Restaurant in Oldstead, United Kingdom
Farm-to-table tasting menu. Book well ahead.
Black Swan holds a Michelin star in the North Yorkshire village of Oldstead, where the Banks family farm supplies nearly everything on the table. A twelve-course tasting menu runs at £175 per head for dinner, £135 at lunch. Book six to eight weeks ahead minimum; this is one of the harder reservations in northern England and the journey from York requires a car or overnight stay.
Picture a 16th-century stone inn on the edge of the North York Moors, exposed beams overhead, an open fire burning, and a dozen-course tasting menu arriving from a kitchen that draws on a 160-acre working farm minutes away. That image is the reality at Black Swan in Oldstead — and it is the reason this restaurant justifies both the journey and the price. Tommy Banks holds a Michelin star here (earned in 2013, making him the UK's youngest recipient at the time), and the cooking, now delivered by Executive Chef Callum Leslie and Head Chef Alice Power, earns a 4.8 on Google across 599 reviews. La Liste places it at 85 points in its 2026 rankings. Book it if hyper-seasonal, land-driven British cooking in a genuinely characterful setting is your target. Skip it if you want à la carte flexibility or a city-centre location.
Walk in expecting a tasting menu of around a dozen stages built almost entirely from what the Banks family farm and kitchen garden produce, supplemented by foraged wild ingredients and preserved seasonal produce. The kitchen made a deliberate call to remove fish from the menu entirely, committing to land-based ingredients only — a decision grounded in sustainability and hyper-local sourcing that genuinely shapes the character of every meal here. What that means in practice is that the menu leans heavily on Herdwick lamb, game, heritage vegetables, and foraged aromatics rather than the coastal sourcing you find at comparable tasting-menu destinations. For a first-timer, this is worth knowing: do not arrive expecting a conventional fine-dining progression. The format rewards patience and curiosity.
Visually, the room sets the tone immediately. Flagged stone floors, antique furniture, heavy beams, and unclothed tables create a setting that feels genuinely old rather than designed to feel old , a meaningful difference. The bedrooms, each with private patios, are antique-furnished and sit quietly apart from the dining operation. If you are travelling from distance, staying overnight is the sensible move; it removes all time pressure and lets the wine flights land properly. Three levels of wine pairing are offered, ranging from an experimental and adventurous selection through to a rare and exceptional tier, calibrated by how deep your budget runs.
This is the clearest practical decision you will make when booking. Dinner runs at £175 per person; lunch at £135 per person. The menu format is the same tasting structure at both services, which means lunch delivers the full Black Swan experience at a £40-per-head saving. For first-timers, lunch is the stronger recommendation: you get the complete kitchen output without the dinner premium, the room feels slightly less pressured in daylight, and if you are driving back to York or further afield, you avoid the late-evening return. The saving across two covers is £80 , enough to upgrade your wine pairing by a tier without touching your original budget. Dinner makes more sense if you are staying in one of the inn's rooms, in which case the evening pacing and the natural wind-down into the property's overnight offer become part of the experience rather than a logistical consideration.
Black Swan is hard to book. A Michelin star, a small dining room, and a location that draws destination diners from across the UK and internationally mean you should plan at least six to eight weeks ahead for most dates, and longer for weekends. Oldstead itself is a small village near Coxwold in North Yorkshire, roughly 25 miles north of York. There is no realistic public transport option; a car or taxi from York is the practical route. Build the travel logistics into your planning early, particularly if you intend to drink across the wine flights. The overnight-stay option solves that problem entirely and the antique-furnished rooms with private patios are well-regarded. For the wider area, see our full Oldstead restaurants guide, our full Oldstead hotels guide, and our full Oldstead experiences guide.
