An interview with:

Arriving at Providores on an indifferent city day I’m immediately struck by the huge swathes of scaffold clad to the first floor of the much vaunted restaurant. As I’m early I sit, sipping a deliciously dark coffee reviewing some of the questions I have prepared. What I don’t know at this point is that any structure I presumed to follow will soon disintegrate, and a far more thoughtful and free-flowing conversation than I could have presumed will take its place. A style reflective of the subject perhaps.

As he takes his seat, Peter immediately makes light of the scaffold masking the façade of his restaurant. He explains that it belongs to next door and as intrusive as it may seem it provides much needed cover to the hordes of customers who routinely queue for Sunday brunch – even on the rainiest of English days. You see, people love the food at Providores. From the Turkish Eggs to the Sesame battered, Nori wrapped Yellow Fin customers flock to Marylebone High Street to sample Peter’s interpretation of a world tour.

In a city of top chefs at the helm of world renowned restaurants it can be difficult for chefs to distinguish themselves. For knowledgeable customers London offers countless examples of fine dining of the highest caliber. Perfect execution has become an expectation and it is now the imagination and creativity of a chef that marks them out and elevates them to the highest tiers of culinary accomplishment.

Imagination and creativity are two attributes Peter possesses in spades. The four pages of menu crammed with exotically balanced dishes serves as a tribute to the constantly evolving ideas of both Peter and the eclectic brigade he has assembled in his basement kitchen. But how did a boy from Wanganui, New Zealand arrive at this point?

“I started collecting recipes when I was 4, and I began cooking when I was 5. At 7 I was cooking with my dad stood on a stool and I pulled a deep fat fryer over my head, so I’ve been cooking forever really.”

“When I was a kid we had really good simple food, we had a sheep, and we ate it. We used to chop down beef carcasses and make soap. I remember buckets of fat in the garage, butchering our own meat, catching fish, and growing our own vegetables. Dad and his mates were all kind of similar in that way – food and cooking were just normal. Dad would cook every Sunday; big soufflé omelettes on his electric frying pan.”

“I was at university because I wanted to be a wine maker, I’d never drunk wine but I thought that would be a cool job. I was at Massey University in New Zealand and just thought I was in the wrong place. I needed to go to Australia to what was then called Roseworthy college in Melbourne which is probably the best wine making school in the southern hemisphere. So I arrived in Melbourne and got a job to get some cash together in a restaurant and realized that I didn’t actually want to make wine, I wanted to be a chef.”

“As a kid we never ate in restaurants, we didn’t have restaurants in Wanganui. There was something called the Colonial Rooms and something called Big Tex which was like a sort of McDonalds, but nothing like the restaurants I know now. I’d never had a cappuccino, I’d never had an espresso coffee, I’d never seen an avocado, I’d never tasted olive oil before I left New Zealand. Funnily enough we used to eat seaweed and tofu so I was familiar with them. Then suddenly I’m 18 saying oh my god, there’s Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, French and Moroccan. I used to go to all the restaurants and they were excellent, they inspired me; so I’d go to the food shops and I’d buy the ingredients take them home and experiment. “

“My head chefs were encouraging but they didn’t really get what I was doing. I was at William Angus College and what was really frustrating was that I would say that I’d just eaten the most amazing silken tofu at a Japanese restaurant, and ask if we could do something with tofu. They’d just say the Japanese don’t cook, they eat everything raw. So I’d say that I’d just been to a Thai restaurant and that I’d eaten some funny little leaves that tasted of lime and they’d just dismiss it. So my college years were just annoying.”

Having left college a frustrated chef Peter travelled extensively; tasting and discovering the myriad cultures of the world. These experiences supplemented what he had been taught at college and emboldened him to open his own restaurant. In 1989 the Sugar Club was opened in Wellington, New Zealand. The restaurant was a huge success and proved both Peter’s palette and the appeal of his food.

Having run the restaurant for 6 years Peter was ready for a new challenge and so transplanted the Sugar Club to London’s Notting Hill. With him Peter brought a style of food the English media found difficult to classify.

