Sweet taste of success with a unique Kiwi style

Peter Gordon lives and works in London.

Finally, after chasing him halfway round the world, I come face to face with Peter Gordon. Despite the elusiveness, it is a relief to find this is no bratty, spoiled cook.

Instead he sits there in his red and white plaid shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, voice endearingly twangy, manner disarmingly natural - as refreshing as the gently sparkling Hildon water they serve in this part of the world - and explains his feverish life and how it works.

The hunt for Gordon started with emails to New York which bounced to London, before being answered from New Zealand where Gordon was setting up his chef consultancy deal with Sky City Grand's new restaurant, Dine, by (or with) Peter Gordon, due to open in April.

Next came a fleeting glimpse as Gordon and his partner, Michael McGrath, emerged from the business end of an Air New Zealand flight to San Francisco and headed off towards Los Angeles.

Then came some serious research at the so-cool Public Restaurant in New York where Gordon is a consultant, and finally the interview at The Providores on Marylebone High Street London, on the other side of the Atlantic.

At 41 Peter Gordon is New Zealand's best known transatlantic chef. His style of food, loosely labelled as "fusion", became fashionable, in the early 80s.

But as fusion was jumped on by the wannabes and their truly horrifying creations Gordon's style became more sophisticated.

Today, he talks about how fusion is starting to become OK again, puts together flavours that thrill the palate and talks of the joys of whole foie gras from France and sweet and hot chorizo sausages from Spain - both of which are outlawed by New Zealand's health regulations.

His dishes are fresh and Pacific, which in deepest London is as exciting as a rolling Karekare breaker.

Grilled Scottish scallops on a plantain fritter with sweet chilli sauce and salted coconut milk; Thai-style seared New Zealand venison salad with coriander, caramelised peanuts, lime and chilli with a black sesame rice fritter; salad with truffled manuka honey dressing; roast tamarind and date-crusted Norwegian cod.

AS Gordon is at pains to explain ("can you put it right for once") a sort of mythology has grown up around his career.

Google him, and you'll find entry after entry relating to different restaurants that claim a slice of this so-distinctive New Zealand chef.

Although Providores is the only restaurant he owns (with three working partners and two investors), he has consulting roles with Public in New York, world-famous Changa in Istanbul, the Gourmet Burger Kitchen in London, Air New Zealand, Marks & Spencer and the Sky City venture.

Gordon helps design menus, offers recipes and advice and sometimes lets his internationally renowned name and reputation as a successful restaurateur (a rare thing in an industry where restaurants fail as often and abruptly as badly made souffles) help add financial muscle to funding hassles.

It all started after his four-year chef's apprenticeship in Melbourne.

Ashley Sumner and his partner, Vivienne Hayman, from Johnsonville were looking for a head chef to start their new restaurant, the Sugar Club, and "took a gamble" on Gordon.

Two-and-a-half years later the Sugar Club and its brand of funky fusion food had a solid following in Wellington.

But Gordon, who had recently got together with Michael, was restless. He took a year's leave of absence and they set out for Europe.

Sumner and Hayman followed and they and Gordon decided to form a partnership to bring the Sugar Club formula to London.

Then came the setbacks - "the banks weren't going to lend to three Kiwis who'd never had a bank account". By the time Sumner and Hayman found their Sugar Club site in Notting Hill, Gordon had rushed to Melbourne to donate bone marrow to his sister, Tracey, who was ill with leukaemia.

At that point he decided he didn't want to be tied into a partnership, although he did continue to work for the Sugar Club.

Soon the itch to open their own restaurant became all-consuming for Gordon and McGrath who had settled in London.

Gordon took two years off, consulting, writing and looking around, and the lucky break came.

He met Annie Smail on a plane to New Zealand, renewed the acquaintance at a New Zealand Day dinner at the Dorchester, and took her up on an offer to open a restaurant/deli in London.

First step was to get Smail together with Gordon's partners in the project, Anna Hansen who was to be joint head chef and Jeremy Leeming to run front-of-house. Next came the hard part - borrowing the money. Even though Marylebone had not reached the trendiness it enjoys today, they needed upwards of NZ$500,000 to set up.  

Which is where that Peter Gordon charm came in. The company that owned Changa restaurant in Istanbul offered backing and Gordon built a relationship with the people behind the Howard De Walden Estate, the fourth-largest property owners in London.

"They wanted to help us come into the neighbourhood and improve it," he says. "Mainly as a response to what I'd done before, we managed to get a good deal."
Also, because of the Smail connection - particularly Annie's British husband, Derek - the banks said yes and the deal went through.

Today Providores, owned by Gordon, Anna Hansen, Jeremy Leeming and and Michael McGrath, is an intrinsic part of Marylebone's new foodie feel.