Black Swan sits in a category of destination British restaurants where the journey is part of the proposition. L'Enclume in Cartmel is the obvious peer: two Michelin stars, similarly farm-rooted, similarly remote, similarly demanding as a booking. If you are weighing one against the other, L'Enclume carries more critical weight at the leading end, but Black Swan is more accessible on price and the inn format gives it an atmosphere that a purpose-built dining room cannot replicate. Moor Hall in Aughton is another northern-England comparator with strong seasonal credentials. For the farm-to-table commitment specifically, The Whitebrook in Whitebrook and CHAPTERS in Hay-on-Wye both operate on similar principles at lower price points if budget is a constraint.
Further afield, Gidleigh Park in Chagford and Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Great Milton occupy the same country-house-restaurant-with-rooms category, though both carry a higher per-night cost and a more formal register. The Hand and Flowers in Marlow offers a very different format , pub cooking at Michelin level , if the inn setting appeals but a tasting menu does not. For those planning a wider northern-England tour, Opheem in Birmingham and Restaurant Andrew Fairlie in Auchterarder are worth adding to the consideration set. You can also browse Midsummer House in Cambridge, hide and fox in Saltwood, and The Fat Duck in Bray for other high-commitment tasting-menu formats in the UK. See our full Oldstead bars guide and our full Oldstead wineries guide for what else the area offers.
| Venue | Cuisine | Awards | Booking Difficulty | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black Swan | Creative British | “Amazing food and amazing service” inspires fans of the Banks family’s famous inn with rooms on the edge of the North York Moors, near their 160-acre farm, which won fame in 2012 when Tommy Banks became the UK’s youngest chef to win a Michelin star. Now their empire has grown, there is room for quite a hierarchy in the kitchen nowadays, with Tommy Banks working with Executive Chef Callum Leslie and Head Chef Alice Power to deliver their tasting menu at £175 per person (£135 per person at lunch). Despite the high level of expense, it’s a consistently well-rated formula. It’s one that’s being refined too – with fish, for example, no longer a feature (‘In our continued commitment to sustainability and hyper-local sourcing, our chefs have taken the decision to focus exclusively on land-based ingredients for our tasting menu… to bring together everything from our own farm and garden, foraged wild ingredients and preserved seasonal produce’).; A Michelin-starred restaurant with rooms in the village of Oldstead on the North Yorkshire Moors owned by the Banks family who have farmed the area for generations. Once a traditional inn, it retains...; La Liste Top Restaurants (2026): 85pts; All the hallmarks of a characterful country pub can be found here: exposed beams, flagged floors and even an open fire. The cooking is driven by produce from their farm, such as superb Herdwick lamb presented in two servings. The chefs work in total harmony with the gardeners, and an array of preservation techniques are used to ensure their ingredients last. The resulting dishes boast bold yet harmonious contrasts and plenty of depth. The entire team has wholeheartedly bought into the restaurant's vision and their enthusiasm is infectious. The antique-furnished bedrooms have private patios.; A shining beacon on the edge of the romantically desolate North York Moors, the Black Swan is a stone-built inn, now more obviously a regional restaurant with rooms. Inside, it has been daringly reconfigured for its contemporary purpose, with spare modern furniture and unclothed tables against a backdrop of thick stone and heavy beams. Former civil servant Alice Power is the latest incumbent in the Swan's kitchen, disposing over two acres of kitchen garden, overseeing a tireless foraging operation, and maintaining the format of a lengthy taster of around a dozen stages – a menu structure that crucially depends on robust endurance. That said, there is no sense of overload about these dishes, largely because they don't go heavy on carbs. First nibbles evoke excited first impressions, from smoked eel and oscietra caviar with fennel pollen to a bite-sized chunk of truffled roe deer with celeriac. Foraged ingredients provide the haunting aromatics in dishes ranging from scallop and leek with spruce to lobster with salt-cured rhubarb and lemon verbena. A thrifty approach to meats might find locally shot partridge served first in a broth, followed by its heart and liver with chestnuts, a leg with elderberry and fir, and finally the roasted breast with Pablo beetroot and bread sauce. An innovative approach to desserts ensures that the latter