Sydney’s Saint Peter moves up the long list

June 7, 2025
1:15 am

The three-hatted seafood restaurant didn’t crack the top 50, but came in much higher than last year.

Josh and Julie Niland in Saint Peter’s new dining room.Wolter Peeters

One Australian restaurant has been recognised in the longlist of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 overnight.

Josh and Julie Niland’s Sydney fish restaurant Saint Peter came in at number 66. It’s a significant jump for the three-hatted Paddington fine-diner, which placed 98th on the list last year.

The announcement of the world’s top 51-100 restaurants – as decided by several international voting panels drawn from food critics, chefs and “travelling gastronomes” – is the first stage of the annual global ranking. The awards ceremony for the top 50 restaurants will be held in Turin, Italy, on June 19.

Josh Niland (centre) at the Saint Peter in Paddington’s Grand National Hotel.Jennifer Soo

Saint Peter was the highest-placed Australian restaurant last year. However, that was before the Nilands relocated Saint Peter from its original Oxford Street to a more lavish home at Paddington’s Grand National Hotel, with double the seating and kitchen capacity.

“What an outstanding achievement!” wrote chef Josh Niland on Instagram. “Julie and I couldn’t be more grateful and proud of the superhuman efforts of the entire team … Alongside our own team, we celebrate the long list of suppliers, producers and artisans that make [Saint Peter] the special place it is.”

Number 66 is the one of highest positions an Australian restaurant has ranked since 2018, when Victoria’s Attica and Brae placed 20th and 58th respectively. (Attica fell to 84th the following year and Brae was 101st, before reappearing at 57th in 2021.)

Australia did chalk up some other wins on the 50 Best longlist: Singapore’s Burnt Ends, helmed by Perth-born chef Dave Pynt, placed 93rd, and Aussie chefs James Henry and Shaun Kelly claimed 77th place for Le Doyenné, a “potager-to-table” restaurant in Saint-Vrain, a small town about an hour outside Paris.

Mindy Woods, a proud Bundjalung woman, received the Champion of Change Award.Elise Derwin

In late May, Mindy Woods – owner-chef of Karkalla On Country near Byron Bay – received the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Champions of Change Award.

Woods, a Bundjalung woman, was the first Indigenous woman to appear on MasterChef Australia. She was named a Champion of Change for using her platform to blend cultures and empower the community, and cultivate a more inclusive food industry that supports minority voices.

Meanwhile, Central Otago destination diner Amisfield became the first New Zealand restaurant to appear on the World’s 50 Best list in its 23-year-history, scraping in at 99th.

It is unlikely any other Australian venues will feature on the list, which last year crowned Barcelona’s Disfrutar as the “world’s best restaurant”. (A four-hour tasting menu at Disfrutar costs around $500 before drinks and may feature a dish called “Fear: The Prawn”, where guests are asked to hunt through dry-ice vapour with bare hands to retrieve the shellfish.)