A seat at the table: a special event

When I saw that chef Peter Gordon was going to be cooking a special menu at one of our favourite places in town, Floriditas, I jumped on and immediately booked a table. He is without doubt a national treasure in food terms in New Zealand, and it was fitting he was the first of The Legends series. Chef, restaurateur, cook book author, philanthropist, he has been creating dishes for over 40 years. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Godfather of Fusion’ he founded his first restaurant, The Sugar Club on Vivian Street, Wellington. After moving to London, he ran several restaurants before before returning to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland where he opened Homeland – a cooking school, community kitchen, restaurant and retail space – where we ate a few years ago (and had a conversation with him while waiting for our taxi).

After perusing the menu, we ordered some a glass each of Pol Roger champagne, because, well this was a special event, which also went very well wth the snacks (served to us by Peter Gordon himself – fan girl moment #1 of the evening). On the left below you can see the coconut relish crostini, kawakawa (a native plant) guacamole and pepitas, with the prawn, sweet chilli, crème fraiche sitting on top of a betel and lettuce leaf. Both were absolutely delicious, with the prawn getting the prize for me (just!).

The first course was fresh linguine served with shiitake mushrooms, truffled tofu, wakamame and dashi cream. This was fantastic mix of flavours and was quite outstanding. The second course was my top dish of the night: tuna with sesame roast kumara, nan jim, pickles and taro chilli crisp. Yet again, the combination of flavours, textures and surprises all came together in the most amazing fashion, a dish I won’t forget. We enjoyed a glass of Akarua chardonnay with these two dishes.

Next up was The Sugar Club’s Beef Pesto, a recreation of a dish first served at his first restaurant in Wellington. The beef was cooked to perfection, topped with olives and pesto. The dessert was also from The Sugar Club days, vattalapam (a Sri Lankan dish), biscotti and passionfruit cream. Our final wine was an Akarua pinot noir.

All in all, this was a very special evening. As we were leaving, Peter (I think I can call him that now….and fan girl moment #2) asked me if we had enjoyed the food, and I told him my favourite was the tuna, and I loved the way he talked about how he had built up the layers of flavours to come up with the dish. It truely showed the difference between the home cook’s approach and the professional chef. Anyway, this was definitely a meal to remember – thank you Peter and Floriditas!

Thistles and Kiwis is a Wellington, New Zealand based blog written by Barbara, who likes cats, summer, good food and pretends to garden.

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