Telephone: 020 7935 6175
Address: The Providores and Tapa Room, 109 Marylebone High Street, London W1.
Lunch £2.50 - £100 for two.
The name of Peter Gordon's new restaurant, The Providores and Tapa Room, may seem odd and convoluted and only just on nodding terms with the English language, but it does at least reflect the contents of the menu, which are equally odd and convoluted and only just on nodding terms with the English language. I could easily fill this page just by recounting the list of the ingredients that make up each dish, and that's only the starters. If I included the main courses there wouldn't be space for anything else in the mag. Monty Don would be cross. How about plantain and cassava fritters with oven-dried tamarillo and tamarind coconut relish? Or chilled roast beetroot, basil and lime leaf soup with crème frache and argan oil? Or...
You get the idea. There are an awful lot of words on this menu or, should I say, menus for it is really two restaurants: the formal place upstairs for lunch and dinner - the Providores of the title - and the more casual Tapa Room downstairs where lots of other dishes with very long names are served both at lunch and, pleasingly, at breakfast.
Normally I would treat such logorrhoea on a menu with huge suspicion. It smacks of special pleading before the thing it describes has even arrived on the table. Hey, look at all the stuff we've cooked for you. Forget the quality; feel the width. But here, I think, it's a good sign. The New Zealander Peter Gordon made his name in this country in the mid-1990s by opening the Sugar Club in west London, which proved that fusion cooking was not just some overwrought and over-fashionable notion but a real cooking concept that could work as long as care was taken over the matching of ingredients in each dish. The main development here at this new venture, which he has opened with three partners - which includes the chefs - is the bustling downstairs Tapa Room, where a meal can be made up of lots of small dishes.
One curiosity of the operation is that some of the dishes served downstairs also appear on the upstairs menu, but at 30p more, as if a charge had been levied for carriage upwards. Perhaps we're paying for the waiters' shoe leather, worn down on the stairs. The dining room at the top of those stairs is either calmingly minimalist or gloomy as hell, depending upon your point of view. I must admit that I leaned towards the latter which is odd, given the place is almost entirely white; but it may be I felt that way because I was seated facing in to a tight corner. My companion thought it all rather clean and reassuring. Either way I find it hard to imagine how it would work in the evenings. It needs the bustle and light of lunchtimes.
Neither of us were really that hungry which may sound like a massive dereliction of duty on the part of a restaurant critic and his guest. It is, I suppose, a little like the motoring correspondent announcing he can't be fagged to drive anywhere. Still, it gave me the opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a long time which is eat only starters. Here it is definitely worth doing. Second on the list was - deep breath - a coconut laksa with grilled baby octopus, deep-fried quail's egg, harusame noodles and crispy shallots. Given my love of laksas I had to have it.
The broth was rich and pungent and quite surprisingly salty - but outrageously moreish for all that. I'm not convinced the egg really was deep fried; it seemed more poached to me, but that is neither here nor there. The yolk was still soft and that's what counts. It was a fine dish. My companion started with a salad of fennel, beans, baby gem, petit lucque olives (god, I love copying out for a living) roast tomatoes and currant soda bread croutons. It was, she said, a fine plateful of nice ingredients.
I followed my laksa with two slabs of ox tongue - one salted, one grilled - on some lovely herby lentils with a ripe roast garlic and herb dressing. It was faultless: the earthiness of the lentils and the meat worked perfectly together. My companion had a grilled scallop thing that comprised three fat scallops, with coral intact, rather than the scallop slices which have become so common these days. It was a great combination of textures: the softness of the scallops blending with the crunchiness of kohlrabi and the crispness (though, oddly, not the flavour) of crisped fish.
This, the restaurant will not thank me for telling you, is an exceptionally economical and deeply satisfying way to have lunch. With a bowl of luscious 'hokey pokey' ice cream - vanilla spun through with chunks of caramel - one glass of bubbly and a bottle of mineral water, the bill just topped £50 for two including service, which isn't bad. If you went for a main course - rack of lamb with a whole bunch of things I can't be fagged to list, or roast halibut steak, ditto - I'm sure the bill would swiftly attain lift off towards the ton mark. And, I'm sure, if you had the appetite it would be worth it. But what really makes this new place so attractive is that you don't have to spend that sort of money if you don't want to. Dishes start downstairs with bowls of spiced pecans and almonds at £2.50. Now look me in the eye and tell me you couldn't do a bit of damage to one of those.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
