David Matthews

When you live in Sydney you forget that chicken shops aren’t really a thing beyond the east coast. At least not in the one-shop-on-every-high-street, charcoal-smoke-billowing-over-the-entire-suburb kind of way it is here. For Josh Niland, the pioneering chef and restaurateur behind Saint Peter and Fish Butchery, these local chicken shops were the inspiration for Charcoal Fish. Instead of glistening, seasoned birds spinning over coals, dry-aged Murray cod forms the basis of a menu that also takes in attentively made salads, a groundbreaking tuna cheeseburger and shatteringly crisp battered fish. The burger has its own deserved following (Nigella Lawson, for one, is a fan), but it’s the cod roll that captures the essence of the local chook shop.

A roll with humble beginnings

Saturday lunchtime, summer, sun beating down on the grass at the local park, cold Passiona beading with condensation and a white roll smeared with stuffing, loaded with breast meat and dripping with gravy from the bain-marie. After a bite or two, hot gravy rolls down your arm and crumbs flake off and fall to the ground. Satisfaction, heft and comfort all in one handful. That’s the idea behind both the roll and Charcoal Fish, a place, in Niland’s words, that aims to reframe expectations of what fish can be and do. It’s inspired by lockdown trips to Chargrill Charlie’s and the necessity of grabbing something healthy, quick and delicious to feed him and his wife and business partner, Julie Niland, and their growing family.

“I said to Julie, how do you think it would be taking the chicken out and putting the fish in, and just having beautiful salads, vegetables, rotisserie, all that stuff?” Niland tells Broadsheet. Julie jumped at the idea, and Charcoal Fish opened in Rose Bay in September 2021.

Murray cod has been chosen as the stand-in for chicken, partly for its sustainable credentials (it’s farmed responsibly by Aquna in NSW), but mostly for its eating qualities, with high levels of visceral fat; a moist, large flake; and skin that takes to crisping on the grill. Plus, says Niland, picking one fish just suited the concept better.

“The whole idea of the menu was that we wanted to piece it around one single fish because, like at a chicken shop, there’s not a multitude of species of birds that are available,” he says, before describing how Aquna’s methods – the fish don’t forage in the mud – means the flesh is clean-tasting. The fat content means that, unlike a lot of fish, it can be held warm for anywhere up to half an hour after cooking and still stay juicy. The ideal basis for a grab-and-go fish shop.

Crisp skin, juicy flesh, dripping gravy: how it’s made
It starts with the roll. “Originally it was a bap,” says Niland, but as classic as that was, he found the soft texture masked that of the fish itself. The solution? A fermented potato and sourdough roll, engineered from the crumb up.

“It’s from our friends at Organic Bread Bar, just across from Saint Peter,” he says. “It gets grilled as a whole bread roll instead of being split and then toasted, so it goes a little bit glassy on the outside, then when you cut it, it’s super fluffy and steamy in the middle.”

Whole Murray cod are hung for a few days to dry out the skin and flesh – this intensifies the flavour and improves the texture – before they’re boned and threaded onto a spit.

“That then goes across the fire,” says Niland. “We cook it off for around 25 minutes, then the skin puffs up and goes really crackly.” Large, crisp-skinned flakes of flesh get spread on the roll to go with “stuffing”, made by roasting off any leftover potato rolls with tarragon, rosemary and thyme, reserved Murray cod fat and plenty of butter. It’s those herbs, and the fat, that put the taste in more of a rich and savoury zone than, say, fish served with lemon or fennel would.

“That changes your perception straight away,” says Niland.

As for the gravy? Rather than a light fumet (fish stock) base, we’re talking brown stock that starts with fish frames.

“We’ll roast them off really dark, and make a dark stock from that,” says Niland. Then they’ll start another base with the cod ribs, which have more fat on them, roasting them hard again. “They all get really caramelised, we add lots of onions, garlic, white wine vinegar, white wine, thyme, bay leaves, then the dark stock on top. Reduce [that] down and get that to a pretty happy place, then add molasses and dark soy.”

This isn’t the kind of refined, clear sauce that graces plates at fine diner Saint Peter. It’s thick, fatty, glossy and opaque. “I wanted it to feel like chicken gravy,” Niland says.

The eating experience
The proof is in the eating, with a roll that, other than being appropriately messy to eat, is one you don’t put down until you’re done, and that tastes that little bit better overlooking the water and Shark Island from Rose Bay, just behind the shop. Niland knows he’s onto a winner.

“That crunchy exterior and then fluffy middle is really great,” he says. “The stuffing ticks all the boxes that stuffing should, where it’s highly seasoned, rich, herbaceous, then the flesh [is] really juicy, and super, super moist, and we leave the pieces really big and coarse. It’s crunchy, it’s fatty and it has that moisture that oozes out of the flesh.” What more could you ask for?

Why it matters
Saint Peter is rarefied, elevated and designed to serve just a few people at once, but along with reaching for the stars, Niland has always wanted to bring fish to the people. His Fish Butchery was one way to do that, but Charcoal Fish is the place that, by tapping into the familiarity of the neighbourhood chicken shop, really hits that mark.

“I do believe it’s a very Australian idea, and I’d personally love to see Charcoal Fish on street corners around Australia, I think it’d be a wonderful fit,” Niland says. In Charcoal Fish, and specifically the Murray cod roll, he now has a model, one that fits his ethos of sustainability, and makes it easy for people to enjoy something that might whisk them back to their suburban upbringing.

“The two words that most intrigue me at the moment are ‘sustainability’ and ‘convenience’,” he says. Does he reckon he’s hit on these with the roll, keeping taste at the front of his mind too? “It’s sustainable. It’s convenient. And above all, it’s delicious.”

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