Fans of star-spotting in restaurants have long since had their favourite haunts. Of course, everyone knows that the Chiltern Firehouse played host to countless A-listers (and the Prime Minister, but such are the blurring of the boundaries these days), and the Ivy has long since had a gaggle of paparazzi shivering outside at 11pm every night, but there are other, more discreet destinations that nonetheless play host to many a famous visage on a daily basis. So it is with Peter Gordon’s much-loved establishment The Providores. Open on Marylebone High Street since before the area was a Mecca for the dizzyingly well-heeled (i.e since 2001), it has built a reputation for top-notch Kiwi food, with tapas in the informal ground floor bar, The Tapa Room, and a smarter and more formal upstairs restaurant, all linen tablecloths and minimalist décor.
Heading upstairs (‘you’ve never struck me as a downstairs type’, a friend joked when I told her about my pending visit), the first person I noticed was the film producer and Working Title supremo, Tim Bevan, lunching with a contact on the table behind. As I waited for my lunch date, Larry, I was given a fleeting insight into how the uber-successful dine; no wine, main courses and coffee only, and much very serious business chat. I, without any serious business chat whatsoever, look out of the window and peruse the cocktail list. A saucy little number is called a Cucumber Sour; I order it, as Larry arrives in a state of mild excitement, ‘This must be good. I saw Stanley Tucci downstairs.’
‘But of course you did.’
Gordon has opened subsequent establishments since, not least Kopapa in Covent Garden, but the Providores remains the flagship, both for the cooking and the award-winning New Zealand wine list. The short-ish lunch menu offers around half a dozen choices per course, some of which verge on the conventional and others of which demonstrate the weird but (mostly) wonderful pizzazz with which Gordon has long been synonymous. I kick things off with a lobster and smoked coconut laksa, which features a dizzying array of extras including quail’s egg, prawn and lemongrass dumpling, soba noodles and crispy shallots. The effect is that of having a lobster bisque with added attitude. After much hand-wringing and head-shaking, Larry decides against a tempting-sounding burrata in favour of the waiter’s recommendation of the smoked Dutch eel with babaganoush. (‘Good choice, sir’.) While this is deeply outside my comfort zone, Larry nods twice, which I have realised is a signal of approval. We have a carafe of the wine du jour, a deeply fine Greywacke Marlborough Riesling. All is right with the world.
Gordon also opened another much-loved (and much-missed) establishment, The Sugar Club, which can still be found in Auckland. The classic dish from it, dating back as far as 1987, is the beef pesto, and a resurrected form of it appears here. As ever with Gordon’s cooking, there is an awful lot going on; very fine marinated beef fillet comes with olives, beetroot, and a chard and courgette salad. It’s excellent, but incredibly filling and rich. I feel the need to (literally and figuratively) unbuckle my belt a notch or two. Washed down with another carafe of Hawkes Bay Syrah, it’s the sort of course that sorts the men from the boys. I look over a beneficently smiling Larry, who could order this sort of thing for breakfast. The difference, ladies and gentlemen, between the truly hardy and the lily-livered.
A reversal of fortune came with puddings. I, coward that I am, felt equal to the most uncontroversial dish I could see, a strawberry white chocolate mousse with ‘pandan meringue’ and poached blackberries. Compared to the riot of culinary imagination we’d sampled earlier, it was pleasant, safe and perhaps a touch bland. Larry, however, looked with fascination at the bacon ice cream on the menu. After much reassurance from the waiter that it wasn’t some sort of elaborate practical joke, and a reminder from me that Heston Blumenthal served a version ‘with egg!’ at the Fat Duck, he took the plunge. After trying it, I can only say that he was a braver man than I. If you’re not particularly interested in sweet things, it’s a perfect palette-cleanser, and does taste of bacon. For others, a safer option might be to look elsewhere.
Nonetheless, we left in hearty and cheery form, alas long after Mr Tucci. Restaurants in London are rather like pets; you hope that they survive longer than a few months, but remaining in hearty form after 14 years is an extremely rare beast indeed. Nothing about the Providores, passed on our visit, suggests that it is in any danger of not lasting at least the same time again.
We’ll raise a glass of New Zealand sparkling wine to that.
The Providores. 109 Marylebone High St, London W1. www.theprovidores.co.uk
