Josh Niland

Josh Niland (born in 1988 or 1989) is an Australian chef, known for practice of cooking fish with little waste.

Early life Josh Niland was born in 1988 or 1989 to Marea and Stephen Niland. He has an older sister, Liz, and grew up in East Maitland, New South Wales. and occasionally fished the Hunter River for flathead.

At the age of 12, Niland decided to become a chef, and three years later left school as he entered an apprenticeship. Six months in, he received a scholarship from a cancer charity presented at an event catered by Est, a Sydney fine dining restaurant run by chef Peter Doyle. Doyle invited Niland to his restaurant which he attended the following day, making the trip by train to Sydney. He later described the event as formative, and from then on made frequent trips on his days off to attend Sydney fine dining restaurants, taking notes on ingredients and presentation.

In 2007, Niland entered a cooking competition between apprentices run by vocational education provider TAFE NSW. There he met Julie Edmunds, a competitor in a different category who was three years his junior. They began dating, and later married.

Career By 17, Niland had moved to Sydney and begun work at chef Luke Mangan's Glass Brasserie. Soon, he took up a job at Est, where he first gained a meaningful interest in cooking with fish. He described this as stemming from a perception of fish chefs having status within the kitchen, saying "they had the sharpest knives" and a good understanding of restaurant economics. Over the following years, Niland worked across multiple restaurants, including at the Sydney restaurant Fish Face under chef Stephen Hodges and for a period in England at The Fat Duck. By 2023, the Nilands had opened four more businesses in Sydney selling fish: two Fish Butchery shops selling fish and chips and fresh fish, an à la carte restaurant named Peterman, and a takeaway shop, Charcoal Fish. Each serving different clientele, Saint Peters served dishes like fish eyeball ice cream, Peterman dishes like a yellowfin tuna dish inspired by chateaubriand, and Charcoal Fish a tuna cheeseburger. Julie acted as CEO of the restaurant group. That year, the Nilands opened Fysh in Singapore, which served fish in the manner of a steakhouse. As of 2025, Niland had four children with Julie; their oldest is ten.