Mark Sargeant returns to cooking at a Surrey pub

Mark Sargeant returns to a professional kitchen this September, taking over The Victoria in Oxshott for a four-day residency that opens a longer stint at the Surrey gastropub.

The chef has not cooked in a restaurant since Restaurant MS closed in Folkestone in early 2025. In between, he ran a small Sunday roast delivery service from his native Kent, a lower-key spell than his years as a lieutenant to Gordon Ramsay.

Mark Sargeant's four-month residency

A four-day takeover in a Surrey village pub reopens a stalled chapter of his career.

From Wednesday 23 to Saturday 26 September, Sargeant takes full creative control of the kitchen at The Victoria, a three-AA-rosette pub on Oxshott High Street trading for more than a century. It is his first time cooking in Surrey.

He works alongside head chef Daniel Lee, who reached the final of the National Young Chef of the Year a decade ago, a contest where Sargeant served six years as head judge. Lee's brigade supports him through the takeover.

"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," Sargeant said, announcing the residency. "Dan and the team have created something quite rare, a proper village pub with a genuinely ambitious kitchen."

The September menu leans on seasonal British produce and the coastal cooking of his native Kent. Lunch runs Thursday to Saturday, two courses for £55 or three for £70, with a shared carafe of wine, bread and petits fours included. Dinner, across all four evenings, is a five-course menu at £125 a head with sparkling wine on arrival and pairings from £35.

Dishes that outlast the takeover

The tasting menu opens with artisan bread, smoked cod roe and flavoured butters, then a chilled white almond gazpacho with cucumber and courgette salad. Mains include marinated Cornish cod with sautéed iceberg lettuce and seaweed tartare sauce, and roast salt marsh lamb Niçoise with aubergine caviar and tapenade, before a pineapple upside-down sticky toffee pudding with clotted cream ice cream.

Two of Sargeant's dishes, Kentucky-fried salt marsh lamb sweetbreads and a Cornish seafood bouillabaisse, join The Victoria's permanent menu once the takeover ends.

Lee said the arrangement gives the pub a chance "to build on" its reputation for ambitious cooking behind a village-pub front. The residency continues with a two-night game dinner in October and a two-night British winter seafood supper in November, dates still to be confirmed.

The comeback lands in a busy month for chef moves: Romy Gill has taken over The Pem in London, while Sidney Schutte is opening The Gym in Amsterdam. For Sargeant, the plan is narrower: four days behind one stove, then a decision on what comes next.