Joshua Overington used to get pleasure from upsetting his visitors at his earlier restaurant, Le Cochon Aveugle. “Cochon was aggressive and bolshy and concrete,” he admits. “We informed individuals what they had been consuming, we didn’t actually do dietaries and the music was a bit too loud.”
Launched by the chef and his spouse and sommelier counterpart Vicky in 2014, the York restaurant closed in the direction of the tip of final yr with the pair saying on the time that they needed to ‘begin a brand new journey’.
That new journey is Mýse (pronounced like mise en place), a extra spacious, bold and grown-up restaurant on the location of a former pub in Hovingham, a fascinating village a few 25 minutes’ drive north of York. Launched final month, it has been conceived as a softer-edged, extra experiential counterpoint to the 20-odd cowl restaurant with which the pair made their title.
“Mýse is extra female. It’s extra relaxed. Issues transfer slower and we maintain the client’s hand a bit extra. We do dietaries. We even supply a vegetarian menu,” says Joshua in a way that implies he can’t fairly imagine how accommodating his new restaurant is.
As its title instructed – Le Cochon Aveugle means the blind pig – the Overington’s former restaurant provided a ‘blind’ menu, with visitors solely discovering out what they had been consuming because it was served to them. This at instances controversial coverage has now been ditched, with Mýse placing its tasting menus on the desk because the meal commences. “Numerous our diners are former Cochon visitors, so we’re discovering {that a} excessive proportion don’t have a look at it,” Vicky says.
Bidding adieu to the macaron
Regardless of this extra customer-centric perspective, Joshua is adamant that his most well-known and due to this fact most requested creation – a jet-black macaron crammed with boudin noir – won’t ever hit the desk at Mýse. “Individuals ask for it daily nevertheless it’s gone. Finito. Useless. I’m not doing it once more. I don’t care how a lot you pay me.”
Isn’t {that a} bit like Elton John refusing to play Rocket Man? “It was necessary to me to not have that dish on the menu right here. It’s not that I don’t assume it’s a very good dish, it simply doesn’t make sense on this atmosphere.”
“We’re centered on British produce right here. That’s to not say that I received’t use lemons and stuff like that, as a result of I’ll, however the primary components on the plate are from the British Isles”
What he means by that is that the pig-blood-sausage-filled canapé was emblematic of Le Cochon Aveugle’s strategy in a lot because it was a inventive tackle fashionable European delicacies with sturdy leanings in the direction of France.
At Mýse, the culinary inspiration and to some extent the components come from nearer to dwelling. That is partly as a consequence of its rural location and in addition as a result of the pair at the moment are seeking to create a narrative-driven restaurant expertise.
“We’re centered on British produce right here. That’s to not say that I received’t use lemons and stuff like that, as a result of I’ll, however the primary components on the plate are from the British Isles.”
Which means no squab pigeon, no foie gras and – sure – none of that scrumptious boudin noir, both.
French fancies
Joshua grew up simply down the street from his new digs in Pocklington, a market city to the east of York. At 19, he arrived at Bray’s The Waterside Inn with minimal expertise and shortly launched he wasn’t fairly pretty much as good as he thought he was.
He remembers Alain Roux taking him to at least one aspect and advising him that he wanted some correct coaching if he was to work in three-Michelin-starred kitchens. On the time, he was fixated on France so headed to Paris to coach at Le Cordon Bleu.
“I needed an journey and the thought of cooking in Paris was very romantic,” he remembers. “To this present day it’s the most effective choice I’ve ever made. Once you work someplace like that you just don’t cease studying. You’re pals with different cooks and also you go to eating places in your day without work. It additionally gave me connections and taught me in regards to the tradition of working onerous.”
After finishing the course, Joshua felt he had unfinished enterprise with Gallic three-stars so took a job working below Yannick Alléno at his Pavillon Ledoyen flagship in Paris. After a few years of “getting beasted”, he left to work as a personal chef within the Alps the place he met his future spouse.
Vicky is from the other finish of England having grown up within the Dorset village of Bridport. She had dabbled in eating places in her youth and got here from a meals loving household however ended up turning into a nurse, her occupation finally taking her to France.