“When the Sugar Club opened Time Out voted us Best Modern British restaurant whilst the Evening Standard gave us an award for best Pacific Rim restaurant in the same week. That was kind of weird, because I thought to myself: we’re not modern British, that’s Fergus Henderson stuff, and I’m not Pacific Rim because I’m using Cous-Cous and Sumac. Then I read about a guy called Norman Van Aken – a Chicago guy based in Florida, and he was doing Fusion food, so I thought that’s what I’ll do, I’ll use that term: Fusion.”

“It’s interesting that everyone needs to be categorised in restaurant guide books. But Time Out don’t call us Fusion, I think they put us under International or something. I don’t really give a shit; nothing means nothing anymore in many ways. For example I read a review of Tom Kitchen’s place up in Edinburgh – sounds amazing, really good – but he’s using combinations of stuff not dissimilar to what I do, but probably in a far more refined, joojy, Michelin sort of way. Nobody will call him Fusion, they’ll probably call it modern Scottish or something. So he won’t be tainted by this term.”

“There are a lot of chefs who have a negative approach to the food I do. They’ve decided, and got it into their heads that the stuff that we do here – even though we’re packed all the time – can’t be good. They’ll never come here to try it, but they’re happy to bad mouth us. Yet if I’d done all my training in Great Britain and gone through the Michelin star system, and worked with all the boys I’d have probably been viewed as being quite innovative. It’s a funny old world really.”

Having distinguished himself at the Sugar Club and on the back of rave reviews (whichever category he was placed in to) Peter and his business partners opened Providores and Tapa room where he has established an eatery that juxtaposes the stiff qualities necessary to make it a destination for discerning customers with a warmth and familiarity that makes it an authentic neighbourhood restaurant (a point reinforced by the regulars who stop to chat). That it feels like a haven from the busy street outside is reflective of Peter’s naturally caring disposition. When asked what he would be if not a chef, his immediate response is: campaigner. A career not surprising given his staunch views on certain topics.

“You just need to speak to anyone who’s worked in a lot of kitchens around town to find out how appallingly some of them are run: youngsters working 100hr weeks being paid poorly, not being given staff meals, being abused, we all know it goes on and it’s never exposed, that to me is the biggest crime in Britain. There’s a slightly strange slave trade where we exploit young people on minimum wages in order to feed the rich customers. It annoys me because there’s no need, you go to the River Café, you look in here…. There are people who won’t put up with that shit. It just appalls me that youngsters are prepared to put up with it, and it appalls me that there are a lot of people making a lot of money by exploiting ambition.”

At this point FTLOL suggests that to be a chef has always been synonymous with physically hard work in oppressive conditions.

“There’s hard and there’s hard. I used to work in a restaurant in Aussie 7 days a week, we’d be at the fish and the meat market twice a week, I loved it, it was great. It was bloody hard work, but I was never exploited. We had breakfast lunch and dinner every single day I worked there. There were always lots of perks and lots of treats – I was happy working there. Some of the stories I’ve heard, they’re just bad – pointless abuse. I don’t get how some of these young people are so lacking in confidence that they’ll put up with some of this shit.”

“We tried doing something about it, we approached three newspapers, but nobody would touch it. They won’t touch the people who lay the golden eggs if you know what I mean.”

Peter’s sentiments extend beyond those of the kitchen. He is an educated advocate of all issues involving food. Unsurprisingly he has strong views and is not afraid to voice them.

“There was a thing on television last night to do with food around the world. They interviewed a guy who had an idea that I’d been thinking about for a while: instead of mowing down 50 acres of land why not build a fifty storey building and grow things in glass houses. In fact in Britain you have the only place in Europe that employs an independent hydroponic system: they have these tanks with fish in. The fish provide the shit which is then filtered and fed to plants. The plants then provide a crop. The trim from the vegetables is used to feed worms which are then fed to the fish, so it’s a totally enclosed biodynamic system.”

