Tapa Room @ The Providores, Marylebone, London

Had a meal here last week in the upstairs dining room and it was fantastic!

Every dish was perfect and all the flavours worked together perfectly. Good food, good wine, good company. It was a great evening and I would definitely visit again and recommend this place to a friend!

I love having brunch and I love breakfasts, warm crispy toast ready to be slapped with butter and condiment, silky and fluffy scrambled eggs… Need I go on? I can have breakfast stuff anytime of the day and love it when places offer all day breakfasts. As not everyone might be as crazy as I am, brunch is a good alternative where I can still go breakfast crazy while my friends can choose other options; all while chilling out on a sunny and relaxing weekend day.

A place which left me with good memories was Providores and Tapas.

Mixed Berry Smoothie £4.7

Brown rice, apple, maple syrup and miso porridge with Tamarillo compote £6

Grilled chorizo on creamy root vegetable gratin, soft boiled egg

My girlfriends and I enjoyed our selections, the ingredients are well harmonised and taste-wise was spot on.

For photos, please go to http://chopstix2steaknives.blogspot.com/2011/07/brunching...

Loved this place. I was a bit daunted by the schizophrenic fusion menu (jack of all trades, master of none?) but was soon put firmly in my place when the food started to arrive. YUM YUM YUM.

The good:

The food (almost all of it), the service (excellent), the atmosphere (it's buzzy with conversations all around at full volume...so not the place for a quiet tete a tete) the NZ wine list...

How can a pork summer roll taste that good? Burrata so delicious and creamy it made me laugh when I tasted it...samphire cooked to perfection...dashi tapioca waltzed in perfect harmony with the salmon belly, a gooseberry baclava that made a greek man silent with appreciation (ok I'm going on a bit, but you get the picture)

The bad:

Struggling...the panna cotta could have been a bit creamier (?)...

The ugly:

Why don't we live within walking distance?

Stunning variety... definetely worth a visit (also try the breakfast).

I had lunch in the upstairs dining area here last week and it was, in a word, tremendous. In two: bleedin’ lovely.

At first glance of the menu, I feared that the complex combination of flavours and tongue-twisting myriad of ingredients was another example of hip chefdom trying hard to impress but ending up producing dishes that resemble something an addled Keith Richards would knock up in his expensive, well-stocked but completely under-used kitchen. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

After much considered deliberation, I eventually plumped for the Yellowfin tuna with pleasant, crunchy lotus crisps and the snappy wasabi tokkiko. Then for the Roast Gressingham duck breast, served with Basmati rice and satay sauce. Though the latter combination was most definitely a first for my palate, both dishes were as close to flawless as can be when being consumed by a culinary pedant like me.

The dessert, I can report, was without doubt flawless. So exceptional that there is no way of discussing it without quoting it in its full descriptive glory: mango-passion fruit and strawberry blackcurrant ripple sorbets with Hokey Pokey ice cream, espresso poached quince and nut biscotti. It was as exotic and indulgently delicious as it sounds, refreshing and packed with perfectly soothing texture and taste.

The closing macchiato was brewed to perfection, nice and strong, and served in a glass, which is always my preference. One gripe I have heard about this establishment is that the waiting staff can be a tad short – in manner, not height – though during this lunch they were as pleasant and businesslike as is required and necessary; I didn’t strike up any new lifelong friendships though, put it that way.

I am now even keener to sample the weekend brunch, which I have been informed by many reliable sources is easily the best in London.

Ah, breakfast culture. When did we Brits lose it?

You go anywhere else in the world and breakfast, or at least that pre-work cup of coffee at the bar, is an essential part of life. Paris, New York, Berlin, Eastern Europe, Spain, Australia, New Zealand… they all understand the role that cafe culture has to play. London / the Uk though? We’ve struggled. Sure, you’ve always been sorted if you fancy a greasy spoon fry-up or a sausage-sandwich-of-indeterminable-origin but quality breakfasts? You’ve had to look long and hard for those.

Things are improving though. Over the last few years, the joys of the weekend brunch are easier to find and many places provide decent weekday offerings too. Typically, the best in London are of Antipodean origin: Lantana, and The Providores.

Of the two, I’d tip Providores slightly higher. The wine list - not that you want one with brekkie, of course - is excellent, the setting is simple and funky and buzzing, and the food - particularly the Turkish Eggs (natural yoghurt, chilli butter, poached eggs) and toasted sourdough - is first rate and creative. Lunch and dinner is also a good value, great tasting bet.

You’ll know when London is the best city in the world because there will be a Providores-style cafe in every Borough. Until then, it’s worth the trawl to Marylebone.

Absolutely superb in almost every way. Very friendly staff, extremely good food and drink - locally sourced ingredients wherever possible. This is the first place I’ve found that produces great fusion food on a par with what I’ve had in Australia (I understand the owner is a Kiwi).
Excellent wine list and also caters superbly for veggies.
I think it’s super value too - not cheap but unlike similarly prices places - well worth it!
My only niggling gripe is the long bar table in the middle of the ground floor room, which I think is in the way and not great feng-shui - but that aside, I can’t recommend this place highly enough!

