The Providores And Tapa Room

The ground floor Tapa Room part of Peter Gordon's vibrant eatery in fashionable Marylebone village is not a mis-spelling: it takes its name from the huge Rarotongan tapa cloth decorating the wall, although it does actually offer all-day tapas-inspired small dishes too, plus splendid New Zealand wines in a buzzy ambience. Move upstairs and the Providores restaurant serves up a similar take on New Zealand-style fusion food in a more formal setting. If you're not familiar with the idiom, that means creative, intricate dishes assembled from a promiscuous mix of global ingredients. Involved menu descriptions give the impression of hectic platefuls, as typified in smoked coconut and tamarind laksa with chicken lime leaf dumpling, green tea noodles, soft-boiled quail's egg, crispy shallots and coriander, but the freshness of the materials and exciting compositions are always rewarding. Elsewhere, you will find Europe-meets-Asia-and-Pacific-Rim ideas such as smoked Dutch eel with ratte potatoes, chorizo, ajwain and dill salad, furikake and lemon oil, and to finish, perhaps a globetrotting assemblage of hibiscus tapioca, rhubarb jelly and palm sugar pannacotta with gooseberry and walnut baklava and rhubarb sorbet.