Viel Richardson meets Peter Gordon, the culinary genius behind Kopapa – the new restaurant that brings the many flavours of the world to Seven Dials then fuses them together, with exquisite results
“I pass through the Seven Dials area all the time and have always thought that it had a really special atmosphere,” says Michael McGrath, co-owner and manager of Kopapa – a new restaurant about to open on Monmouth Street. “It is very hard to put an exact description on it. With the trees and the roundabout it feels to me a little bit French. It also has with a really good collection of restaurants and shops. I have always felt the area is really special. In my mind it has its own identity.”
That good collection of restaurants will, as of this winter, have a very special addition to its ranks. With Michael taking care of things front of house, the culinary force behind the new restaurant is his partner Peter Gordon. Born in New Zealand, Peter has long been established as the chef who raised fusion food from a reputation he once likened to that of reality TV to a recognised style of cuisine found on the high end menus of hotels and restaurants around the world. It is Peter’s singular take on global cuisine that will take centre stage at Kopapa.
For Peter, who made his name in the kitchens of the acclaimed Sugar Club restaurants in Notting Hill and Soho before joining with Michael to open the phenomenally successful Providores in Marylebone, fusion food takes as its starting point the belief that any ingredient from any part of the world has the potential to be used with any other, as long as the result tastes good. Who can say, he asks, that you should never use a Malaysian ingredient in a traditional British dish? If you raise your eyebrows in response, he will gently point out that Worcestershire sauce, that most British of condiments, contains tamarind – a decidedly Middle Eastern and Asian ingredient – yet no-one considers shepherds pie a fusion dish.
“I treat the world’s culinary resources as one huge, exciting larder,” says Peter. “Why wouldn’t a creative chef want to try the new – to push boundaries and make culinary discoveries? You never know when a new classic is in the making”.
Without fusion, Peter says, the Italians wouldn’t be serving polenta, since corn and maize are from the Americas. Thai cooks wouldn’t have chillies or peanuts – again from the New World – or coriander, which is a Mediterranean herb. His basic premise is that ingredients have always travelled, always mingled, always been ‘fused’, yet for some reason this creative fusion has fallen out of fashion.
I treat the world’s culinary resources as one huge, exciting larder. Why wouldn’t a creative chef want to try the new – to push boundaries and make culinary discoveries? You never know when a new classic is in the making.
Of course in the wrong hands – of which alas there are far too many – the mixing of unfamiliar ingredients can all too easily lead to culinary horrors that should never see the light of day. But with the right blend of knowledge and experience, combining the world’s ingredients can give the diner a brief glimpse of heaven. And Peter Gordon’s palate, knowledge and experience are up there with the very best. Diners can expect to experience dishes like steamed crab, shiitake, corn and coconut pots with wasabi tobikko; miso risotto with chicken livers and plum compote; and sea urchin panna cotta with dashi jelly and seaweed. These dishes might not sound familiar, but that doesn’t mean they’re anything less than utterly mouth-watering.
Kopapa will be Peter’s second restaurant in London, and he also owns highly rated restaurants in Auckland and Istanbul. It will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and there will also be dedicated pre- and post-theatre menus. Peter fully expects the menu to evolve over time – in fact that is part of the plan. “It will really be interesting to see what the menu is like in the middle of January as opposed to when we open. Our head chef is from New Zealand and grew up steeped in the Asian influences of the region. He has recently been in a more British atmosphere and is really excited about the chance to return to those Asian flavours and textures, and to really spread his wings. At the beginning, the vast majority of the menu will be my recipes, and I will always be heavily involved in the menu and regularly be in the kitchen. But at the same time we want our chef to be able to express himself and bring some of his own passions and ideas to the menu.”
In the end it was the guys in our restaurants in Turkey who actually came up with the name. They looked up a Maori dictionary and just went through it. They wanted something that meant a gathering or a crowd or a busy location, and they came up with Kopapa.
Kopapa is a Maori word. Peter is part Maori, as is Brandon, the third partner in the project. The team wanted something that spoke of New Zealand but didn’t want the Kiwi aspect pushed front and centre. That presented a bit of a problem – no-one could think of a name they liked.
“In the end it was the guys in our restaurants in Turkey who actually came up with the name. They looked up a Maori dictionary and just went through it. They wanted something that meant a gathering or a crowd or a busy location, and they came up with Kopapa. The thing is there are so many Maori dialects. I have asked some Maori friends and they said, ‘Oh you mean Kaupapa’, which actually means something completely different – luckily not rude. Others said, ‘Oh yeah, my grandmother used to use it’, while others had not heard of the word at all. It is a vague word which suggests a meaning but which has the beauty of not being tied down too tightly.”
Beautiful, but defying easy categorisation – the name, it seems, is very much like the food.