A tourist view of London

My friend Akari was in London for 4 days and stayed at my apartment in Bow.  On Wednesday, we had a dinner party, which I chronicled in my last post.  On Thursday, we ventured into the city for a day of sight-seeing, which was something I hadn't done properly since my first visit to London in 2008.  We started in Liverpool St, where we looked at the architecture and perused the markets.  We then headed to Trafalgar Square and took some seedy photos with the lion statues, before walking to Bin Ben and going on the London Eye.  This was actually something I thought I would never do, not for any particular reason, I just didn't think it would ever be relevant.  It was interesting but I didn't learn anything about London.  We then headed to Portabello Markets (not that the markets seemed to be on - a recurring theme in my market-going experiences) and unsuccessfully tried to locate pivotal scenes from the movie Notting Hill - which was difficult for me, as I have never seen it.

We got back to my house at around 8pm and were both fast asleep on the couch by 8.30 that night.  The next day I went to work while Akari went exploring the places I didn't want to go the day before.  That night we met up in Paddington and went to The Providore and Tapa Room in Marylebone.  I friggin love this place.  It's tiny, but the food is really amazing (which is to be expected from Peter Gordon) and the whole dining experience exudes New Zealand, which is a nice feeling to have on the other side of the world.  I went into the Providores the day after I arrived in London for the most amazing 4 course tasting menu with Claire.  I don't want to detail every dish I had, but all 8 that we shared where simply divine.  It made me second-guess my decision to take a job elsewhere, giving up the opportunity to work with Peter again.

When I first decided I was coming to London, I had a job lined up at the Providores and Tapa Room.  I worked for Peter Gordon in his Auckland restaurant, dine by Peter Gordon (they've just taken my name off the website in the past 2 weeks - *tear*) for 2 years and just before I decided to come to London, had discussions with him about working as his personal assistant.  Which would have been fabulous, but it didn't work out.  He then offered me a job in the Providores but I couldn't get a concrete job description from anyone involved so kept my options open.  That's when I stumbled across Bistrotheque - and applied - and had a conference call interviews over the phone with the directors - and found out I had the job while in Malaysia.  I do still feel like I've missed out on something by not working for Peter here.  I think I could learn a whole lot from him, and above all, I respect the guy immensely for everything he gives back to various organisations, both in New Zealand and abroad.

But back to my latest Peter Gordon experience -  Akari, Kerrie and I dine in the Tapa Room for the first time.  The food in the Providores (the 'fine dining' portion of the restaurant) is much more complex and more in line with Peter's food that I know, while the downstairs Tapa Room (named for the cloth that covers the wall, not the tapa-esque portions of food) has a relaxed, much more casual vibe and service style and serves up smaller, less complicated dishes.  We were treated to a round of cocktails on arrival, a sharing plate of spanish chorizo, guindilla chillies, olives, bread and other deliciousness, as well as roasted figs with goats cheese and a basil and buffalo mozzarella salad.  Peter also took care of our desserts, which was totally unexpected but very much appreciated (as it meant we could spend more boozing it up later).

Once we were sufficiently full and drunk on NZ wine (The Providores only lists NZ wine.  Pretty cool for a London restaurant), we decided to hit the clubs in Soho.  As I was still recovering from tonsillitis, I thought it best if I left early - but this didn't happen and we ended up in gay bar after gay bar until we finally found a place that didn't close 15 minutes after we arrived - The Place That Shant Be Named.  Suffice to say, this is the gayest of all gay bars,  we stayed there til close to 4am, and somehow both straight girls I was with managed to pick up, yet I somehow did not.  I got asked for my number a few times, but What.  The.  Fuck?

The next morning I put Akari on the tube to go to Luton Airport to catch her flight to France.  All I could think of as she left was how jealous I was was that she was getting to go travelling, and how much I am looking forward to going to Berlin in 14 days.