Where is the first ‘fish butchery’ – offering sausages, ‘bacon’ and masterclasses?

Australian chef Josh Niland is obsessed. His passion: fish. At his hot spot restaurant Saint Peter, in the Sydney suburb of Paddington, he serves almost nothing but fish and seafood – often underutilised species – and only those caught sustainably from Australian waters.

Diners can order from a few vegetable sides, and tarts – only tarts – for dessert, followed by a few options of cheese.

Yet while these courses are limited, diners come to Saint Peter for the mains, a daily-changing feast. Dishes range from 18-day-aged broadbill swordfish from Mooloolaba with roe, kelp and lime, to a whole Port Lincoln pallidus octopus draped over sweet and sour sauce, to spanner crab from Ballina, its meat shredded and served in its own shell, in a pool of coral sauce made from its roe.

Dedicated to “nose to tail” – or should it be “lips to tail fin” – cooking, Niland thrills in using marine offal, for example making the equivalent of prawn crackers from the eyeballs of mirror dory.

He handles so much fish on a daily basis that he set up what is probably the world’s first fish butchery.

“Initial thoughts were triggered by logistics; we simply ran out of fish-ageing space and storage,” says Niland, a multi-award-winning chef, who made the shortlist in the “Ethical Thinking” category at last month’s new World Restaurant Awards.