After achieving the prestigious Grande Diplome from Le Cordon Bleu Oscar worked across London in top kitchens cooking everything from Michelin level food plated dinners to buffets and canape events for 500+ guests. Oscar's cooking style is all about quality, sustainably sourced produce, carefully cooked and elegantly presented. Oscar likes to use techniques and flavour profiles from all styles of cuisine and adapts them to the amazing larder of ingredients in the UK. Oscar loves to cook over fire, make ferments and pickles and forage for wild herbs, flowers, fruit and mushrooms.
Though I wouldn’t describe my family as ‘foodies’, growing up we always ate food cooked from scratch. We would have a roast on Sundays and my siblings and I would help do the cooking. But I only really got the cooking bug once I had left home and moved to London and had to feed myself. I’d get increasingly ambitious in the kitchen, and after years of working in the TV & Film industry, I decided to retrain as a chef. I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu London in 2017, and have worked in the kitchen since.
The importance of quality, ethically sourced produce and seasonality are central to my style as a chef and that has come from my parents who have both in some capacity worked with or on the land. My dad spent years working as a farmer and as the owner of a fishery and my step-mum has a passion for wildflower meadows. Together they keep bees, and this relationship with nature has been ingrained in me. I love food to have a sense of place and to reflect the landscape it was produced on.
It’s a chance to be creative and express yourself, but also to provide a service to others and spread joy! Food ties us all together and I love to facilitate that. I also love the methodical nature of cooking and the way cooking focuses the mind. Cooking professionally can be stressful but it is also so rewarding, especially when you have happy customers!
I love music and have played in bands for many years, so I want to say I’d be a musician, but I can’t honestly imagine doing much else now!
My chef’s knife, a big pot, and a fishing rod. I plan on eating well.
My career has given me the opportunity to cook for many people from all walks of life, from heads of state to famous actors and musicians, but when you are in the kitchen the ebb and flow of your day is dictated by the people you work with. I have worked with incredibly inspiring people from all over the world during my time in professional kitchens, and they are the coolest thing about the job.
I love being outside in nature, and enjoy getting out of the city for hikes, usually with a pub involved at some point. I love rock climbing and enjoy getting out to the sandstone crags around the south-east and further afield when I get the chance. ]
I’d like to be dividing my time between private cheffing, starting a venison charcuterie business and running wild food cookery classes. All while only working two days a week!
Changes regularly. Currently tarragon.
Brat
Jonny Lake, former Exec Chef of The Fat Duck
Not sure if beer slogans are the best things to live your life by but, ‘Take Courage’.
My small carbon steel Japanese petty knife. You’ll cut yourself just looking at it the wrong way.
