No guts, no glory: Trailblazing chef Josh Niland on his new Singapore restaurant

Special is the man who makes the idea of eating fish guts palatable. Or convinces diners to not only eat ice cream made of fisheyes, but fork out good money for it too. You want a cheeseburger? Josh Niland will make you one out of the parts of the yellowfin tuna that most other people would throw away. Suffice it to say, Niland is the poster child for eating the whole fish — guts and all — and foodies are lapping it up.

Until now, anyone who wanted a taste of Niland’s gill-to-tail cookery had to make their way Down Under to his flagship restaurant Saint Peter in Sydney. But this week, Singapore welcomes its own Josh Niland eatery, FYSH at EDITION, which he describes as a “seafood-focused steakhouse” at the newly opened Singapore Edition along Cuscaden Road.

With 154 seats sprawled over a 249 sq m dining room, FYSH could not be more different from Saint Peter, which seats just 18 people at any given time. “It’s a very generous space that’ll command its own identity,” said Niland. “There will be aspects of Saint Peter that will be in this menu, like making pasta out of fish bones and ice cream out of fisheyes, but at the end of the day, we just want to inform people that there is more to fish than two fillets. That is the ambition of this exercise.”

If all this talk about fish bones and guts is giving you Fear Factor vibes, relax. Niland didn’t become the only Australian to score a spot in the Top 100 Best Chefs in the World List in 2022 by daring diners to slurp fish guts from a glass. His approach has been largely defined by treating fish like meat and transforming all the not-so-popular parts into desirable eats.

To wit, yellowfin tuna, which will form a large part of FYSH’s menu, is viewed as a cow in Niland’s kitchen. “So we have the fillet steak that looks like a beef fillet… and the skirt steak, which is the tuna belly, grilled in a Josper oven and served with condiments that reference a steakhouse, such as harissa, barbecue sauce, seaweed tapenade, chimichurri, horseradish cream and smoked gremolata.”

Meanwhile, the last loin of ribeye on the bone is aged for a fortnight and put through a meat grinder with other parts of the tuna, like its head and organs. Seasoned and pressed into patties, they serve as the anchor for yellowfin tuna cheeseburgers, which come with barbecue sauce, cheese and pickles between a soft bun.

“The rest of the bones, heads and bits and pieces go into a sauce that will go into the tuna Wellington,” he added.

THE CHALLENGES OF USING IT ALL

Niland’s interest in fish began when he worked for chef Stephen Hodges at his famed Sydney restaurant Fish Face in the early 2000s. Apart from Hodge’s deep knowledge of cooking seafood, Niland found himself fascinated by how much of the fish, “went in the bin for aesthetic value”.

Cut to 2016 when he opened Saint Peter. “I believe that you find creativity and innovation when you have a problem. And my problem was that my fish bill was very high. If I throw out half the fish that I’ve paid good money for, I’d go broke.”

The challenges that he struggled with in Saint Peter’s early days are what will plague him at FYSH now. Buying fish whole is a struggle in efficiency since cooks only get limited time to butcher and cook it before it starts to smell like, well, fish. That exercise alone calls for a larger-than-usual kitchen brigade.

“The hardest thing will be receiving the fish whole, scaling it, wiping it, gutting it, sorting through the offal, wiping it, cooking it up, hanging it, and maturing it for a period of time,” he explained. “Then fabricating that into a product that looks extraordinary and feels unique and special. And then once all that work is done, we turn what’s left behind into something desirable again, so that we get as close to 95 per cent used product by the end of it.”

To ensure optimum efficiency, FYSH’s menus will offer fewer seafood species with which to create its repertoire of dishes across breakfast, lunch, dinner and a bar menu. “(That gives us) the opportunity to bring an identity to each service so that it all feels connected while also providing a reason (for diners) to go to the bar or come for dinner and come back for lunch with us.”

Yellowfin tuna aside, diners can expect a short list of seafood including swordfish, blue eye trevally, hapuka, Sydney rock oysters, King George whiting, scampi and scallops, mostly from his long-time suppliers in Australia and from local and Malaysian suppliers. Among his “local” finds are Malaysian clams which he will serve over noodles made from fish bones, turmeric and flour, tossed in an XO sauce made from fish offal, scallops and shrimps.

“I’m trying to write a menu that’s of as close proximity as I can,” he added. “but it’s taken a multitude of years to develop relationships and a rapport with the supply chain I have in Australia, and it’ll be the same here.

While he focuses on the task ahead, Niland reiterates, “My ambition and desire are to show people something new that they’ve never tasted before with regards to fish, to be as informative and delicious with regards to how we handle a fish and try to treat this as an educational experience for the guest.”