Menuwatch: The Pass, South Lodge hotel, Horsham

"We'd reached the peak of what we could achieve at the Cottage," says Wilkinson. "We'd got it to a nice level where it was really busy and the owners were really happy, but there was no ambition to go beyond that from them. But for me there was. We left on good terms."

With South Lodge's sister restaurant, Camellia, catering to those guests in the 89-room hotel looking for a country house hotel style of cooking, the 22-cover the Pass has always been unashamedly cheffy, with diners seated more or less inside the kitchen. As a new workspace, Wilkinson couldn't ask for a better arena to challenge his own ambition.

An eight-course tasting menu is priced at £120 and draws on the late-summer Sussex harvest. To kicks things off, a canapé-sized tartlet of chalk stream trout, pretty as a picture with its dotted patchwork of oranges and greens. It's a dish that Wilkinson feels perfectly showcases his style: "It starts by showing off what I like to do, which is just layering up flavour upon flavour." At the base of the tartlet a creamy oyster custard is topped with sea lettuce – a double hit of briny seaside flavours. Layered on top are cubes of lightly cured sea trout, meaty enough to stand up to the brininess below, along with orange pearls of trout roe and classic flavours such radish, cucumber and dill.

As an opening dish, it's a knockout. "There's nothing in there that's shocking, everything makes sense," he says. "It's not my style to challenge guests. They're classic flavours and we've figured out different things to do with them – I'm not even going to say ‘modernise them' – while also trying to make it delicate and light and pretty."

A dish of venison is a case in point. "That was actually inspired by a venison burger I had at a restaurant," he says. "It came in a rye bun with a fennel and cabbage coleslaw and I asked myself, ‘why do I like this so much?' and I broke it down. It was this smokey, meaty burger, but the fennel was so refreshing it just cleared away the smoke immediately. We thought about all these elements and basically deconstructed it." The result is lightly seared loin of venison with a ‘slaw' of shredded fennel with fermented cabbage, a mayonnaise made from smoked oil and beer vinegar, and then a Simon Rogan-inspired caper jam for a sweet-sour-salty pickle hit. It's topped with toasted pine nuts and mustard seeds and served with a rye bun to mop everything up.

Classical flavours and techniques with a modern sensibility underpin everything, nowhere more so than in a turbot dish in Champagne sauce. "I will die on the hill of keeping turbot on my menu – I just love it so much – but the Champagne sauce is the star." A classic sauce made with local Ridgeview sparkling wine smothers a hunk of turbot sitting on a bed of earthy turnips and girolles. A little mound of Ossetra caviar tops a dish as luxurious and comforting as a pair of silk pyjamas.

For dessert, Wilkinson doesn't hold back. "It's what I want to finish my meal with – hazelnut and chocolate. It's a grown-up dessert but it's never going to put anybody off." At the bottom is a cylinder of boozy, moist frangipane filled with a light hazelnut parfait, topped with a luxurious whipped milk chocolate ganache and a dark chocolate praline crisp ("a grown-up cornflake cake, basically"). Atop that, a cream cheese ice-cream infused with coffee brings a welcome touch of acidity, before being finished with a drizzle of a maple, vanilla and coffee syrup and a chocolate tuile.

Despite the vast process and thought that has gone into the dish, it arrives at the table refreshingly free of pretence or ego, even when Wilkinson himself serves it (with his wife Monica a charming maitre'd-cum-sommelier). "I never want the technique to be the selling point," he says. "I think it's a trap chefs often fall into. I think very few guests want to know, say, what temperature you cooked an egg at, but the majority just want to eat the best version of a dish they've ever had."

The restaurant held a Michelin star under Matt Gillan from 2011 to 2016 and Wilkinson doesn't beat around the bush in making clear that winning it back is a key objective. "I suppose the fact that I held one up in the Cottage of the Woods was a big part of my appeal to Exclusive [the hotel's owners] – they want to have a star back in the group. Although it wasn't the brief – go get a star – that's the ambition of the restaurant. And definitely mine. To try and get that back quickly."

From the menu

• Tomato: essence, nasturtium, prawn
• Ajo blanco: prawn, grapes, almond
• Cornish lamb: Jerusalem artichoke, hen of the woods, sweetbreads, gem
• Celeriac: beef cheek, fillet, celery
• Strawberry: ewes' curd, vanilla, elderflower
• Lemon thyme: yogurt, lemon, olive oil

South Lodge hotel, Brighton Road, Lower Beeding, Crabtree, Horsham RH13 6PS www.exclusive.co.uk/south-lodge/food/the-pass