Close to Home with Peter Gordon

Chef Peter Gordon and his partner Michael McGrath moved into their apartment in London a year ago but it took them until the New Year to finish unpacking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Their unbelievably hectic working lives had something to do with it. There were the preparations for this month’s opening of Dine by Peter Gordon, the restaurant at Auckland’s new SKYCITY Grand Hotel. Peter was also writing his new book Salads – The New Main Course and working on a chef’s compendium called Cook.

He was also cooking four or five days a week at The Providores and Tapa Room, the restaurant the couple co-owns in London’s Marylebone. In between were four visits to Public, the restaurant in New York that The Providores consults for. Michael works six days a week at The Providores as a co-manager yet finds time to facilitate workshops for new writers at The Royal Court Theatre.

But it wasn’t just the lack of free time for unpacking and making the apartment home, it was also the size of the task.

“We had all this stuff in storage for two years,” says Peter. “A lot were things I hadn’t missed, couldn’t believe I’d ever had – snow globes, ugly wooden bowls, pottery jugs and mugs – things I’d picked up from charity shops years ago.”

“Peter is the collector,” says Michael, “and luckily I like his taste.” “And the hoarder,” Peter admits. “Michael could live in a Zen house but I’d miss all the beautiful things I like to have in my life.”

With a fortnight off over Christmas they pared down their possessions. “Five big boxes went to the op shop, gone in one fell s woop,” says Michael.

The spacious West Hampstead apartment – on the top floor of a mansion block built in a horseshoe around a lawn – is reached by a rickety lift creaking up four floors. Stepping through the double front door into the apartment is like emerging from a tunnel into fresh air. Light streams into the broad, pleasingly square hall.

“It is an Edwardian, purpose-built block of flats, 100 years old,” Peter explains. “In those days putting on a good face was important so the hall would be big to give callers the impression that the rest of the house was just as grand.”

And from the hall comes the first inkling that this must be the home of the genius of fusion cuisine. A rich Turkish kilim leads the eye to the leather armchair in the corner. Beside it is a carved bench from Indonesia with South African masks mounted on the wall. Opposite is a wall hanging woven with shimmering red and black feathers reminiscent of a Maori cape by New Zealand artist Moana Nepier. It is an eclectic mix of ingredients that could so easily fail in less talented hands but Peter carries it off.
When he and Michael first saw the flat it had five bedrooms. A three-month renovation project – the interior stripped out, walls taken down, doors relocated and a large open sitting/dining room created – has produced a two-bedroom, two-study, two-bathroom home.

It is easy to tell whose study is which. Michael, who confesses to a fondness for “clear walls”, has simply a table, chair and computer in his calm room. The walls of Peter’s home office are covered in Farrow & Ball ‘Mouse’s Back’ – “muddy brown or light khaki depending on the light” – and are crammed with books, photographs, magazines and all sorts of bits and pieces. A piece of tapa from Rarotonga and an antique map of New Zealand remind him of home.

“Maybe if I lived in New Zealand I wouldn’t feel the need to buy so many New Zealandy things like maps,” he says, “but I’d still buy paintings and crafts.”

Many contemporary artworks appear throughout the flat. “We like to buy work from friends or artists we know,” says Peter.

“And when I’m back in Wanganui I always go to the art college and try to come back with something. My mother Timmy always had lots of pictures in her house in Auckland and I think I got my love of art on the walls from her.”

In the pale uncluttered bedroom (Michael’s choice) another reminder of home sits at the foot of the bed – a green cloth-covered trunk in which Peter’s stepmother Rose transported all her worldly goods when she emigrated from England to New Zealand in 1962 on the Stratheden.

On the voyage she made friends with a young emigrant called Heather. A few months after Peter and Michael met at the Sugar Club in 1988 (Peter was head chef, Michael a waiter) they discovered Rose’s friend was Michael’s elder sister. She left Surrey when she was nineteen. Eight years later thirteen-year-old Michael and their parents followed.

Another reminder of family back home is the aluminium tea trolley currently home to the television. Peter has a particularly soft spot for that icon of a bygone age because it reminds him of his grandmother. She would come rattling into a room at family dinners, trolley laden with desserts. But he has managed to trim his trolley collection from five to two. “It was a question of space and anyway how many tea trolleys does a boy need?”

For two years before they moved in, Peter and Michael lived in a tiny, rented flat nearby. They hadn’t meant to stay in a shoe box so long but the house they had shared with their friend, actress Kerry Fox, just would not sell. “We had lived there together for just over three years but after Kerry got together with her partner Alex and then they had their son Eric in 2001 we all decided it was time to move on.”

Now that Peter and Michael are at last in a home of their own, they love to entertain. But they won’t be having any of their legendary parties. “Not with this carpet,” says Michael looking protectively at the pristine, silver-grey Feltex carpet shipped from New Zealand. (It’s colour is ‘Shadow’ on the sample card but again, he says, “it depends on the light”.)

Instead they invite friends to stay or for dinner. They like gathering in the kitchen and lending a hand (“all our appliances are Fisher & Paykel yet our friends in New Zealand hanker for European,” says Peter).
They call the guest bedroom the “womb room” and not just because of its deep red walls. It has such a comforting and cosy atmosphere even the most jetlagged or insomniac of visitors wake up saying they’ve had their best night’s sleep in years.

One thing Peter misses about not living in New Zealand is having a garden.“Living in London it has to be a flat. And with flats you can have light or a garden but not both. We chose the light.”