While some chefs source ingredients from all over the world, Tommy Banks is interested in what’s in his own backyard. The chef grew up in Oldstead, a village in the north-east of England, and has built an entire career in the region, devoting himself to growing the best possible produce from the region. His Michelin-starred restaurant, Black swancelebrates its 20th anniversary in August – a milestone that demonstrates how much the destination has evolved.
“It’s night and day,” Banks tells the Observer. “When we first opened, I was a 17-year-old kid, and it was a local pub. Over the last decade, my focus has been on creating something unique and something just for the area.”
Banks, 37, grew up on his parents’ small farm, where they also ran a bed and breakfast. It was difficult to make ends meet by growing only wheat, barley and rapeseed, so when Banks was a teenager, his parents moved to the local pub, The Black Swan. “I had no interest in it at all,” he says. “I worked there because I left school and needed a job. I waited tables and washed dishes.”
At the time, Banks wasn’t thinking about becoming a chef. He dreamed of pursuing a career as a cricketer. But when he was 18, his grandfather died, and the grief was so intense that he developed an aggressive autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis. Part of his intestine was removed and he was bedridden for several months.
“This puts an end to any thoughts of being a professional athlete,” he says. “I had three operations, and it was very upsetting and difficult. I dropped out of school, my health wasn’t good, and the only work experience I got was at The Black Swan. But I was very determined and a bit frustrated too, so I got into cooking. The amazing thing was that you could get all the things you can get through sport. You could win accolades, you could be welcomed.”
For the first few years, Black Swan struggled. Banks worked under head chef Adam Jackson, an ambitious chef who helped guide the restaurant to a Michelin star in 2012 by raising the restaurant’s standards and tightening the kitchen, and she was a big surprise. Jackson left the following year, putting Banks in charge of the kitchen when he was just 23 years old. “I knew we had this Michelin star, and I had to keep it,” he recalls. “I worked seven days a week and cooked every dish. I thought if I did it all myself, it would be okay. And I kept the star.”
At the age of 24, Banks became the youngest chef in the UK to receive a star. But he was also mired in imposter syndrome. He didn’t go to culinary school, and he never trained with a prestigious chef. He once spent two days working at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, but other than that, Banks taught himself. He read a lot of cookbooks, drawing inspiration from chefs like Heston Blumenthal and… Sat PinesBut Banks felt he lacked the worldview of his peers.
“I never traveled, and I never trained,” he says. “I didn’t have any of that stuff to fall back on. So what could I make of it? But I realized I grew up on a farm, so maybe it could be farming and the land we live on. I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I want to only cook with things we grew ourselves or foraged.’ My parents were very much on board, and we really flew with it. Some of the dishes in the early days were very experimental, but over the last 13 years, we’ve refined them to the point where we have a full range of ingredients.”
Today, Banks and his team create The Black Swan’s signature tasting menu (£195 for dinner, £135 for lunch) using produce grown in the restaurant’s extensive garden or raised on the regenerative farm, including their own Dexter cows. There is a three-person foraging and preservation team that focuses solely on keeping the meat store fully stocked. Banks estimates that at least 90 percent of the ingredients served at The Black Swan are hand-picked or sourced from their own land.
“For me, everything is flavor-oriented, so if it’s delicious, we’ll go for it,” Banks says. “We can make really weird flavors from things on the ground. I like sweetwood because it tastes like vanilla. There’s a wild herb that tastes like vanilla, and yet you can import vanilla from the other side of the world. We found we could make all the flavors of the world, but using things that already existed in front of us.”
Some produce, like asparagus and lion’s mane mushrooms, comes from nearby farms, but Banks is primarily interested in how things taste in Oldstead. Fish is no longer served at The Black Swan because it has to come from too far away. (It’s on the menu at his other restaurants, roots In York and The Abbey Inn In Byland.)
“The more restrictions you set, the more you foster creativity,” says Banks. “It’s really hard to be creative if you can use anything you want. If I made a dessert in February and I could use anything in the world, I’d choose Alphonso mangoes from India or chocolate. And in North Yorkshire in February, there’s rhubarb and whatever you’ve had the foresight to preserve. Constraints are the ultimate catalyst for creativity.”
