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‘World’s Best Restaurant’ chef Tommy Banks set to open 2nd site
Tommy Banks, the chef behind award-winning, Michelin-starred Yorkshire gastropub The Black Swan, is opening a second site in York city centre.
The Black Swan’s head chef, Tommy Banks
Roots, which is set to open later this year, will take inspiration from the menu at The Black Swan at Olstead, which has held a Michelin star since 2011.
“So pleased to be able to announce our second restaurant which will open this summer in York,” Banks wrote in an Instagram post.
“We have so many ideas, I can’t wait to take the Black Swan ethos into a new concept in the city that we love.”
A private limited company under the name Roots York was incorporated on March 11 this year, according to Companies House.
Roots will offer “casual and playful sharing dishes with the same focus on quality cooking that Tommy has become so famous for,” according to a statement on the new restaurant’s website.
“The dishes will be hearty, fun and always delicious. Make a choice. Order as much as you like, eat, drink and be the creator of your own menu.”
Banks, who started working in the kitchen at his family’s pub at the age of 17, shot to global culinary fame when his pub was crowned the World’s Best Restaurant above Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons in the annual Tripadvisor awards last October.
The pub won a Michelin-star with a classically French menu in 2011. Shortly after, Banks took over as Head Chef at just 24, and took inspiration from his family’s agricultural roots.
Today, it is best known for a menu which revolves around seasonal produce, the vast majority of which is grown on two and a half acres of land behind the pub itself, or sourced from Banks’ parents farm nearby.
Banks, now 28, is also a celebrity in his own right, winning the finals of the Great British Menu in both 2016 and 2017.