Lockdown taught chef Tommy Banks to let go and trust his team at the restaurant voted by OFM readers as this year’s favourite
One day, we will be able to talk about restaurants without referring to the upheaval of 2020, but not yet. Roots in York, the OFM readers’ Best Restaurant for 2022, has flourished post-pandemic but it’s a very different restaurant to the one that opened in 2018. That, says its creator, Tommy Banks, was all down to Covid.
This city spin-off from the Black Swan, Banks’s Michelin-starred destination in remote North Yorkshire, was opened as its casual sister venue. Housed in a former pub by the river Ouse, Roots was designed to utilise the Black Swan’s accumulated knowledge and produce from the Banks family farm in Oldstead, including its uglier vegetables, charging £50 a head and turning tables regularly. It was, says Banks, “sharing plates, high volume, very busy”.
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