Interview with Victoria and Josh Overington

Stuart Forster interviews chef Josh Overington and his sommelier wife Victoria about running a restaurant, the food served and their vision.

The couple operate Restaurant Mýse in the village of Hovingham, North Yorkshire. It was awarded a Michelin star in February 2024.

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I interviewed Josh and Victoria Overington in 2019 after experiencing the blind lunchtime tasting menu, with wine pairings, at their restaurant Le Cochon Aveugle in York. Le Cochon Aveugle was closed permanently in November 2022.

Chef Josh Overington

“Doing a tasting menu was done to save the pennies, essentially. We couldn’t afford to buy a turbot and throw it away if no one ordered it. We had to make money. So, we came up with the idea that we do just one menu, which is blind, has no choice, essentially, and no waste. It’s got a lot more elaborate and a lot more our style as the kitchen and the staff grew,” explained Josh.

Le Cochon Aveugle

The couple took over Le Cochon Aveugle restaurant in York from Michael O’Hare, who is renowned for The Man Behind The Curtain in Leeds.

“We opened it when we were 26, so everything was done quite naively. We just went along with the name of Le Cochon Aveugle,” said Josh, adding that it was a French-style bistro before Victoria and he took ownership.

Sommelier Victoria Overington

Over the past five years, Victoria has been training as a sommelier while Josh works in Le Cochon Aveugle’s open kitchen. People who like to observe chefs at work will probably benefit by requesting a seat at the bar overlooking the kitchen when reserving at the restaurant.

“We found our own palates. When you open a business like this when you’re so young, you don’t know what style you want to do, and it’s the same with wine. As the restaurant got more well-known, you get more confident in what you do. Both sides of it grew in that way. As for the wine programme, we never say it’s conventional or natural wines. We just serve wines that we think are tasty,” said Josh, who is from Pocklington.

French cooking techniques

“We’re pretty well-known for our wine pairings as much as the food. All the food is based on classical French techniques or dishes. We usually follow the path of what you would conventionally pair. So, the guineafowl we had today with the Valjean, obviously a wine from the Jura would usually pair well with it, but let’s not be boring about it. We thought, let’s look at some other interesting regions or countries. Corsican wines have similar profiles. We tried it and think it works.

It’s about not being so different that people have to scratch their head about eating and drinking but being different enough that we stand out and it makes people remember us,” he said, eliciting a nod of approval from Victoria, who has added several natural low intervention wines to the restaurant’s wine list.

“Between us, we’ll talk about the dish, the flavours we’re trying to achieve with the dish, then find a wine,” explained Victoria, who grew up in Dorset.

Tasting menus with wine pairings

“When it comes down to the actual dish, during dish development, we’ll get a few wines in and try them — quite often with the full team. We’ll put a couple of conventional pairings and one or two wild cards in there. More often than not, those make it onto the wine list,” she added, citing the example of the pairing of beef tartare with La Rumbera, a wine with scrumpy-like characteristics from the Oriol Artigas estate in Catalonia.

After training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Josh was working as a private chef in chalets, saving money to open a fine-dining bistro.

Josh and Victoria met in France. While skiing, Josh broke his leg. That resulted in meeting Victoria, who was working as a nurse.

Before returning to England, they decided to take a holiday in Paris.

“I wanted to show her why I was in the Alps saving money and what I was trying to go for. Vicky had a view of Paris that a lot of people have — as a grungy city with rude people that doesn’t have a lot going for it anymore. It isn’t that at all. If you live like a Parisian, if you go on holiday like you live there, you have a completely different and better experience,” asserted the chef.

Inspired by Parisian bistros

Inspired by the chic bistronomy of Paris — such as Saturne and Frenchie (5 rue du Nil) — the couple shared a vision: “We wanted to create a restaurant that we would want to come and eat in, and a bar that we want to drink at. I feel that’s what we’ve created.”

