On the face of it, chef Tommy Banks – the farmer’s son who turned the family’s village pub into a global beacon of grow-your-own self-sufficiency – is a painfully obvious OFM Local Food Hero. Cue: a bucolic tale of regional, seasonal Yorkshire folk, right?
Well, not quite. Because, like his food, this 30-year-old’s story is more complicated. Despite his farming background, the Black Swan chef was not born with green fingers. His food is not strictly seasonal. He does not serve Yorkshire on a plate.
Instead, like Noma or his early inspiration, Sat Bains, Banks has created a unique restaurant experience, which, while rooted in the local soil, exists as an inspirational example of what is possible beyond Yorkshire puddings and rhubarb crumble. He has done this, moreover, against the odds, personal and financial.
Banks’s parents bought the Black Swan in 2006 as a step up from the B&B they ran on their neighbouring farm in Oldstead, a village of 30 houses. They still oversee the inn’s rooms while Tommy’s brother, James, manages the restaurant. Initially, this 16th-century pub ticked over, with Tommy, then a 17-year-old A-level dropout, doing kitchen work.
Then the 2008 recession hit. Trade slumped. And after trying every promotion going, the Bankses, boldly, decided to move upmarket. “A pub in the middle of nowhere? It had to be a destination,” says Tommy, sat in the bar.
Chef Adam Jackson was recruited and, in 2011, he bagged the Swan a Michelin star. The business was still financially precarious (it would continue to be until Banks won consecutive seasons of Great British Menu and, in 2017, TripAdvisor named the Black Swan the world’s best restaurant), but Michelin put it on the map and paved the way for Banks to hit his stride, albeit in bleak circumstances.
Between 2007 and 2010, this sports-mad aspiring cricketer was ill with ulcerative colitis: “I had three major operations and, for a year, I was pretty much bed-ridden. At 19, I had a colostomy bag. I was in a dark place, with no qualifications and the business was struggling.”
Convalescing, Banks read cookery books obsessively and, mentored by Jackson, found he was a natural cook. Aged 24 and now head chef, he retained the star. It seemed remarkable to outsiders, but he has said he felt “fraudulent” at the time. “I recreated some recipes. I wasn’t a genius, I just worked hard.”
The success persuaded mum and dad to give him full creative control: “Working with family is doubled-edged. It’s support but everyone has an opinion. At first, everyone was paranoid about losing that Michelin star, so the family wanted to taste and debate the dishes before they went on and I was like: ‘Either I’m doing it or I’m not.’ When we retained the star, everyone took a step back.”
Banks’s search for his USP took him to Northumberland grower Ken Holland, consultant to the (Michelin) stars, who got him excited about heritage vegetable varieties, and ancient storage techniques such as clamping. Simultaneously, Banks explored preserving methods and his “only real food memories” of foraging.
Is the Swan’s food steeped in the romance of the landscape? Banks loves Yorkshire, but no. His smoking Douglas Fir dessert that mimics the smell of hot, wet woodland in summer, is a rarity. His real driver is a desire for complete control over his produce so he can use it creatively, year round – freshly harvested or, often, preserved in radical ways – confident of its consistent quality.
Not that growing your own is simple. “We have disasters every year,” he says. “Growing radishes for crudités you might get one in five perfect, if you’re lucky. It’d be way cheaper to buy veg, but growing your own you have the ability to use ingredients in a way other people can’t.”
Managing 30 acres of produce on the farm and foraging ingredients in 100kg harvests (elderflowers, rowan berries, wild garlic seeds) is a huge task shared by a 90-strong team which works across the Swan and a newer sister site in York, Roots, which uses the “ugly” produce the Swan cannot. “It’s not a cash cow,” says Banks. “I’ve got as many chefs at Roots as I have here.”
This self-contained operation uses only a few local suppliers, mainly for raw milk and meat. But, Banks stresses, the Swan helps fill bedrooms in pubs, taxis from Thirsk and is recruiting young people to live in rural Yorkshire. Economically, it boosts the area.
“I’d like to think,” says the star chef who still lives in the family’s Oldstead farmhouse, “we’ve never stopped being part of the community.”
blackswanoldstead.co.uk
