Brunch with a twist

My foodieness did experience somewhat of an acceleration when I started working, mainly because I started being able to afford going to nicer places, and buying nicer ingredients to play around with. And one of the things I treated myself to was a little cookery course. The Cookery School on Little Portland Street offers intermediate classes for people who knew how to cook, but wanted to explore food groups a little further - during the 6 week course, you learn more about sauces, fish, poultry etc. and you cook enough during the class to share it all with a glass of wine at the end. It was utter bliss, if only they did an advanced class.

Lindsay, as a result, is one of my original foodie friends. Lindsay and I first met doing Habitat together in Oxford, and somehow ended up in the same job starting the same day. She was my wonderful partner in crime in this cookery course, and we've shared a passion for food ever since even though she moved back to Boston. She is coming back to London next year, and when she visited last weekend, I wanted to show her how diverse London food still is.

So brunch with Lindsay was already an exciting prospect, but even more exciting was that I was going to meet her husband to be. I racked my brains for somewhere interesting, and then I remembered Providores on Marylebone High Street, probably the most exciting place to go for brunch. They have the usual eggs benedict, fry ups etc. but there are also some very cool fusion dishes. No wonder there is always a long queue of yummy mummies outside on a Sunday.

I chose what I guess is one of their signature brunch dishes, 'turkish eggs', which is yoghurt with 2 poached eggs drenched in chilli oil. Sounds disgusting, but what a genius combination when you have a bit of granary toast to make dippy soldiers with:

It is extremely rich, almost like having a bowl full of egg yolks and cream. As you can also see in the picture, it was accompanied by the most amazing black pudding. If you're squeamish about black pudding, you won't like it, because you can definitely tell it's made of blood. Rich and melt in the mouth.

Lindsay had their sweet potato and potato frittata esque thing - I can't quite remember the name:

Again, the combination of flavours exploded in the mouth. It is topped with a bit of creamy cheese and some onion relish, lovely combination of creaminess and sharpness and then the softness of the egg. And finally Lindsay's other half Jeff had the slightly more standard French toast with bacon:

Providores is also where I had probably my favourite ever starter: seared scallops with salted coconut milk with plaintains. Sounds disgusting, but it all worked! I really hope they still have this on the menu, because it is a perfect example of how fusion food should be, challenging without being silly. I ate that dish nearly 5 years ago now, and I still remember it so well.