The pair’s ‘how we bought collectively story’ is a wonderful one. Joshua managed to interrupt his leg whereas on a date with another person and – in a bid to avoid wasting money on medical payments – sought out Vicky, then merely an acquaintance, for some recommendation. She frogmarched him to hospital, and the remainder is historical past.
Swine eating
The couple returned to the UK with hopes to launch their very own place however underestimated how a lot capital could be required. They ended up working for different individuals, Vicky for Tommy and James Banks at The Black Swan at Oldstead (which is simply about 10 minutes’ drive from Mýse) and Joshua for Michael O’Hare at his York restaurant that had lately modified its title from The Blind Swine to Le Cochon Aveugle.
On the time, the restaurant was run alongside the strains of a French bistro serving dishes equivalent to steak and chips and snails with garlic butter. It wasn’t going so effectively, prompting O’Hare to go to Leeds to launch the very profitable Man Behind The Curtain.
The owner ended up providing the restaurant to Joshua – then O’Hare’s quantity two within the kitchen – in 2014. “All of it occurred quick and we actually solely had £800 within the financial institution so we couldn’t afford to vary the title,” Vicky says. “We had pretty humble ambitions once we relaunched it as our personal, it was mainly only a neighbourhood bistro.”
Blind ambition
The pair pushed the tiny area to its limits, creating one of many UK’s most bold eating places (in its latter years Le Cochon Aveugle featured on Restaurant’s record of the highest 100 locations to eat within the UK).
“It was a restaurant that by no means ought to have labored, however via our onerous work and stubbornness it did”
“It occurred organically, however if you begin on that path you may’t actually return,” says Joshua. “Cochon was our studying restaurant – we had been solely 26 once we began. We made a variety of errors, however we had a variety of successes too. It was subsequent to a Chinese language takeaway in a scholar space on the outskirts of the town centre. It was a restaurant that by no means ought to have labored, however via our onerous work and stubbornness it did.”
Inevitably the pair outgrew the area. “It wasn’t dropping cash nevertheless it wasn’t making a lot both,” he continues. “Economically and creatively it simply wasn’t working for us. There may be solely a lot you are able to do in a tiny little kitchen. It bought boring. It began to really feel like work.”
The Overingtons offered on the leases for Le Cochon Aveugle and their close by wine and pizza place Cave du Cochon, with each websites closing in the direction of the tip of 2022. The money from the 2 gross sales mixed with financial savings and a hefty enterprise mortgage allowed the pair to purchase the location that now homes Mýse outright.
A pub no extra
The location that Mýse occupies was already well-known for its meals having been overhauled and relaunched by Richard and Lindsey Johns as The Hovingham Inn in 2019 (it made the High 50 Gastropubs record in early 2022). However whereas it might have solely been open a few years it nonetheless took a variety of work to make the change from pub to restaurant.
“It was necessary to us that we had been seen as a effective eating vacation spot reasonably than a pub,” says Joshua.
In addition to a beauty transformation that has seen the inside brightened and comprehensively decluttered, the rear of the location has been remodelled to create an open kitchen. Partly funded by an unnamed outdoors investor who now has a small stake within the enterprise, the location’s three letting bedrooms have additionally required a variety of work.
The funding has paid off. Whereas Mýse may retain some pub trappings – together with a bar with a couple of handpulls and a comfortable comfortable – it’s unlikely to be mistaken for a village boozer with its whitewashed partitions, minimalist really feel and Noma-esque eating chairs.
‘Elevated grandma cooking’
Mýse‘s £110 10-course tasting menu (a shorter model is obtainable at lunch for £85) is partly impressed by Joshua’s grandma, a formidable cook dinner, by all accounts. “This restaurant is a illustration of the meals I ate rising up. It’s elevated grandma cooking. That retains the issues grounded and in addition makes it playful,” he says.