For example, one of the desserts at The Black Swan is made with koji, an ingredient made by fermenting grains. They have a rich, chocolate-like flavor and seem to offer a familiar feel to dinner, even though they are a completely new innovation. Banks are interested in how to change the preservation process or improve the taste of something. He says time is the biggest gift you can get as a chef.
“Fermented kale seems like the least glamorous thing you can think of,” he explains. “But if you do it over a long enough period of time, the depth of flavor is crazy. It’s a case of patience to do it and wanting to do it the right way. You end up with something much more unique.”
The foraging team collects everything from sweet garlic to wild garlic to elderflower, depending on the time of year. There are many shipping containers full of preserves. It takes a lot of planning ahead, but Banks says it pays off. For example, the restaurant’s Negroni uses house-made vermouth made from 18 plants it forages or grows, including wormwood and tangerine amaranth. Banks has spent so much time collecting, tasting and preserving ingredients that he can know exactly where on earth they grow.
“I like the word terroir in French, especially when it refers to wine because it indicates a very specific flavor of a very specific location,” he explains. “It sounds really arrogant when you say it as an English person, but it shows what I mean. It’s gotten to the point that I only like to pick the sweet wood berries from a certain bank because they taste so much better from the other side of the farm. That’s down to geography.”
“It’s not about food miles, because everything comes from here. It actually goes back to the idea of what’s within that mile,” he adds.
After finding success with The Black Swan, Banks debuted Roots in York in 2018. It received a Michelin star in 2021. Between the farm and his three restaurants, Banks has built a mini-empire in a region of England less prosperous than the south. He wants to continue investing in the area, an important part of The Black Swan’s two-decade legacy. Today, The Black Swan has nine bedrooms, adding to its destination-like appeal, and visitors can also visit the more casual Abbey Inn.
“Restaurants in the middle of nowhere are struggling to survive, so you have to build something that people are willing to travel for,” he says. “But the result is that we now have about 170 people working in the company. We’ve created a community of young professionals in a really rural area. And over the next 20 years, it’s about how we deepen that impact.”
Banks tries to be in the kitchen as much as possible, but she often finds herself dealing with the administrative side of the business. He has become an outspoken campaigner for fairer tax regulations for restaurants in the UK. Currently, the British government charges a 10 percent value-added tax on food. banks, Along with many other chefs Here, they are trying to lower it. Banks was forced to start a side project catering at sports stadiums to earn enough to pay for the increase in VAT in 2025.
“It’s really tough mentally,” he says. “And what breaks my heart is that so many people don’t survive it. Since I started campaigning for a VAT cut, my DMs have been full of heartbroken people who have lost their businesses. I find it very frustrating, and I really want to try to keep pushing for change. But it also keeps you very honest because it’s a real fear that everything you’ve built over 20 years will disappear.”
On July 17, Banks will perform in a one-man theater show. Spinning Boards: Live!at York Theater Royal to reflect on these challenges, as well as his journey as a chef. It will include documentary footage that he has been filming over the past year with a director friend, covering everything “from its beauty to the bitter reality.” Banks wrote the show himself and hopes there will be additional live dates. The documentary is also titled Spinning panelswill follow.
“It’s a test for me,” he says. “Everything points to this north star of wanting to put my area on the map and really invest in it. We can do that for a few hours with people at The Black Swan when they come to dinner. But if I create media and content and tell them stories, it’s even better.”
The Black Swan will be holding several special events in August to mark the anniversary, and guests can also expect to find a temporary 20-ingredient Negroni on the drink menu. Banks is also planning a party with all his fellow chefs from the North East, where more and more Michelin-starred restaurants have been popping up over the years, including House of Tides’ Kenny Atkinson and Forge’s Jake Jones. Banks is proud to celebrate 20 years, but he also sees this moment as an opportunity to reflect on how difficult it is to maintain a restaurant in the UK today.
“It’s an interesting juxtaposition, because on the one hand you feel incredibly grateful,” he says. “My career has taken me to amazing places. I’m very lucky in some ways. But at the same time, it’s very difficult. We have to take care of small businesses. They are the lifeblood of what is great not just in this country, but in any country.”
The Black Swan is certainly now part of what makes Oldstead a great city.