stages of the production are among the most memorable: mushroom-dusted chocolate ganache with meringue and chocolate/honey pieces, as well as yoghurt ice cream with wood sorrel and Douglas fir oil applied at the table. The rather over-rehearsed mood of service – often a feature of the tasting format – would benefit from relaxing a little. Three levels of wine flight are offered to accompany the cavalcade of flavours, ranging from ‘experimental and adventurous’, through ‘grand and classic’ to ‘rare and exceptional’, depending on depth of pocket. The first might embrace a Naoussa Xinomavro with that partridge, the second a 2009 Beaune premier cru ‘Les Epenottes’, the last Calera's 2008 Pinot Noir from Sonoma, California.; The Black Swan is a historic 16th-century pub with guest rooms run by the Banks family. His son Tommy Banks was 24 when he was the youngest British chef with a Michelin star in 2013. He brings classic dishes from Yorkshire in a modern and creative way. With vegetables and fruit from their vegetable garden, the team can supply themselves with fresh products and rare ingredients. From his kitchen come dishes like raw venison from Oldstead served with beer from Yorkshire, scallops with razor blades and rhubarb and also monkfish with fermented celeriac and a beetroot crapaudine cooked in beef fat.; Opinionated About Dining Top Restaurants in Europe Ranked #258 (2025); La Liste Top Restaurants (2025): 86.5pts; All the hallmarks of a characterful country pub can be found here: exposed beams, flagged floors and even an open fire. The cooking is driven by produce from their farm, such as superb Herdwick lamb presented in two servings. The chefs work in total harmony with the gardeners, and an array of preservation techniques are used to ensure their ingredients last. The resulting dishes boast bold yet harmonious contrasts and plenty of depth. The entire team has wholeheartedly bought into the restaurant's vision and their enthusiasm is infectious. The antique-furnished bedrooms have private patios.; Opinionated About Dining Top Restaurants in Europe Ranked #196 (2024); Michelin 1 Star (2024); Opinionated About Dining Top New Restaurants in Europe Highly Recommended (2023) | Hard | — |
| CORE by Clare Smyth | Modern British | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Restaurant Gordon Ramsay | Contemporary European, French | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Sketch, The Lecture Room and Library | Modern French | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| The Ledbury | Modern European, Modern Cuisine | Michelin 3 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
| Dinner by Heston Blumenthal | Modern British, Traditional British | Michelin 2 Star, World's 50 Best | Unknown | — |
Key differences to consider before you reserve.
At £175 per person for dinner (£135 at lunch), yes — provided a long farm-driven tasting menu is the format you want. The Banks family farm and kitchen garden supply the bulk of the menu, and Tommy Banks' team has held a Michelin star since 2013. La Liste ranked it at 86.5pts in 2025. If you want à la carte flexibility or a shorter meal, this is the wrong room; if you want a committed single-vision tasting menu in a historic inn with rooms, the price is justified.
Lunch is the stronger value call: £135 versus £175 per person for the same menu format and the same kitchen. Unless you are staying overnight and want the full evening pace, book lunch. The £40 saving per person is material at a table of two or four, and you lose nothing in terms of food quality or course count.
Possible, but not the natural fit. The tasting menu format and inn-with-rooms setting are built around twos and small groups. Solo diners can be accommodated at the counter or a single seat, but the remote Oldstead location means you are also committing to a significant journey. If solo fine dining is your goal, a city-based counter like CORE by Clare Smyth in London is a more practical option.
Book at least 6–8 weeks ahead for dinner; lunch slots can open sooner but fill quickly given the restaurant's destination status and small dining room. A Michelin star, a location that draws diners from across the UK and internationally, and limited covers make last-minute bookings unlikely. Weekend dinners and Saturday lunch are the hardest slots to secure.
There is no à la carte menu — Black Swan operates a set tasting menu of around a dozen courses, priced at £175 for dinner and £135 for lunch. The kitchen focuses exclusively on land-based ingredients sourced from the Banks family farm, kitchen garden, and foraged wild produce. When booking, consider one of the three wine flight tiers (ranging from 'experimental and adventurous' to 'rare and exceptional') to align with your budget.
Location
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