Tommy Banks never received any formal training as a chef, and yet in 2013, aged just 24, he became Britain’s youngest chef to receive a Michelin star as head chef of The Black Swan at Oldstead; the North Yorkshire pub and restaurant his parents had owned since 2006.
Banks had been working in The Black Swan kitchen since his parents brought the place, but it was the departure of head chef Adam Jackson that had propelled him to the top job. At the time he was plundering the likes of Phil Howard’s The Square and Eleven Madison Park The Cookbook for inspiration, but in the years since he has established his own creative signature that rests heavily on taking inspiration from the ingredients that surround him.
Banks now runs two restaurants, with Roots - the city slicker equivalent to The Black Swan’s country gent – opening in York in September 2018. Both kitchens work around three key growing seasons identified by Banks and his team: the Preservation Season, the Hunger Gap and the Time of Abundance.
