Sydney restaurateurs Josh and Julie Niland have quickly become Australian restaurant royalty. The kitchen duo swept the recent Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025 Awards with newly crowned Restaurant of the Year Saint Peter, in Paddington. Now their food is following the country on holidays, with a Niland-led restaurant to open at Hamilton Island’s luxury boutique hotel, The Sundays.

Don’t expect their signature fish-eye ice-cream to be on the menu when the yet-to-be-named restaurant opens in April 2025. The food pitch will be “family friendly”. The married couple – who carved a reputation primarily at the pointy end of the dining market – have plenty of experience to draw on as parents of four children.

The couple fell in love with the vision for the project, Josh Niland said in a statement: “We can’t wait to introduce a dining experience that feels connected to the island and its incredible natural environment.”

While the menu pitch will follow Niland’s whole-fish ethos, the couple is savvy enough to know that might not impress every visitor to The Sundays. So the cooking will jump out of the surf and onto the turf, widening the standard food brief to include land-based protein and other “local ingredients”.

The Nilands have been on a relentless expansion drive in recent years, with book deals and new venues, even dipping their toes in international waters last year, opening Fysh restaurant in Singapore’s luxe new Edition Hotel.

They might’ve put the tuna cheeseburger on the map in Sydney, but it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Earlier this year, they closed Charcoal Fish, the experimental barbecue fish eatery at Rose Bay, and Paddington’s Fish Butchery. When Charcoal Fish opened in 2021, it created a new genre by treating fish in much the same way a charcoal chicken shop treats chicken.

The acting chief executive of Hamilton Island, Nick Dowling, says the collaboration with the Nilands at The Sundays – the 59-room hotel overlooking Catseye Beach – redefines Hamilton Island’s dining options: “Their creativity and expertise will offer our guests an experience that is uniquely connected to the island’s natural setting.”