“Whether organic is better for you or not, when you grow things conventionally you’re putting all these fertilizers on the ground which leave a carbon footprint. It’s non – sustainable, they‘re often oil based, and in order to make the oil you’ve got to mow down the land to get the oil, to get the nitrogen. So what you find now is that in order to grow 2 acres of broccoli you’ve suddenly inadvertently destroyed 3 acres of the environment.”

“I wrote a piece for the Independent a couple of years ago on food miles because I was getting sick to death of hearing how buying New Zealand lamb was destroying the environment, and I knew that it was a load of bull shit. I wrote that food miles are a completely ridiculous measure of environmental impact – it shouldn’t be used in any way, shape or form. The reality is that if you buy New Zealand meat its carbon footprint is far less than conventional British meat.
The meat in New Zealand is reared on grass, the majority of the power in New Zealand is produced by hydroelectrics, it is shipped over which is the most environmentally economical method of transport.

It’s only when it reaches this country and moved around by lorries to be held in refrigerated storage to then be thrown on to another lorry to be taken to a supermarket which the consumers visit in their cars that it stacks up its carbon foot print. Everyone thinks that if it’s grown in Wales, it’s got less distance to come and so must be better. But most electricity in Wales is made by burning fossil fuels. It’s not just lamb though. If you’re interested have a look at how onions are produced and distributed.”

“The only reason I buy local is to keep people employed and to experience the cuisine, but it is a misconception that buying locally and in season is the answer to global warming. It’s an unpopular thought, but it‘s based on facts and it‘s my view. Wow, I feel like a real pariah.”

……………. And maybe he is: an outcast from the mainstream. But you get the feeling that he’s past caring.

Whether it’s through his vibrant cooking or his colourful views Peter continually demonstrates the healthy schisms that exist both in the micro culture of the cooking fraternity but also in the world as a whole. Go to his restaurant, listen to what he has to say, because even if you don’t agree I can assure you that you will leave with a broader horizon.

Being a Kiwi it seemed only natural for Peter to cook us a dish that originates from his home land. This is Peter’s take on the classic Pavlova.

Ingredients
For the pavlova
6 x egg whites
300g caster sugar
60g unrefined caster sugar
1 x vanilla pod, scraped
10 ml white malt vinegar
2 tbsp cornflour

For the sherry agar jelly cubes

300g Sherry, try Oloroso or Palo Cortado
100ml apple juice
30g caster sugar, or more to taste
4g agar

For passion fruit mascarpone cream
150g passion fruit, pulped
100g icing sugar
200g Marscapone
300ml double cream
6 x kiwi fruit, peeled and sliced into rings

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC

For the Pavlova
Line a baking tray with baking parchment.

Beat the egg whites, both sugars and the vanilla scrapings with an electric whisk for 10 minutes. Mix the vinegar and cornflour together and add to the meringue and keep beating for another 5 minutes.

Use a spatula to remove all of the meringue from the bowl and form it into a nest about 25cm around – you can be fairly rough. Place in the centre of the oven and drop the temperature to 100ºC.

Bake for 1 hour then turn the oven off. If it’s coloured beyond pale gold then leave the door ajar slightly until it’s completely cooled down – otherwise just leave it in the oven to cool down.

For the jelly cubes

Place half the sherry, the apple juice and the sugar into a small pan and bring almost to the boil.

Whisk in the agar agar powder, making sure it doesn’t adhere to the whisk, and cook at a rapid simmer for 3 minutes.

Take off the heat and whisk in the remaining sherry for 30 seconds. Pour onto a clean plastic tray or container, no more than 15 x 15cm square. It will set as it cools.

Cut into 1cm cubes and tip out – these jellies will not melt at room temperature.

For the passion fruit mascarpone

Mix the passion fruit pulp with the icing sugar. Combine the mascarpone and whisk for 20 seconds. Add the cream and whisk until soft peaks form.

To serve: place the pavlova on a platter. Spread the passion fruit cream over it, then scatter with the kiwi fruit and the sherry jelly cubes.