“We are an ingredient-led restaurant,” said Josh, adding, “I have no time for food which makes things into a ball of foam, or whatever, and you can’t tell where you’re actually eating.”

He sources some of his vegetables from Ken Holland, based in the northeast of England, and scallops directly from the Orkney-based divers.

Top-quality ingredients

“I don’t use everything which is local because not everything local is good. Tomatoes from Yorkshire are rubbish because we don’t have the climate to grow really nice tomatoes. So I get them from the south of France,” he added frankly.

“In my personal opinion, guineafowl from the Loire Valley is the best you can buy, so we get it from there. It’s just about finding the very best ingredients and then showing them off in a way that is true to the form of them.”

What about recipe development?

“The ideas come from looking at the ingredients and then I might look at a classical French dish…The ingredients will dictate where I go and how I’ll twist it. Basically, it’s a classic dish, in essence, but I’ve done my own version of the flavours,” explained Josh.

Michelin-quality dining

“I would say that there are a lot of restaurants now realising that French food is cool again. We’re not cooking old-school food. We’re cooking quite modern food – classic French food cooked by 30-year-olds. That’s my style. We’re cooking bistro food in a Michelin style.

There are other restaurants like that, especially in London — The Clove Club and Lyle’s, that sort of place — but they are more British in style. We are 100 per cent French and that’s what makes us different. You can eat here and see similarities with certain restaurants, but we are different in that we are French to the core,” said the chef.

“We want to move away from formal fine-dining where you have a starched table and a silent dining room where you’re not sure if you can chat or laugh. When people go out to eat, we want people to have fun and we want people to enjoy themselves…We want people not tofeel under pressure when they come out. There’s nothing worse than going somewhere and feeling uncomfortable about it,” added Victoria.

“I always thought York had the wealth to have a fine-dining restaurant or a restaurant that serves really good food. But I also knew York didn’t want a white tablecloth, silent, poncey, stuck-up restaurant. I always wanted to do it in York because I’m from here, knew the city and people from it. Luckily, I was proven right. The locals have always supported us and still do to this day…They want a sort of Yorkshire, tongue-in-cheek, fun service. That’s what we give them. We feed them as well. No one leaves here hungry,” explained Josh.

Fine-dining in Yorkshire

“We see a lot of people coming to visit us from London. They’ll visit us one night visit and maybe the wine bar on the second. Or maybe Skosh or Roots on a different night. There are options here for a weekend to visit from London – two hours away on the train – or Edinburgh. York’s such a lovely city to visit,” said Josh before mentioning Arras as another York-based restaurant likely to attract people who enjoy quality dining experiences.

Where to eat in York

And what does the future hold for Josh and Victoria?

“We’re still relatively young and I’d never say never to anything. Right now, I just want to concentrate on Le Cochon Aveugle and make it the destination restaurant of York. There are other great restaurants in York but I want mine to be the best fine-dining restaurant…It’s like coming to my house. Basically, you sit in my kitchen and eat — that’s the way I treat it,” said Josh.

I stepped into York’s afternoon sunshine impressed both by the lunch and the couple’s approach to hospitality.

Restaurant Mýse in Hovingham

Josh and Victoria now operate Restaurant Mýse in Hovingham, North Yorkshire.

Accommodation in Hovingham

The map below shows options for accommodation in Hovingham and the surrounding area:

Further information

Find information about tourist attractions and things to do in and around the historic city centre on the Visit York and Welcome to Yorkshire websites.

Thank you for visiting Go Eat Do to read this interview with Victoria and Josh Overington. Planning a trip to North Yorkshire? You may enjoy posts on things to do in Harrogate and things to do in Malton.

Stuart Forster, the author of this post, has written for BBC Good Food, National Geographic Traveller and Love Food. He is based in the northeast of England.

The food photography illustrating this post is by Why Eye Photography.

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This post was originally posted on Go Eat Do on 23 February 2019.