Chef Tommy Banks at Black Swan, Oldstead and Michelin Dining

While other chefs fly in ingredients from around the world, Tommy Banks is interested in what’s in his backyard. The chef grew up in Oldstead, a town in the north-east of England, and has built his entire career locally, devoting himself to cultivating the best produce from the region. His Michelin-starred restaurant, Black Swancelebrates its 20th anniversary in August—a milestone that shows just how far the destination has come.

“It’s night and day,” Banks tells the Observer. “When we opened, I was a 17-year-old kid, and it was a local bar. For the last ten years, I’ve been focused on creating something unique and something that’s only local.”

Banks, 37, grew up on his parents’ farm, where they ran a bed and breakfast. It was difficult to make a living growing wheat, barley and rapeseed, so when Banks was a teenager, his parents entered a pub, the Black Swan. He says: “I didn’t care about it. “I worked there because I dropped out of school and needed a job, I waited tables and washed pots.

At that time, Banke did not consider becoming a chef. He had a dream to pursue his career as a cricketer. But when he was 18, his grandfather died, and the grief was so great that he developed an autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis. He had part of his intestine removed and was bedridden for months.

He says: “That makes any ideas of being a professional sportsman. “I had three surgeries, and it was very painful and very difficult. I dropped out of school, I didn’t have a life anymore, and the job I got was at The Black Swan. But I was very determined and frustrated, so I dedicated myself to cooking. The amazing thing is that you can find all the things that you can face in the game. You can be successful and gain respect.”

In 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 strengthening the kitchen—a big surprise. Jackson left the following year, putting Bank in charge of the kitchen at just 23 years old. “I knew we had this Michelin star, and I had to keep it,” he recalls. “I was working seven days a week and cooking all the plates of food. I thought if I did everything myself, it would be fine. And I kept him a star.”

At the age of 24, Banks became the youngest chef in the UK to receive a star. But he also suffered from imposter syndrome. He had not gone to culinary school, and had never trained with a respected chef. He once spent two days working at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, but otherwise, Banks taught himself. He read many cookbooks, drawing inspiration from chefs such as Heston Blumenthal and Sat Bainsbut Banks felt he lacked the worldview of his peers.

He says: “I had never traveled, I had never been trained. “I didn’t have any of these things to draw from. So what was I going to take? But I realized that I had grown up on a farm, maybe it could be farming and the place where we lived. I was like, ‘okay, I only want to cook with things that we hurt or eat.’ My parents were on board, and we flew into it. Some of the dishes in the early days were very experimental, but over the last 13 years, we’ve refined it to the point where we have the perfect set of ingredients.”

Today, Banks and his team create Black Swan’s signature tasting menu (£195 for dinner and £135 for lunch) using produce grown in the restaurant’s extensive garden or raised on a regenerative farm, including their own Dexter cows. There is a team of three people serving and maintaining that are solely focused on keeping the ladder stocked. Banks estimates that at least 90 percent of the ingredients used in The Black Swan are produced or consumed in their country.

“To me, it’s all driven by taste, so if it tastes good, we’ll pick it,” Banks said. “We can create extraordinary flavors from the humblest things. I like sweetwoodruff because it tastes like vanilla. There are wild herbs that taste like vanilla, and yet you import vanilla from the other side of the world. We found that we can create all kinds of flavors of the world, but we use things that were already there in front of us.”

A few products, such as asparagus and lion’s mane mushrooms, come from nearby farms, but Banks is most interested in how things taste in Oldstead. He no longer feeds fish to The Black Swan because they have to go too far. (It’s on the menu at some of his restaurants, Roots in York again This is the site of the Abbey Inn in Byland.)

“The more you limit yourself, the more you encourage creativity,” Banks said. “It’s really hard to be creative when you can use whatever you want. If I’m making a dessert in February and I can use anything in the world, I’ll go for Alfonso’s Indian mango or chocolate. In North Yorkshire in February, there’s rhubarb or whatever you’ve got the wit to keep. Limitations are a great motivator for creativity.”