The meals is high-end and artistic, then, however is essentially impressed by hearty dishes. There’s a tackle Yorkshire pudding and gravy in doughnut type; a cod dish impressed by fish and chips with the fish cooked in beef dripping; and a intelligent black pudding dish that sees the ingredient used to assemble a taco-like-object that’s used as a vessel for a grilled langoustine and a pickled rose petal.
The macaron might have been 86’d, however a handful of dishes and culinary concepts have survived the journey to the Yorkshire countryside. First amongst these is a scallop steamed in its shell with sea urchin butter that’s opened on the desk, which Joshua describes as ‘a near-perfect dish’.
Generally, conventional cooking strategies take choice over extra up to date ones, however the kitchen does make use of some devices, not least an Anti Griddle – a grill that freezes reasonably than cooks – which is presently getting used to set jam round entire strawberries with out altering the feel of the fruit itself.
The chef is rather more fascinated by speaking about his components than his strategies, nevertheless, with Mýse going to better lengths than most with its sourcing. “I’m assured that now we have the most effective. We’re a 22-cover restaurant that’s open for six companies every week so that’s achievable,” says Joshua, who has a longstanding relationship with native grower Rocket & Russet.
“I inform him what I need and he grows it. However I’ve to choose it myself. I am going each week with our two-year-old daughter. It’s truly very nice and solves an enormous drawback – nice greens usually are not straightforward to search out round right here.
Seafood additionally requires a variety of effort, with the kitchen having to alternate between a number of totally different suppliers together with a contact in Cornwall that sources straight from the boats, a shellfish man in Scotland and some native suppliers which might be typically in a position to safe great things from the east coast.
Working with Noble Rot
Mýse could be procuring round for its fish, nevertheless it’s utilizing only one provider for its wine. Although Vicky is greater than able to assembling a killer record, she has opted to work with Keeling Andrew & Co – run by the workforce behind London’s Noble Rot – as a result of she is unable to completely handle the wine programme as a consequence of childcare commitments (Vicky usually doesn’t do night service).
“It additionally provides us entry to wines that might in any other case be onerous to come back by,” she says. “It’s superb to see all these wines that we beforehand didn’t have any probability of getting maintain of now on the record.”
Created in partnership with Keeling Andrew & Co, the 300-bin record is massive on basic wine areas with a deal with producers from Jap France. “Having lived within the Alps we’re massive followers of areas like Jura and Savoie, particularly. They’re precisely-made underrated wines and might usually supply nice worth,” Vicky continues. “They usually are usually made by small producers utilizing low-intervention strategies. That’s actually our fashion however not the very funky finish; we like our wines to be clear and have a way of place.”
With solely small allocations out there, the wine pairing (£85 at dinner and £65 at lunch) modifications frequently and comprises some critical wines together with Bodegas Lopez de Heredia’s Viña Gravonia and a Saint Aubin 1er cru. An much more premium possibility is ready to be launched quickly.
Weathering the storm
Mýse is hardly low cost nevertheless it’s priced competitively when in comparison with different top-end eating places within the space. “There’s no getting away from the truth that we’re a special day place,” Joshua says. “Generally it’s a must to be a bit pig-headed about it. We’re assured it’s well worth the cash.”
That stated, the pair are effectively conscious of how tough the effective eating market is for the time being when it comes to each demand and profitability and have reduce their fabric accordingly. “There is no denying that it will be a tricky couple of years. That is most likely one of many worst instances ever to open a restaurant,” says Joshua.
“Generally it’s a must to be a bit pig-headed about it. We’re assured it’s well worth the cash”
But there are many causes for positivity. The pair have spent the previous eight years making a tough website work and now have an area with higher services in a extra beneficial location. And in distinction to most different startup effective eating companies, they aren’t ranging from scratch on the subject of buyer information.
Most significantly, the previous Le Cochon Aveugle pair are strolling in with open eyes. “We now have designed the enterprise with the extra challenges eating places are going through in thoughts,” Vicky says. “Mýse is as streamlined as it may possibly presumably be. We aren’t alone in doing it however we function a four-day week, which is nice for the workers and in addition good for the enterprise as a result of we’re condensing our bookings.”
“We really feel optimistic, we’re getting busier and busier every week.”