For four days only, from Wednesday 23 to Saturday 26 September, acclaimed British chef and restaurateur Mark Sargeant will take over the kitchen at The Victoria Oxshott, cooking in Surrey for the first time.
The lunch and dinner menus will be entirely conceived and created by Sargeant, who will take full creative control of the food for the takeover. The Victoria’s Head Chef Daniel Lee and his established kitchen team will support him in delivering dishes that reflect his cooking, career and distinctive style at the three-AA-Rosette village pub.
With dinner served across all four evenings and lunch available on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the menus will celebrate seasonal British produce and the coastal influences of Sargeant’s native Kent. His modern British cooking will combine the precision of his fine-dining background with the generosity and pleasure of a great British pub.
Lunch will offer a shorter version of the dinner menu, with two courses priced at £55 per person and three courses at £70 per person. Both options include a carafe of wine to share, bread and petits fours.
In the evenings, The Victoria’s usual menu will give way to Sargeant’s five-course menu, priced at £125 per person. Beginning with a bread course, guests will then choose a starter, main course and dessert from a concise à la carte selection, followed by petits fours. The experience also includes sparkling wine on arrival, with optional wine pairings starting at £35 for three glasses.
The menu will begin with artisan bread served with smoked cod roe, Ampersand butter, ‘Markmite’, roast chicken butter and radishes, alongside smoked paprika pork crackling with caramelised apple sauce. Other dishes created by Sargeant will include chilled white almond gazpacho with cucumber and courgette salad, frozen grapes and basil oil; fillet of marinated Cornish cod with sautéed iceberg lettuce and warm seaweed tartare sauce; and roast rump of salt marsh lamb Niçoise, with aubergine caviar, tapenade, confit fennel, black garlic purée and olive and rosemary jus. Desserts will include pineapple upside-down sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream ice cream and butterscotch sauce, followed by Sargeant’s petits fours.
The September takeover will launch Sargeant’s four-month residency at The Victoria, followed by a Game Dinner over two nights in October and a British Winter Seafood Supper over two nights in November. Each will explore a different aspect of seasonal British produce, with dates, menus and booking details to be announced.
The residency also builds on a connection dating back to 2014, when Lee was a finalist in National Young Chef of the Year, the competition for which Sargeant served as an ambassador and head judge for six years.
Mark Sargeant said: “I’ve known about The Victoria and its reputation for some time, so the opportunity to become part of the kitchen for four months is incredibly exciting. Dan and the team have created something quite rare — a proper village pub with a genuinely ambitious kitchen.
“For September, I’ll be bringing some of the dishes and flavours I’ve loved cooking throughout my career to The Victoria, before exploring game and seasonal seafood later in the autumn. It’s my first time cooking in Surrey, so we intend to make it memorable.”
Daniel Lee, Head Chef at The Victoria, added: “We’ve built a kitchen here that is capable of delivering food at a very high level, and welcoming a chef of Mark’s calibre gives us an opportunity to build on that. The September takeover is Mark’s menu, and the team and I are looking forward to supporting him in bringing his food to our guests.
“Having him with us across the autumn means our guests can experience more of his cooking beyond the September takeover, with the relaxed hospitality they know and love at The Victoria.”
Sargeant spent 13 years working alongside Gordon Ramsay, rising through the ranks to lead Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s from its opening in 2001. The restaurant was awarded a Michelin star under his leadership in 2002, which it retained throughout his tenure.
He later established a collection of his own restaurants and pubs, with much of his work centred in his native Kent, and has appeared regularly on British television, including Saturday Kitchen, Great British Menu and The F Word.
Reservations for the September takeover are now open via www.thevictoriaoxshott.com