Hi!
Oxeye is coming to London for 2020!
We need your help to open Oxeye London and Bar Rex. It literally cannot be done without your support. We need to raise £30,000 for a deposit and fit out for our dream location in central London, this is how we will be using the Kickstarter funding. We hope you can see our goals in all of the info here and would absolutely love you all to join us on this journey!
Oxeye London – Is a farm to table restaurant celebrating some of the most delicious produce grown on the Melbourne Estate and from some of the best farmers and suppliers in the UK, all served in Sven’s unique style. Oxeye’s influences come from the kaiseki cuisine and craft of Japan combined with historical British ingredients, tradition and cooking technique. Oxeye London is going to be a one of a kind opening in 2020. Oxeye Derbyshire is coming soon but needs to be built from the momentum of our London opening. We hopefully will keep London and Derbyshire running in tandem in 2021!
Bar Rex at Oxeye – Named after Kae and Sven’s newborn, Bar Rex is going to be a wine bar with a difference. Bar Rex will have the largest collection of English wine ever assembled served alongside some other amazing British spirits and drinks and an awesome collection of sake and sochu. Sven has been a self-appointed ambassador for many years for the English wine industry and is incredibly excited for the direction it is headed. Bar Rex will be THE place to drink the best wines of the UK.
Hopefully you saw the story of Oxeye on MasterChef the Professionals: The Rematch. Opening a rural restaurant and celebrating all of the best produce found in the surrounding fields, pastures, gardens and woodlands has been a dream of Sven’s for years. Oxeye has been a passion project for Sven for the last six years where he’s worked tirelessly trying to open a restaurant in South Derbyshire whilst working alongside Tori and Ben’s Farm and latterly, Melbourne Hall, Sven has found the perfect place to open the rural restaurant of Sven’s dreams.
Despite plans moving positively (if slowly) for the Derbyshire opening of Oxeye, it looks like 2020 is not going to be our year to open. While this is the case, Sven is desperate to start cooking for customers, and start telling the unique story of Oxeye.
Oxeye is an ethos born in the fields of Park Farm on the Melbourne estate. Park Farm is the home of Tori and Ben, the amazing multi-award wining, rare breed livestock farmers of South Derbyshire. Sven considers himself incredibly lucky to now call Tori and Ben great friends. Tori and Ben are on a project of restorative farming, returning some of their fields to ancient parkland on which to graze their animals. The oxeye daisy seeds planted here started the conversation which lead to the development of the ethos of the restaurant.
Oxeye London will be a long-term residency in the capital showcasing this world-class and unique produce. Sven will continue with the story he started on MasterChef the Professionals. We look forward to you joining us on this journey and can’t wait to cook for you in our London space!
Sven, Kae and Rex
The classic risks of opening a restaurant are the worries that no-one will come! I assume all restaurateurs have the same sleepless nights. For us now, that is the reality. Have we done enough? Have we done everything we can to ensure we are serving the most delicious food possible? Have we created something unique enough in an already saturated market? Have we remained true to ourselves and our ethos? We’re not doing this to open a chain of restaurants. We’re doing this because we feel there are too many steps from field to plate, and that often hinders deliciousness. We’re doing this for deliciousness. Our challenge with Oxeye London and Bar Rex is to keep the energy and vibrancy of our new opening throughout the whole of 2020. We want to transfer this dynamism to Oxeye Derbyshire and a more permanent Oxeye London when we’ve finished with this residency. To do this we will have to work tirelessly and pull together an amazing team who have the same drive and desire to succeed that we do. Oh, and at the same time as looking after baby Rex! So if you see us in Bar Rex or Oxeye looking through cash flow records, accounts or sweating over invoices, we would love you to come and say hello, and perhaps join us in a glass of a beautiful English wine. It would be our pleasure. See you soon!