Saint Peter Restaurant & Hotel Puts Aussie Hospitality on a Plate

From the outside, Josh and Julie Niland’s new home for their whole-fish restaurant, Saint Peter, inside the Grand National Hotel, is deceptively unassuming. Sitting on a pretty Paddington corner, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, it’s not dissimilar to other 19th-century pubs in the area: a three-storey structure with a narrow entryway and a demure monochrome palette. You have to squint to see the building’s most decorative feature: a series of tiny, eight-pointed stars that adorn the window eaves.

But step through the main doors and that kerbside anonymity shapeshifts into the warmest of welcomes. The bar is all marble, desert-toned leathers and bunches of banksia leaves. Stop here for a Spider Flower Negroni or something from head sommelier Houston Barakat’s international wine list, with its focus on grapes from maritime terroirs. Add a tapas-style appetiser or two, such as tiny preserved red prawns served with Fiore sourdough and spheres of cultured butter, or a plate of Sydney rock oysters from the NSW South Coast.

Then it’s through to the main dining room, which continues the restrained Australiana décor (glance to your right on the way to see a self-portrait by Ken Done). Here, the team – led by head chef Joe Greenwood – will be preparing the evening’s seven-course tasting menu in the open-plan kitchen beneath garlands of deep-green dried kelp. This, of course, is the main event; Niland’s ode to everything scale and tail, which has cemented him as one of the world’s most exciting culinary visionaries.

The procession of dishes is a mix of newcomers and big-hitters from the original restaurant, using all-Australian fish. There’s the salt-and-vinegar garfish or mackerel, pickled and sliced into a circular jigsaw puzzle and curled around a sunshine-yellow pool of olive oil and brine. A delicate tangle of translucent calamari “noodles” topped with an unctuous “bolognese” of tuna ’nduja. The fish fillet course is anything but predictable – perhaps a triangle of line-caught nannygai served beside a flower-dappled beaker of its innards. There’s always something encased in pastry, such as a Wellington or pâté en croûte, made with every part of a fish to minimise waste and maximise flavour. On paper, some of it could sound challenging, a trompe l’oeil of fishy things behaving like meaty things. But on the palate it’s delicious.

The surprises at the new Saint Peter don’t end with the food. Above the bar and restaurant, on a scale that is nearly impossible to envisage from the street, is a 14-room boutique hotel designed by Studio Aquilo, the same creatives responsible for the aesthetics of the ground floor. Each suite – some with skyscraper and harbour glimpses – has a slightly different size, style and layout, as you’d expect from spaces carved into the bones of a 130-year-old building. There’s more marble and leather, plus rich patterned wallpapers, prints of John Olsen landscapes and clawfoot baths.

“The colour and texture, along with the 1890s Victorian vibes, are what I think separates it from other hotels,” says Josh Niland. Minibars are stocked with Australian produce, including Hunted+Gathered chocolates and Archie Rose spirits. Continental breakfast deviates from the usual fruits and pastries with the addition of fish charcuterie from the Nilands’ Fish Butchery business.

Together, the restaurant, bar and hotel combine to create one of Sydney’s most charming and deeply considered examples of Aussie hospitality. “The project has taken six years,” says Niland. “Julie and I couldn’t be more excited to see this beautiful building come to life.”