Saint Peter at The Grand National Hotel — Restaurant in Sydney

Not so Grand St Peter

A degustation experience not to be repeated. Wed 8:45pm, 2 p, 7 courses, no choice of dish $ 750, bill attached as proof of attendance.

Many good reviews, an experienced chef, trained by one of the best seafood chef Steven Hodges, what could go wrong?

No doubt, a lot of work goes in the preparation with an overall disappointing experience in term of flavour and taste.

Although emulating original dishes by substituting the original proteins with fish parts is an interesting concept, it fails to deliver any true culinary discovery as such.

Overall, we can’t say the food from the set seven courses is not good, but it is disappointing, many dishes have too many mix of savours which is overwhelming for the palate.

Probably the small portion used to make each dish, ends up unbalancing the flavours, when you have a tiny bit of fish surrounded by different sauce and ingredients it become lost, failing to provide a good result.

The deserts were interesting and probably the most innovative part considering some of the components are sourced in tiny qty from fish parts.

This modern set up is run by a large team of staff where no one seems stressed, no doubt this would be very expensive to maintain, it seems overstaffed.

As guests, we felt manipulated rather than welcome, we came 4 minutes earlier to our 8:45pm booking, greeted by the front desk hostess, who forced us to sit at the bar pushing the drinks menu, while we said we were not interested.

She made us wait 2-3 minutes extra waiting for 8:45 sharp to drive us at a table, while the room was not full at the time.

We saw the chef dodging a hi from a distance, and immediately disappeared for ever. It was 9 pm time to go home !

The staff delivers food like in any other restaurant reciting unwarranted explanations, we don’t go to a restaurant to hear the fish has been caught one by one or other irrelevant unproven details. A lot of gimmick with little substance or solid evidence.

A drinks menu on the table pushing wine by the glass and cocktails, you have to request a full wine list to be able to order by the bottle, the list comes on an iPad.

The overall experience is not terrible, simply no special discovery or any tremendous, tasty product that would drive us back, considering the prices, it can only be justified by the number of staff and the restaurant setting, unfortunately less by the food itself which is a serious concern for a restaurant.

Based on our experience we can’t understand how SMH Good Food would rate this restaurant at 18/20.

An additional discretionary’ 10% tip on the final bill, is absolutely unwelcome, it makes us feel uncomfortable and mandatory very bad practice.

Will we go back ?

Definitely NOT for the degustation formula. As nothing impressed us to warrant another visit not even if it was offered for free.

May be later on we could consider returning to try a la carte as full size serving would probably offer a tastier experience.

We did not like the Fish Butchery Charcuterie, as reproducing meat product using fish part with an excessive use of spices fails to deliver a valid substitute for the original product.

The John Dory Liver Pâté was terrible, the worse component of the night, with a strong overwhelming bitter taste like a bad quality chicken liver pâté, please take it out.

The Salt & Vinegar Blue Mackerel Gordal Olive Brine was OK although, the fish was definitely overcooked in the brine to our taste, the Cultured Butter was very ordinary.

Charcoal Calamari interesting although the tasty yellow fin Tuna Nduja covered the savour of the Calamari.

A minuscule piece of Coral Trout, too many flavour mixed up in the same plate

Aged Yellowfin Tuna, too many ingredients and sauces spoiling the product, nothing bad but nothing spectacular.

Native Fruits sorbet, interesting flavour.

Sweets of the Sea, best interesting concept and good taste.

I would not recommend anyone to go there for the degustation, it seems that full size dish a la carte could be a...

(Last visited May 11, 2023.) Next up on our word-of-mouth recommended list is Saint Peter located in Paddington just about an hour’s walk from downtown or a 6-minute car ride. 🤗 You know what butchers are right? 🔪🥩 The guys who create beautiful cuts of beef? 🤌🏽 Well, here they’re known as “The Fish Butchers”! 😱 They create INCREDIBLE dishes from various different sea creatures and they don’t waste a single part of them! 😲 We even had ice cream with the proteins of a snapper’s eyes! 🙃 This place is brilliant! ✨ They only offer 2 lunchtime seatings 🍽️ Thursday through Sunday and 2 dinner seatings Tuesday through Sunday. We were there for dinner and it was $195.00 per person for a 7-course tasting menu that was absolutely DIVINE! 😋

Atmosphere/Appearance: Set in a fairly quiet, but downtown-ish like area of Paddington (a district of Sydney) between downtown Sydney and Bondi Beach is this incredible establishment. It's a part of the Grand Hotel, but the restaurant literally have 12 seats so you NEED to make reservations well in advance. The restaurant is elongated with the "kitchen" and prep area pretty much running along the entire left side with seats that pull right up to the counter. Such a cool experience. It felt so intimate and personal.