The fusion food is great and loads of NZ wine (the owner is a Kiwi.)

Let down by the total lack of space when its busy (you couln’t swing a cat.) If they redesign the layout and actually allowed some space when it is full it would get 4 stars

We went there for breakfast and the food was fantastic. Lots of really exciting and different combinations as well as good ol’ English breakfast favourites. You are packed in very tight and the queue was quite a wait but the food was well worth it.

Great place. Quite casual. I visited here mainly because my daughter has worked here for five years.
Have to recommend because she chooses the wines but also because of the atmosphere. Have also eaten upstairs but that is quite expensive - well by NZ standards - but also very good. Interesting taste combinations as Peter Gordon is into marrying unusual foods.
Great coffee !

I live in the area and this is stones throw from me. To start this place is always busy even more so since Evening standard posted it as one of the top 5 places in London for breakfast. If you are trying for a Sunday book in advance or be prepared to Q on the street. So would I Q, well no. Its very nice but also expensive for whats on offer. Have been for dinner 3 times and its always close to 50/60 per head, and in that bracket theres a lot of other places that does it better. If it wasnt so busy it (and slightly cheaper) would a great place for a evening drinks as it carries a good selection of wine. Ladies that lunch is the afternoon theme and yet again theres plenty of other places near by that I would rather watch the world go by in. Next door to L’Autre Terre (Pied a Terre little sister) which is getting better every month..

This is such a find. Amazing for brunch, lunch and dinner! Had brunch here on Sunday and what a lovely experience. The menu offers the more usual brunch/breakfast-type things like a superb full english or veggie english, but the menu is so varied and interesting I had to opt for something a bit different. I went for the hot smoked salmon on walnut toast, with spinach, 2 (perfect) soft-boiled eggs and finished off with hollandaise - top notch. Great smoothies too.

It gets very busy at peak times, e.g brunch and dinner, and you can’t book downstairs so it’s pretty crowded, quite loud, and rather hot - which is why it only gets 4 stars and not 5. But, you can book upstairs, the more formal dining area if you call in good time. Definitely worth a visit and I’ll be going back for more…

I always seem to find myself sitting at the high tables in the midst of this busy Marylebone restaurant. It’s cosy, intimate, and quite easy to be bumped by either the waiters and waitresses or other diners leaving or arriving at the other small set of tables. Fortunately they also have a dining room upstairs (that I would hope would be roomier) and that you can book for in advance (unlike downstairs). The high tables are a reasonable use of the otherwise difficult-to-use space and adds to the bustling atmosphere many seem to come here for.

The few other times I’ve been before, waiting to be seated is the usual norm, so I was surprised to find today that we didn’t have to wait what so ever. We started with a set of strong coffees (myself, a flat white), whilst we perused their unique gastronomic offerings on the menu. As mentioned above, they have almost too many interesting choices or twists on classic brunch dishes, yet not too many to leave the diner confused and bewildered.

I love poached eggs and decided to settle on the salmon dish CaribQueen mentioned above. It’s an especially decadent dish, with the strong flavours of the smoked salmon strongly contrasted against the sharp yuzu-flavoured hollandaise. I still don’t think the walnut bread goes too well with this, and could really have been substituted with any other bread as I certainly don’t think it added much to the overall flavour of the dish.

Either way, we left this place completely satisfied and am still aching to return here to try their non breakfast menu.

Good brunch in the Tapa Room of the Providores, which is the ground floor level of the restaurant. The breakfast/brunch menu has the standard dishes you’d expect from a celeb chef restaurant like greek yogurt and granola and fry ups with a twist to them, such as one with black pudding and roast apple for a tenner. What’s more notable though, are the not-so-standard dishes such as the brown rice porridge, apple, maple, miso porridge or French toast with banana and pecans (still standard there) with vanilla verjus syrup and thick slices of bacon.

There are a few interesting egg dishes as well, one being 'turkish eggs’ (poached, with whipped yogurt and hot chilli butter) and poached eggs atop spinach, hot smoked salmon and walnut toast, with yuzu hollandaise. I had the latter and but for the salmon I really enjoyed it. I now know that tea-smoked salmon tastes just like regularly cooked salmon, which i dislike, and not at all like smoked salmon, which I adore… unless they made a big fat booboo here and I got the overcooked end of the stick.

Brunch gets busy, as I can see happening all day at the Tapa Room given the trendy but cozy feel they’ve managed to attain, and the fact that the all-day menu also sounds delicious for bites big and small. Brunch should run about 10-15 quid with coffee (Monmouth!) unless you also go for a cocktail or one of the blended juices that seem quite popular with the in-the-knows. Worth a visit, and I’ll be going back for wine and small bites next.

Smooth little eaterie below the main restaurant…difficult to be specific…. but it’s good for breakfast,coffee,lunch ,tasty takes on classic foods.
A few small tables and some communal ones. Clearly very popular with the local Marylebone residents… I like it!

One of the best brunches in London, they even do Vegemite soldiers and you can get sour dough toast.

If you are an Aussie or Kiwi and are hankering after a posh brekkie from home then this is the place to go.

They even have great Bloody Mary’s.

Book or get there early.