided to crash immediately after I took that photo and it didn't save it! 

Here we have the second drink of the evening. A Pineapple, coconut cream with pineapple skin turned into a verjuice with a pineapple sage leaf - a delicious and sharp combination with the fish which follows.

This dish was Fish, bread and butter! What you ask? What indeed! 

It was a new South Wales Salt & Vinegar Line Caught Blue Mackerel, with Gordal Olives Oil and Olive Brine and a Fiore Bread with Cultured Butter. We were instructed by the waiter in the order of eating for the best flavour. It is dip bread in oil, add butter and fish then insert in mouth.

The tingling in the mouth and on the tongue, a gentle, light fish, but with a tangy flavour when eaten as instructed above.

This was followed by our third drink - Pumpkin Sake. It wasn't our favourite flavour. Made from pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, sweet non-alcoholic sake, blackened honey and wattleseeds, it tastes to us like watered down cough medicine!

But we didn't mind so much as being this close, a few feet, to the action in the kitchen we could be distracted as we prepared for the next course.

This was called: Southern Calamari Yellowfin Tuna 'Nduja and was again mind blowing.  

The calamari was barbequed then cut very fine and turned into what looked like spaghetti. With the tuna 'nduga the dish tastes and looks like Spaghetti Bolognese yet is Calamari and yellow tuna nduja!! It was so amazing to look at and delightful to eat that my photo of it was only of the used plate:

Thankfully someone else has had it before and a photo of an uneaten version can be seen on their instagram account via this link 

The next drink was sharp and tangy - Australian Lemongrass soda, lemon verjuice, tonic water and rosemary. No this is much more to my taste

It was served with charcoal Garfish with Nasturtium, Romanesco and Smoked Eel Butter. A lemony taste comes through from somewhere and gives a tanginess to a tasty piece of fish which carries the strong flavours of the eel reall well, or as Drew insists, it was 'Eeely, Eeely Good'.

Just to prove how much Drew was enjoying himself, here he is looking very happy with the next drink which on paper doesn't sound like it should work: Beetroot, eucalyptus and koji! Yet this interesting mix of flavours works wonderfully with the food that follows.

Contrary to what your eyes might suggest this is not a piece of lamb rather it is a Six Day, Dry Aged, Yellowfin Tuna with Spring Vegetables, Black Garlic and Macadamia nuts. THe spring vegetables are asparagus and garden peas which with the black garlic puree, potato and cashew ball provides a great foil for the tuna which is flavoured like a spring lamb with a crust of pepper and spices rolled outside it. Tuna isn't my favourite fish, but here the flavours of the purees, sauces and spices make it very palatable, amazing.

Our next drink is quince, lemon vinegar and carrottop leaf, yes, sharp, sharp and sharp again. It was wonderfully dry and crisp, perfect to offset the sorbets which were to be eaten with it.

The next dish was called Queensland Selection of Native Fruits and included no-fish! Rather it was a selection of sorbets from local fruits - the smallest one is Lemon Aspen, the next largest Desert Lime, the next Quandong Muntries and the largest Davidson Plum. They were served over dry ice, giving great theatre to the expereince. 

Here is a post-dry ice picture.

I've tasted three of these flavours four before in the other two restaurants - Quay in Sydney and Wildflower in Perth - but each has its own distinctive - and tart - flavour which got little groans of delight from each of us as we ate them. I'm not a dessert lover, but I could have eaten a few more of these.

Following the palette cleanser the main dessert was Lemon Meringue Tart with very Good Cream. The meringue element was barbequed with a coal at the table for effect. This was far to sweet for me - so Drew managed the whole tart and all the cream and was happily licking his lips at the end.

Our final drink of the evening was lemon juice, strawberry and non-alcoholic rice wine and rosso. It was designed as a lovely gentle taste, balancing the tartness of the tart. Though it was also very tasty on its own.

The Petite Fours are called on the menu: New South Wales Sweets of the Sea.

They are from right to left

• Kaluga Caviar Canelé 
• Jannygai Eye Crème Brulé 
• Smoked Chocolate, Bones and Fat 

Yes, you heard it, caviar in a canele - an inspired idea, so delicious. The second used the collagen naturally found in fish eyes to replace the chicken eggs which normally bind a custard of this kind. Finally the chocolate delight has a rich and tasty centre, the title tells you what it was made of, the taste didn't suggest either bones or fat! 

Each of them were little bombs of fishy goodness.

We finished dinner at nine and walked back to the hotel which is just off Kings Cross. Drew had brought his posh lens with him, so here is a shot of the centre of Kings Cross at night.

And here is the iconic Coke sign at the heart of this part of the City.

As we walked home we chatted about the experience of St. Peter's. It was such an exceptional place to eat, which the space in the dining room is not large, meaning we were closer to other people than we would be in most good restaurants, that really didn't matter as the quality and unexpectedness of both the food and the drink meant that your focus was on that not the people to right or left of us.

There are times when food is a comfort and solace, times when it is just to fill a gap in the stomach, times when it can challenge and make us reflect and times, like, tonight when it can stun you into thinking in all new ways about how we cook and use ingredients as common, yet as amazing as the fish of the sea. Josh Niland you are a genius, I'm so glad we have learnt the lesson.