One of the desserts at The Black Swan, for example, is made with koji, an ingredient made from fermented grains. It has a rich flavor that tastes—and looks—like chocolate, giving it a familiar diner feel, even though it’s an entirely new creation. Banks are interested in how the saving process can change or improve the taste of something. He says time is the greatest gift you can have as a chef.

“Roasted turnips sound like the most appealing thing you can imagine,” he explains. “But if you cook them long enough, the depth of flavor is insane. It’s just a matter of having the patience to do it and wanting to do it right. You end up with something very different.”

The foraging team gathers everything from sweet cicely to wild garlic to elderflower, depending on the season. There are many shipping containers filled with preserves. It takes a lot of planning ahead of time, but Banks says it pays off. The restaurant’s Negroni, for example, uses house-made vermouth made from 18 plants they eat or grow themselves, including wormwood and tangerine marigolds. Bank has spent so much time collecting, tasting and preserving ingredients that he can tell where in the world they were grown.

“I like the word terroir in French, especially when it refers to wine because it means the special taste of a certain place,” he explained. “It sounds really silly when you say it as an Englishman, but it explains what I mean. It gets to the point where I like to pick sweet wood from a bank because it tastes better than across the farm. That depends on the area.”

He adds, “It’s not food miles because everything comes from here.

After finding success with The Black Swan, Banks launched Roots in York in 2018. It received a Michelin star in 2021. Between the farm and his three restaurants, Banks built a small empire in an area of ​​England that was less prosperous than the south. He wants to continue investing in the area, which has been an important part of Black Swan’s decade-long legacy. Today, the Black Swan has nine bedrooms, which only adds to its reputation as a place, and guests can check in through the unusual Abbey Inn.

“Restaurants in vacant lots are struggling to exist, so you have to build something that people are willing to go to,” he said. “But the result of that is that we now have about 170 people employed in the business. We’ve created a community of young professionals in a really rural area. And in the next 20 years, it’s about how we can deepen that impact.”

Bankers try to be in the kitchen as often as possible, but often find themselves dealing with the administrative side of the business. He has become a campaigner for fairer restaurant tax laws in the UK Currently, the British government imposes a 10 percent VAT on food. Banks, and many other chefs here, they are trying to lower it. Banks are being forced to start a stadium catering business to generate enough cash to pay VAT by 2025.

“It’s really hard mentally,” he says. “One of the things that breaks my heart is that so many people don’t survive it. Ever since I started campaigning for the reduction of VAT, my DMs have been filled with the hearts of people who have lost their businesses. I find it very frustrating, and I want to try to continue to make a change. But it also keeps you honest because it’s a real fear that everything you’ve created in 20 years could disappear.”

On July 17, Banks will present a one-man stage show, Spinning Plates: Live!at York Theater Royal to reflect on these challenges, and his journey as a chef. It will also include footage he shot last year with a filmmaker friend, and includes everything “from its beauty to its harsh reality.” Bank wrote the show himself and hopes there may be more live dates. A documentary, also titled Spinning plateswill follow.

He says: “It’s a test for me. “Everything points to this north star of wanting to put my place on the map and really invest in it. We can do that for a few hours with the people at The Black Swan for dinner. But if I create media and content and tell them stories, that would be even better.”

The Black Swan will host several special events in August throughout the year, and guests can expect to find a 20-ingredient Negroni on the drink menu for a limited time. Banks is hosting a party with all his fellow chefs from the northeast, where Michelin-starred cuisine has emerged over the years, including Kenny Atkinson’s House of Tides and Forge’s Jake Jones. The Bank is proud to celebrate 20 years, but also sees the occasion as an opportunity to reflect on how difficult it is to maintain a restaurant in the UK today.

“It’s an interesting combination because on the one hand you’re incredibly grateful,” he said. “My jobs have put me in amazing places. I have a lot of privilege in some aspects. But at the same time, it’s really difficult. We have to look at small businesses. They are the backbone of what is good not only in this country, but in any country.”

The Black Swan, indeed, is now part of what makes Oldstead great.