The Penn at Stoke Park: Tom Sellers Brings Fine Dining to a Historic British Estate

Stoke Park has been in more films than most actors. Bond played Goldfinger on its golf course, Bridget Jones had her dirty weekend here, and golfers have been going on about the seventh hole for the best part of a hundred years. What it hasn’t had, not for a long while, is a restaurant you’d drive across London for. It does now at The Penn at Stoke Park. The chef behind it made his name in Bermondsey, which is a long way from Buckinghamshire in more ways than one.

A Bit of History Before the Food

Stoke Park is a historic 300-acre estate, long regarded as the UK’s first country club. The house was built in the late 1700s for John Penn, grandson of Pennsylvania founder William Penn. The story goes that much of the money came from compensation his family received from the American government after the revolution.

In 1908 Nick “Pa” Lane Jackson bought the estate and turned it into that first country club. Its par-three seventh is said to have inspired one of the famous short holes at Augusta National.

Then in 2021 the estate was bought by Mukesh Ambani, the Indian businessman and one of the wealthiest people in Asia, and an extensive restoration began. The return is happening in stages. Golf has reopened, and the course is not membership-based, so visitors can play it. There will be a boutique hotel , a spa, tennis courts and more.

Where Stoke Park Fits Among the UK’s Best Country Estates

On the outskirts of London there are estates that are more than somewhere to visit. They are institutions. Estelle Manor, Soho Farmhouse, Heckfield Place and The Newt in Somerset all belong to that rarefied category, each with its own character and following, and Stoke Park was once one of them. After years of closure and renovation, it will retake its place among the top estates in the UK. It has the history and the land to sit alongside them. It just needed a dining experience that would impress the guests it hopes to attract.

So instead of going for a safe name, they rightly picked Tom Sellers. The flagship is called The Penn, after John, and it seats 48 with a private dining room for eight. That is tiny for an estate this size, which tells you they are not chasing volume.

Tom Sellers: Pedigree and Back Story

Tom has an impressive background. He trained under Tom Aikens in London, then worked at Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York and René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen, before returning to London. He opened Restaurant Story in Bermondsey in 2013 at just 26, received his first Michelin star within five months, and a second in 2021.

His food has a certain ethos, a certain vision. He belongs to the next generation of British chefs doing wonderful things in the kitchen, and one of the figures he looks to for inspiration is Marco Pierre White, a rebel with a plating tweezer. White was part of a generation that trained in the great French kitchens and brought that knowledge back to Britain, and Sellers takes pieces from classical French gourmet technique, then adds his own spin.

Arriving at The Penn: Murano Chandeliers and a Piano Bar

 The restaurant is in the Pavilion. Past the revolving door, and beyond the foyer beneath the Murano crystal chandelier , there is a piano bar and a fireplace. It’s a comfortable place to gather and mingle with champs or a cocktail, and canapes.

Heading towards the restaurant you pass the private dining room, and in it is a 500-gallon saltwater tank, filled with brilliantly colored  fish and florescent coral. I did not expect that. It is an unusual thing to find in a country house restaurant. Then you come into the main dining area, where Tom does his thing.

The Dining Room and the Food: Three Courses Done Right

With that we were sat for dinner. The restaurant interiors are elegant without being overly opulent to the point of distraction. The design draws on the history of the house without making everything look as though it belongs in another century.

The meal opened with our first dish, which for me was the prawn ravioli, sat in a bed of mouclade sauce with steamed mussels. On top was a tall little nest of pear cut into fine matchsticks. I wouldn’t have thought to put pear there. It works though: a bit of sweetness, a bit of freshness and a clean crunch against the soft filling and the richness of the sauce, so there’s a lot going on for something that looks that tidy. It’s just damn good.

A place like this doesn’t need a tasting menu, and I’m glad it doesn’t try to be one. Tom has made his name with that format at Story, but a country house restaurant can do something different. Starter, main, dessert, proper portions, and that’s plenty to understand what he’s doing.

Next was the confit salmon, cooked very slowly in olive oil and so soft and tender it barely needed a knife. It was nothing like the seared salmon most of us are used to. It was cooked so gently that the fish still tasted like itself, and it arrived fresh and glossy, a bright reddish orange, on a bold sauce with a paler one threaded through it.

Beside it was the aubergine, and this quite unexpected in its presentation as well.   It was layered with spiced tomatoes and aubergine stacked so neatly it looked like a little cake, the sort of thing you’d expect in a patisserie window.

All of this was paired with lovely wines. They have an extensive wine cellar, as you would expect at an estate with this kind of ambition. Wine matters at a place like this, but it should support the food rather than turn the table into another performance, and here it did.

Dessert was something you would not expect: rice pudding, with a riot of flavours. Most of us remember it from childhood, warm in a bowl with a bit of sugar or jam, comforting and entirely unpretentious. This was not that. It had raisins, pistachios and saffron, which brought sweetness, crunch and fragrance, and it was creamy and light and properly finished. Still recognisably rice pudding, but not your grandma’s, I will say that.

What stayed with also with the vibe of the meal set by the service provided by the  staff. They look more like bankers than waiters, all sharp and immaculate, and you brace for stiffness. Then they open their mouths and they’re warm, easy to talk to and every so often properly funny. The food is serious, but nobody is serious at you, and that’s why the night worked.

The Bigger Picture

Sellers will tell you his inspiration and techniques pay homage to the chefs who came before him. He likes the period of British culinary tradition from the 1970s onwards, when British cuisine began to come into its own. Chefs such as Marco Pierre White learned in France from the greats, then returned with their own vision of what British cuisine could be. They made something real, in your face, bold and unapologetic, and not overly pasteurised by fusion. That is what Sellers brings to his dishes and to this place, which is to be celebrated.

The Penn sits at the centre of a wider collection: the Piano Bar, The Terrace & Glasshouse, The Tea Room and The Clubhouse, each with its own job, from a relaxed meal after golf to afternoon tea. That makes sense for an estate that has to suit different occasions without asking one restaurant to do everything.

It is early days, and it would be premature to crown The Penn before it has had time to settle. But the foundations are there. Stoke Park could have got away with less. A beautiful house, a famous golf course and a recognisable name would have filled most restaurants for years, and The Penn doesn’t take that route. It is a wonderful setting, and the cuisine will definitely play a major part in Stoke Park’s return, because for more than a century this estate has been known for what happens outside. Now it will be known for what happens at the table too.