Saint Peter chef Josh Niland pulls pin at high-profile Singapore restaurant

The see-sawing performance of Australian chefs trying to crack the Singapore dining market has taken another turn, with Josh Niland pulling the pin at Singapore’s high-profile Fysh restaurant after just two years.

Niland, co-owner with wife Julie at Sydney restaurant Saint Peter, confirmed they have ended the contract at Fysh, where his scale-to-tail seafood philosophy and wider repertoire were showcased after its late 2023 opening at Singapore’s Edition hotel. Edition is the dream child of US entrepreneur Ian Schrager.

Singapore has long been a magnet for top-shelf Australian culinary talent, but the longevity of Tetsuya Wakuda’s Waku Ghin and David Pynt’s Burnt Ends has been matched by chefs who’ve jettisoned Singapore ventures, including David Thompson’s Long Chim and Clayton Wells’ short-lived Blackwattle restaurant.

“It took a bit of time to get going,” Niland said of Fysh’s early days. The grind of travelling to Singapore while juggling family and a demanding top-shelf Sydney restaurant also took a toll.

Niland said Singapore is an extremely competitive market, where diners have plenty of choice with an abundance of cheaper hawker-style food and “a lot of great restaurants”.

Celebrity chef Luke Mangan, who is among the band of Australian chefs to close venues in Singapore, agreed that the plethora of great restaurants coupled with “lots of good cheap offerings” made it a tough market to crack. “And rents are extremely high,” he said.

Choice of partner is also important. “I sold all my Salt [restaurants] to my Japanese partner in 2019, sadly they all went under after COVID,” Mangan said. However, he remains optimistic about Singapore’s upside as an international dining city, snaring a yet-to-be-disclosed Singapore site where he’ll open Luke’s Bar & Grill in early 2027.

Singapore’s location and efficiency had advantages, Niland said. “Some of the fish out of Western Australia was quicker to the door than Saint Peter.”

Niland had a number of options on the end date to his contract, but felt the timing was right to hand over to the local team. “At the end of the second year I was happy, the business had kicked on,” he said.

Meanwhile, Wakuda’s ambitious international restaurant stable includes his Waku Ghin fine diner and Wakuda venue in Singapore, plus a Wakuda restaurant in Las Vegas. However, his Dubai outpost, Sagetsu by Tetsuya, which opened in 2024, is listed online as permanently closed.

Sagetsu, which picked up a Michelin star in its first year, was reported by local media to have closed last year, along with two other restaurants, at The Link, a 120-metre cantilever in the sky between two Dubai towers. Wakuda, who etched his name on the Sydney dining scene at the now-closed Tetsuya’s restaurant, was approached for comment.

The Nilands’ move follows a busy few years for the couple, with Saint Peter relocating from Oxford Street to a larger, more elegant space at The Grand National Hotel in Paddington and a number of their spin-off ventures closed. Saint Peter’s north-side sibling, the more accessible Petermen restaurant, shut, as did Rose Bay takeaway shop Charcoal Fish and the Fish Butchery outlet in Paddington.

Niland said the cull and recalibration of the hospitality group allowed more focus to be directed towards the Saint Peter restaurant mothership. And he’s confident that the Singapore clientele will continue to eat his food, with Saint Peter popular with visitors from South-East Asia.

Overseas expansion isn’t off the table. Niland points to the Catseye Pool Club at The Sundays boutique hotel, on Hamilton Island, as an example of where the couple is successfully operating a remote venue. The chef named London, New York and possibly Spain as top of his wishlist for any future global restaurant launches.