When seafood savants Josh and Julie Niland opened the first Fish Butchery in Paddington back in 2018, right next door to their acclaimed fish-centric fine diner Saint Peter, it was something of a gamble. Bringing Josh Niland’s distinctive philosophy of gills-to-tail cusine to the masses, there was little guarantee that the average Joe would be tempted by dry-aged fish, much less sauces and preparations made from parts of the animal considered bin fodder by most other chefs.
And perhaps it was this roll of the dice that made the Nilands opt for a relatively compact shopfront for their first foray into fishmongery. If that were the case, then the mammoth scale of their second Fish Butchery in Waterloo is surely an indication of how successful that experiment has been. Not that this latest venue – their fourth, including the fast-casual Charcoal Fish in Rose Bay – is just a scaled-up version of its cousin in Paddington. Indeed, the name aside, the Waterloo venture is yet another, more holistic riff on the Nilands’ mission to champion sustainable, sophisticated, accessible seafood.
Yes, you’ll find a chiller stocked with various cuts, albeit of uniquely aged and cured varieties all prepared in view of punters from the venue’s spacious working kitchen, but there is also a large takeaway menu, featuring lunchtime bites and dinners perfect for those heading back to Inner East suburbs after work. There are sandwiches, pies, and classics like fish and chips alongside Niland’s ingenious sleights of hand with fast-casual favourites such as a yellowfin tuna cheeseburger with Murray cod ‘bacon’.
While the Nilands’ first three venues have each explored their own niches within the seafood world, the Waterloo Fish Butchery is a celebration of everything this hospitality power couple have discovered through their years of culinary excellence and the bravery to draw the once idiosyncratic into the mainstream. While it is exclusively a takeaway offering at present, there are plans to offer seated dining in the near future, and given the sheer square-footage of this Waterloo site – roughly three times the room of either the Paddington Fish Butchery or Saint Peter – this will bring Josh Niland's bold vision of seafood’s untapped potential to diners on a whole new scale – hook, line and sinker.