Full marks for Providores

This review was first published in September 2001

There is something rather wholesome, well-meaning, and almost Utopian about The Providores. There was a time when overt wholesomeness, rather like world music, used to get my back up, but I think that age is mellowing me - besides, wholesomeness is usually harmless enough.

The Providores is the latest restaurant from Peter Gordon, the man who brought us the Sugar Club. In its Notting Hill heyday, this was a beltingly good restaurant which punched a hole in the collective national resistance to fusion food. The problem was that a convoy of imitators, some good but many mediocre, drove through the breach and we suffered fusion overload. Suddenly, anyone who could lay their hands on a fistful of lemon grass, a couple of kangaroo fillets, a bucket of coconut broth and a bunch of tamarillos was ready to open a fusion restaurant, even if the result was a kaleidoscopic mix and mismatch of flavours. Like abstract art, fusion food is one of those things that appears easy to do yet few master it.

As is fashionable these days, Gordon has adopted a multistorey approach to restaurant design. The result is a scaled-down, tidied-up, New Age version of Smiths of Smithfield. The ground floor is a sort of PC pub called the Tapa Room, where 'ethnic' wall hangings set the tone along one wall and the customers fall into stereotype. Imagine an All Bar One pitched at well-travelled Guardian readers. This is the sort of place where you might arrive in your Audi TT, dressed casually smart in sports flip-flops to discuss human rights violations in a Third World country while guzzling expensive New Zealand wine and platters of exotic food. Some of the male patrons sported straggly goatee beards and one wore a black turtleneck so persuasively that I feared he might start quoting chunks of Jack Kerouac.

Upstairs, the relaxed ambience continues, though it's rather less noisily right-on. It may not be as crowded as downstairs, but this is still not a place to come if you do not like making friends with the people dining at tables next to you. Luckily my neighbours were a nice bunch, all united by an interest in the food, and what struck me was that although the spirit of excited experimentation was abroad, there was none of the gastro-snobbery or food-related pretension that I abhor.

The food here is as good as one would expect from a chef of Gordon's talent. As it turned out I ate light and my physicist friend ate heavy (for about £25 a head, without wine). My dishes were grilled scallops on kohlrabi, jicama, green papaya and cabbage salad with crispy fish, followed by roast halibut steak on wok-fried wing beans, bok choy and shiitake with yuzu dressing and roast beetroot. Both were excellent, surprisingly clean-flavoured and intriguingly delicious. The clever thing about mixing such a litany of ingredients - I chose some of the longer combos on purpose ? is making each one count, something that the kitchen at The Providores accomplishes admirably.

My friend's scientific background came in handy when trying to deconstruct his dishes. His coconut laksa and grilled baby octopus with deep-fried quail's egg, oyster, harusame noodles and crispy shallots is best described as a fusion version of bouillabaisse; it left him very impressed. His New Zealand venison strip loin with spicy black-bean stew, quince a?oli and grilled courgettes was consumed with similar enthusiasm. However, the best thing was the sweet potato and miso mash. Not since Joel Robuchon created a pur?ed potato for which people used to fly to Paris has a root crop been cooked so remarkably; it is a triumph, and is dangerously addictive.

The only thing that disappointed my friend was the dessert - sticky black rice and coconut pudding with mango, toasted coconut, pandan syrup and lime was somehow not as good as it sounded.

I understand that the Tapa Room is open for breakfast, which if you're ever up early is brilliant news. Breakfast is an under-exploited meal, and the chance of eating Gordon's wonderful tea-smoked salmon is as good a reason as I can think of for getting out of bed. As an added bonus there is the chance to flick through the New Zealand edition of House & Garden, copies of which lie around the Tapa Room. Maybe if I read enough of these, I might learn to love the wall hangings.

The Providores & Tapa Room Restaurant
Marylebone High Street, London, W1U 4RX