Australia’s Seafood-Forward Cuisine – Along With Some of Its Most Talented Chefs – Will Be on Hand at Malibu’s “Great Australian Bite” This April
Australia and Southern California share a passion that transcends time zones and hemispheres: food. In Los Angeles and Sydney, two cities lapped by the Pacific Ocean and with highly evolved culinary scenes, seafood in particular is enjoying a protracted renaissance. No fewer than seven SoCal restaurants made the top 30 of Yelp’s national “Top 100 Seafood Spots 2024,” while in Sydney, maverick chef Josh Niland is expanding the already impressive breadth and inventiveness of Australian seafood.
Niland’s adventurous, sustainable approach to fish feels tailor-made for forward-thinking SoCal diners. Happily, he’ll be on hand alongside fellow award-winning Aussie chefs along with some of California’s best food creators at a spectacular outdoor dinner event on Malibu Pier on April 10. Presented by the Los Angeles Times and Tourism Australia, “The Great Australian Bite” will offer Angelenos a rare opportunity to taste the very best of Down Under’s cuisine right here on our own Pacific Coast. The event, which will create a monumental takeover of the pier for a sunset dinner event, would be spectacular on its own, but will be made wholly unique by the visiting chefs like Niland.
Take One Fish
Niland is credited with spearheading a fish revolution centered upon applying traditionally meat-focused practices like dry aging and whole animal cookery to seafood. In 2020, the young restaurateur was the first Australian to win the James Beard Foundation’s Book of the Year award for his debut effort, “The Whole Fish Cookbook.” A year later he published bestselling follow-up “Take One Fish” – which is precisely what Niland will be doing at “The Great Australian Bite,” where he’ll prepare his contributions to every course from one fish.
“By the end of the meal, I can stand up comfortably and say, ‘you’ve now consumed 90% of this one single fish … from canapé to dessert,” he explained.
Niland’s culinary fascination began while battling childhood cancer, when his mother went to great trouble to always make him a home-cooked lunch after chemotherapy sessions (“one of the most generous things that you can do for somebody”). Growing up in Maitland, north of Sydney, he found comfort not just in food itself but also in TV cooking shows and culinary magazines.
By his late teens, Niland was working in high-end Sydney kitchens, including chef jobs that would shape his signature style when he opened the city’s seafood-centric Saint Peter restaurant in 2016. In England, he worked for celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal, creator of bacon-and-egg ice cream and snail porridge, and experienced Fergus Henderson’s “nose-to-tail” embrace of offal and off-cuts at London’s St. John restaurant. Back in Sydney, at seminal seafood eatery Fishface, owner Stephen Hodges impressed upon Niland the notion of treating fish just as you would meat.
A fateful mistake during Niland’s Fishface tenure – storing a tray of fish in a fridge with a fan overnight, which left it dried out yet delectable once cooked – began his fascination with dry-aging fish, which he’s since honed to both an art and a science.
Scales-to-Tail
The sobering economic realities of opening the upscale Saint Peter with his wife at just age 28 encouraged Niland to explore using more and more of every sustainably-sourced fish he purchased – including the heads, bones, heart and blood – at a time when most kitchens were discarding more than half of all seafood. Niland became what he calls “a butcher of fish,” discovering that he could make patties, hams, bacon, and sausages all from seafood.
Today, at the upscale Saint Peter and his nearby Fish Butchery store, Niland aims to use 90% of each fish, while also embracing lesser-known species such as wild kingfish and red mullet. To make this “scales-to-tail” approach more comfortable for diners, Niland developed recipes for familiar meat dishes, only with seafood as a principal ingredient – the likes of spearfish pastrami, coral trout head terrine, and yellowfin tuna cheeseburger, as well as chips made from fish eyeballs.
Niland dry ages fish in custom-built cool rooms where they never come into contact with water, ice, salt or brining. This intensifies flavor while reducing odor. He dismisses the traditional fishmongering practices of scaling, gutting, and repeatedly washing fish as producing only a “held state of mediocrity.” Niland’s game-changing results and rave reviews (Jamie Oliver declared him “one of the most impressive chefs of a generation”) have enabled him to open further eateries in Sydney and a first-of-its-kind fish steakhouse in Singapore.
The Great Australian Bite
At the Great Australian “Bite” – a play on The Great Australian Bight, the huge bay spanning much of Australia’s southern coastline – Niland will cook alongside fellow standout Aussie chefs Jo Barrett (The Age Good Food Guide’s 2024 Chef of the Year) and Monty Koludrovic (culinary director of L.A.’s Living Room) using ingredients from Australian producers including Great Southern Lamb, Yarra Valley Caviar, and ALTO Olives.
The spectacle of the event, which will feature an enormous 300-person table set upon the Malibu Pier overlooking the setting sun to the west, will be unmatched for the lucky guests. But the real sensory feast will come from the dishes prepared by the three talented chefs who will take over the famed sport fishing pier for the evening. The scene will be added to aurally by live performances from Australian musicians.
For Niland, a repeat Chef of the Year awardee from multiple publications, the Great Australian Bite is a hands-on opportunity to advance the identity of Australian cuisine through a family-style feast of Aussie and Cali produce paired with world-renowned wine selections. “I feel there’s an audience in California that absolutely is very aware of the state of the oceans and of where we’re headed,” he said. “I think they, like Sydney, love something that they can take a great photo of and communicate to their friends and to really celebrate exclusivity.”
The curated menu will also include sustainably sourced prawns from Southern California’s TransparentSea Farm and fresh produce from Weiser Family Farms. Sponsors include Qantas, South Australia Wine, and Four Pillars Gin.
-Paul Rogers