Downstairs an entire wall of the narrow Tapa Room room is indeed covered in Polynesian tapa, the food is Spanish tapas style and the staff relaxed and friendly. Upstairs The Providores is narrow, more formal and elegant with tall windows, white walls and tablecloths, funky music. You could be in Ponsonby if it wasn't for the illegal goose liver and slightly tipsy ladies-who-lunch in cashmere and fur making their way up the narrow stairs and piling out at 4.30 in the afternoon - in a dignified way of course.

On the other side of the Atlantic, deep in Nolita (North of Little Italy) Manhattan, the Peter Gordon touch is just as distinctive. The dining room at Public is roomy and seductive, festooned with banks of tiny candles over low-slung tables that perfume the entire place with a faint smell of coconut and vanilla.

Again the food brings a wave of nostalgia - hokey pokey ice cream with passion fruit caramel and a ginger snap; steamed New Zealand snapper with sesame ginger broth and shrimp gyoza; fried Coromandel oysters served on a bed of salt.

And from the rest of the world, pan-seared foie gras with roasted corn pancake and Chinese black vinegar-blueberry sauce and grilled wild boar tenderloin with plantain-chorizo mash.

By the time we leave, the long staple-shaped bar at the centre of the room is crammed with expensive-looking New Yorkers with their arms draped round each other.

As someone remarks, New York has more single people than anywhere else in the world. Certainly there's a remarkable amount of snogging in the dim light.

For Gordon, of course, it's business. "When we were asked 'Would you like to do something in New York?' I said it has to be a consultancy," says Gordon who travelled to New York with his partner in the deal, Anna Hansen, 10 times that first year.

For their part of the job, which includes creating the menu, they charge a consultancy fee plus a percentage of Public's obviously healthy turnover. And no, the menus are not identical.

"We do the two menus [Providores' and Public's] side by side," he explains. "Ten to 15 per cent of Public's dishes are inspired by us. We also helped with investors. Peter Gordon has a reputation so we secured funding for them."

The restaurants also swap staff through a visa exchange programme, meaning that many of Public's waitpeople in their cool black outfits and white aprons, have that reassuring New Zealander twang plus the casual, friendly Kiwi feel. It's refreshing after a non-stop deluge of "have a nice day" everywhere else.

And although Gordon is careful to explain that the restaurant is primarily the baby of American chef Brad Farmerie, who worked with Gordon at the Sugar Club in London and Providores, and his brother Adam, whose company Avroko designed the interior and handles the business end of the business, the New Zealand feel is what gives this place its personality.

As William Grimes of the New York Times wrote: "A high-risk, high-reward dining proposition. I have a feeling that owners want it that way. They did not come thousands of miles to bore New York ... sometimes you have to slap people in the face to get their attention."

Obviously the notoriously picky New Yorkers love having their faces slapped. Foodies and A-listers have found their way there in great numbers. Vanity Fair had its Christmas Party there last year, Tim Robbins chose Public for his opening party, as did Kea, the Kiwi Expatriots Abroad, networking organisation.

The restaurant is described on Page 45 of the 2005 edition of famous New York Black Book list, a handbook of the best places to eat in the city designed for locals rather than tourists: "Eclectic, modern, high-concept restaurant can put a smile on your face and a hurt in your wallet. It's a bit pacy for downtown, the staff is hot and fun, the clientele keeps the pace and the inventiveness of the international menu (seared rare kangaroo) keeps your palate intrigued."

Today, although his idiosyncratic influence stretches not just across the Atlantic but the Pacific too, Peter Gordon is not one of those chefs like Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey who, he says, are worth £8 million ($21.4 million) apiece.

"We pay ourselves a pittance. I've taken a 50 per cent drop in salary since I left the Sugar Club, but it's our own business so the perks are good," he says. "If Providores had 100 seats and was full all the time we'd make bucketload, but it's 38 seats. No. I make my money from consultancy, writing books, demonstrating, teaching ... "

Which is perfect for a man who gets bored doing the same thing all the time, takes on "tons" of charity work in Auckland and Britain, including an annual dinner for Hammersmith Hospital's Leukaemia Foundation ("we've already raised $1.5 million") and beguiles foodies the word over with his unmistakable approach.

Maybe his real genius lies in the fact that he is notoriously hard to pin down. As he says, as the London light fades and Providores partners and waiters start to slide in beside us for their early evening staff meal, after his two years away from the kitchen, people on both sides of the Atlantic were hungry for his brand of cuisine.

"So when we we opened first the Providores, then Public, they were both really busy from Day One.

"I suppose the press [not to mention the public] had been waiting for me to turn up again."