The Victoria, Oxshott, Surrey: ‘A proper trousers sort of place’ – restaurant review

The Victoria in Oxshott, Surrey: ‘Like an olde English inn with the light blueprint of a pricy West End brasserie.’ Photograph: Maria Bell/The Guardian

All pub grub is not built the same. Some is sublime, worth booking ahead for and travelling miles to get to; some is the reheated or deep-fried contents of various freezer bags and flung at plates. My job – and it is a real job – is to decipher what goes in which category. Take the Victoria at Oxshott in Surrey, for example: newly refurbished and reopened, and with Fat Duck alumni at the helm, which feels instinctively like the sort of place you should force your partner to change into trousers for.

The Victoria’s beer-battered oysters come ‘with a puddle of pale green, seaweed-infused mayonnaise’. Photograph: Maria Bell/The Guardian