Food fuss after critic labels meal as 'Lego'

Peter Gordon. Photo / Chris Skelton

It's getting hot in the kitchen - award-winning UK-based Kiwi chef Peter Gordon has been accused of cooking food that tastes like "boiled Lego".

But Gordon says the newspaper review of his new fusion restaurant in London is "ridiculous".

Kopapa - which translates from Maori as "be crowded" - opened in Covent Garden in December and one of the world's most respected reviewers, Sunday Times restaurant critic AA Gill, laid into it last week.

The Wanganui-born, part-Ngati Kahungunu chef said Gill "doesn't get fusion food".

"We've just had to roll our eyes, ridiculous as it is. A mutual friend warned me we'd be slated as Adrian [Gill] just doesn't get or doesn't want to get it."

Gill wrote Gordon's restaurants tended to be full of people who wanted to feel good about themselves and "didn't really mind what their mouth thought". Kopapa was dark, loud and offered "disappointing taste association made imprecisely without sophistication".

The critic described a meal of parmesan and bone marrow sauce on toast as "fat infused with Marmite"; a tomato sauce accompanying a meal of lamb brains as a "single mother's quick pasta"; a warm eel with ice-cold runny egg as "really nasty"; and the skin on a pork belly "like salty chewing gum".

The coconut sticky pork ribs were "dank, boiled sweety-sweet and sticky", and the smoked coconut tamarind laksa with chicken, lime-leaf dumplings, vermicelli noodles, shallots and coriander was "more of a mouthful to order than to eat. It tasted like boiled Lego".

Gordon said Kopapa had been called "unmissable" in a review by Time Out! with the Independent and Independent on Sunday also responding favourably.

"We're not fussed at all. We've been full every dinner for three weeks and most lunches and if one took reviews too seriously then that would be silly."

Kopapa's website says the eatery offers "fantastic coffee and juices, energising and hearty breakfasts, small plates through to main courses, a concise and exciting wine list and the most delicious fusion food in the area."