Service: No single person took care of us, but it was more like the entire staff took turns talking to us, pouring us wine and telling us about each dish. I loved that.

Food: So the menu here changes all the time since they use freshly caught specimen and use EVERY PART OF IT. Here was our menu!

1st Course) Line Caught Rainbow Runner Fantastic. Warm, comforting, incredibly complex flavors that worked so well together. Good salt, good savory-ness.

(2nd Course) Fish Butchery Charcuterie On this board was yogurt churned butter, yellowfin tuna + marie cod chorizo, tuna cured for 1 week then hung for 6 weeks. (My favorite. Tasted like a mild jerky.) Marlin (a bit fishy, mild), rock flathead mortadella with black pepper. (Least favorite, gave me bologna vibes). This idea was kinda all over the place, but I really appreciated the idea.

(3rd Course) Charcoal Pips The tortolini was made with squid ink. Whole mixture with clams was very balanced with a good buttery flavor.

(4th Course) Southern Calamari & Berrima Octopus It’s supposed to be a wild take on spaghetti bolognese. Lol. It was a bit on the salty side for me and the natural textures of the sea creatures made it difficult for me to eat.

(5th Course). Line Caught Mahi Mahi On The Bone Excellent. Cooked perfectly. The beet root added a great texture to every bite and the flavors were just amazing. Savory, not too salty and so hard to describe.

(6th Course). 14-Day Dry Aged Tuna In Swordfish Bacon The tuna was excellent, but wrapping it in a swordfish bacon may have been a little too much for me. The flavors competed instead of working together. Then to add a “pumpkin & bone sauce” just really went over the top. It felt like there was a lot happening. The celeriac was just… I don’t know. Lol. I guess you need a vegetable with your meat.

(7th Course). Snapper Eye Ice Cream Instead of using traditional egg whites or egg yolks, the man, Josh Niland uses the proteins from the snapper eye to make the ice cream. Lol. What a guy. Fantastic.

(8th Course). Valrhona Chocolate Tart 64% chocolate from Madagascar. 34% milkfat cream. It was so creamy, a bit bitter, but super soft and I loved it.

Value: I didn't mention the price in my initial intro, but this is Michelin Star level quality. Yes, you will break the bank. Lol.

In conclusion, dining here was a phenomenal experience. I loved how well everything was prepared, presented and executed. Well done. I can't wait to make a return to try a whole new...

Went in with very low expectations as I’m not a big fan of fish but my partner has been wanting to try this restaurant for some time now.

Pacing of the food was great and it was greatly appreciated that it was based on each table as my partner and I ate a lot faster compared to the table next to us.

Food and ambience were both outstanding. I really enjoyed the fact that it was an open kitchen and could see the chefs make the food, and personally felt very homey even though the price says otherwise. It was also a pleasant surprise to see Josh Niland there since my partner has been wanting to try the restaurant because of him.

Service was great too. As it was a full house, there were a lot of servers that were constantly making sure that we had a great experience. I appreciated the servers explaining each dish.

The oysters were a little pricey at $8 but considering the effort that goes into growing them, we were happy to try them. I appreciate the different areas they are able to source them from and the mignonette to enhance the flavour. I usually like lemon on mine but not having them worked out in the end as the oysters tasted amazing.

We had the $275 tasting menu and enjoyed everything. It is hard to choose a standout because all the dishes were all delicious in their own right. But if I had to choose it would be the fish butchery charcuterie, line caught John Dory, and the native fruit sorbets.

The fish butchery charcuterie was genuinely a piece of art and I could have had the pâté tarts on its own. I liked how there was an order to trying each piece and it all flowed very well.

The John Dory was done very well which was no surprise considering that was also the standout fish for me at Petermen. And the caramelised cream complimented it really well.

The Native Fruits sorbets (although did not contain fish) were the standout dessert for me due to not having tasted the fruits itself before. Loved how they were different sizes in accordance to their flavour profile i.e the more citrusy sorbets were smaller in comparison to subtle and sweet counterparts. It’s a shame we can’t buy some of the fruits itself here in Australia.

Overall, the consensus between my partner and I is that Saint Peter is one of if not the best restaurants we have been to in Sydney. We both had very different expectations of the restaurant but arrived at the...