Josh Overington
Josh Overington
Josh Overington opened Le Cochon Aveugle in York with just £800 in the bank, bringing exciting modern French cooking to the city of York and building his platform as a chef. Today, he puts his elegant spin on traditional Yorkshire cooking at his Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant Mýse.
When York native Josh left home on his gap year, he did so with no expectations of becoming a chef. He wanted to see the world – specifically Australia – and travelled to Sydney with a dream of freedom and discovering his independence. ‘I never really intended to start a career cooking,’ he explains. ‘I never had that idea in my head, really. It was more about necessity – I’d moved abroad and the only job I could get was washing pots, so I started from there.’
His family enjoyed eating together – ‘we always sat down for Sunday dinner,’ he says – but it wasn’t until Josh immersed himself in the food culture of Sydney that he realised a broader appreciation of food and cooking. After a few months spent elbow-deep in a sink of hot, soapy water, Josh was promoted to prep chef and then moved onto the line, and discovered a passion for food that has birthed a career. He returned to the UK with a plan to take his cooking seriously and enrol at Le Cordon Bleu cookery school in Paris, but he got his hands dirty at a couple of British institutions first – The Pipe and Glass Inn in nearby Beverley, east Yorkshire, and the Roux brothers’ legendary Waterside Inn in Bray. With no formal training and limited kitchen experience under his belt, the latter in particular was a real baptism of fire for the young chef.
‘When you work in restaurants of that level – especially three-Michelin-starred restaurants like The Waterside Inn – you realise pretty quickly that you need some kind of training,’ says Josh. ‘I’d made the decision that I wanted to be a chef, and I knew I needed to get the training – where better than Paris?’
Josh’s time in the French capital would turn out to be the biggest influence on his career to date. After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu, Josh worked for six months at the world-famous three-starred Pavillon Ledoyen with chef Yannick Alleno. Ledoyen is without question one of the great restaurants of the world and an icon of classical French cuisine, but it wasn’t this French institution that made an impact on Josh – it was the neo-bistro movement happening in Paris simultaneously. ‘Bistronomy was just starting to explode in Paris at the time,’ he says. ‘All these amazing chefs were going into little run-down bistros and doing Michelin-style food. That style really appealed to me, as I much prefer a sort of stripped-back look and feel to fine dining.’ Josh’s time in Paris honed his skills as a cook, but also taught him who he wanted to be as a chef.
Josh remained in France and worked as a private chef in the Alps, with the intention of saving up enough money to open his own restaurant. He didn’t quite manage that – ‘I was a bit naïve in terms of how much money you needed!’ he says – but he did meet his wife Victoria, and the pair returned to York with ambitions of opening their own place. Josh took a job working as sous chef at Michael O’Hare’s Blind Swine, but when Michael left Josh and Victoria saw a chance at their dream and took over the lease.
They had the site, but not much else. With just £800 in the bank, the pair couldn’t afford new crockery, cutlery, table decorations, or any extra staff. They couldn’t even afford to change the name of the restaurant, so they translated it from English to French instead. ‘Honestly, I wouldn’t have kept the name!’ Josh laughs. ‘I could have come up with a new name, we just didn’t have the money to change it.’ Victoria – a sommelier by trade – handled all the wine and front of house, whilst Josh looked after the kitchen on his own. ‘We couldn’t do an à la carte,’ Josh explains. ‘The kitchen was tiny and I was on my own. The only way to make it work was to do a set menu.
‘It was incredibly hectic,’ he continues. ‘We were only twenty-six when we opened, still mega young. It was a real learning process in the early days – as the word spread and we got more attention, we got busier and we didn’t always have all the answers when it came to coping with that. We didn’t have any backers so we had no money for a sous chef or a restaurant manager.’
Though successful, Josh was still a relative unknown – until food critic Marina O’Loughlin arrived at the restaurant and waxed lyrical about York’s playful new neighbourhood bistro in The Guardian soon after. ‘That was a huge moment for us,’ he recalls. ‘We were just a neighbourhood restaurant before then, but Marina’s review brought us national recognition, and a lot more people through the door.’ Le Cochon Aveugle is proof that national reviews really do make or break some restaurants – Marina’s Guardian review allowed Josh to finally get a sous chef for starters, and it also put him on the map nationally. A year later in 2017, Josh appeared on Great British Menu, where he competed alongside Tommy Banks and Danny Parker to represent the North East.
Le Cochon Aveugle soon established itself as one of the best restaurants in the country. Josh and Victoria oversaw a full refurbishment of the restaurant and secured a full complement of front- and back-of-house staff. They even opened a wine bar – Cave du Cochon – just down the road. But despite the changes, the foundations of what made Le Cochon Aveugle special were always rooted in those humble beginnings. The restaurant served a blind tasting menu with no à la carte, and the friendly, down-to-earth neighbourhood vibe remained.
As stereotypes go, classical French cooking and Yorkshire would seem to go together like chalk and cheese. Josh’s cooking – though rooted in classic technique – is modern enough to be approachable. His boudin noir macaron, for example, is unequivocally French, but it’s clever, modern cooking, delivering bold, robust flavours that even the gruffest of Yorkshiremen would coo at. Orkney scallops are cooked with sea urchin butter à la ficelle – an old French technique where things are strung up (ficelle meaning string) over an open fire – and opened table-side. The quality of produce and cooking is paramount, but everything is presented in a way that removes the stuffiness, and makes the experience easy-going and accessible.
In 2019, Le Cochon Aveugle made it into the National Restaurant Awards top 100 for the first time – another sign that Josh’s cooking was being recognised nationally. At the time, he admitted that the journey was really just beginning, but that awards wouldn't define them. ‘If someone wants to give us an award then we’ll be ecstatic about that,’ he says. ‘But if they don’t, that’s fine. We still feel like we’re at that level and we have a successful business with happy customers. We don’t cook for anyone other than our guests.’
In July 2022, Josh announced that Le Cochon Aveugle would permanently close later that year. In 2023, it was confirmed that the couple would open Mýse in the north Yorkshire village of Hovingham. A fine dining restaurant with rooms, the menu celebrates the area's rich history and local produce, and sees Josh put his elegant spin on traditional Yorkshire cooking. In 2024 he won at Michelin star at Mýse.
Three things you need to know...
Josh once removed his boudin noir macarons from the menu at Le Cochon Aveugle, but had so many complaints that he returned them two weeks later.
Aside from Australia and France, Josh has also worked in Canada and Spain in the course of his career.
Josh rarely uses black pepper in his food, preferring the warmth and colour of Espelette pepper instead.
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