Tommy Banks: “It’s been great to go back to our pub roots”

We understand The Abbey Inn​​ is where it all began for you

Yes. One of my very first jobs was washing pots and plating desserts there when I was in my early teens and James (Banks’ brother and front of house counterpart) worked behind the bar. The Abbey Inn is a mile down the road from The Black Swan at Oldstead, there’s one field between us basically. It’s a site we have had our eye on for a very long time - about 20 years. We tried to buy it in 2005 but it ended up being bought by English Heritage (the family purchased The Black Swan a year or so later)​​.

So The Black Swan was your second choice?

That’s right. The Abbey Inn is a stunning site that - as the name suggests - overlooks the ruins of Byland Abbey. English Heritage initially ran it themselves and then had a few different landlords in over the years. It’s just not done that well and had been closed for about a year prior to us taking it on.

It must be nice to have a proper pub in your portfolio again

When we started at The Black Swan it was a pub with rooms. But over the years it has evolved into being a Michelin-starred restaurant that offers a tasting menu. It’s a similar story with Roots (the family’s equally highly-rated York restaurant). We initially set it up as an informal small plates restaurant but due to the pandemic we made it more high-end (it now holds a Michelin star and is tasting menu-only). It’s nice to have something more informal in the portfolio again. My wife and I have two young kids and a dog so pubs are our thing right now.

Would you rule out The Abbey Inn becoming more involved and ambitious over time as your other places have?

Definitely. The concept here is set in stone. Having two tasting menu places in the area is enough. Plus we need this spectrum of businesses to continue to be self-sufficient. We run our own farm and that forms the basis of all the menus. When it comes to meat, we need to achieve carcass balance. It’s not a very glamorous term but it is very important. We can use the legs from our pigs for charcuterie and the less prime cuts of beef in our burgers, for example. 

The burger at The Abbey Inn looks amazing. How do you make it?

The cuts vary but at the moment we’re using a mix of brisket, short rib and chuck. We also add 10% of aged fat we get from the tops of our steaks. We dice it all up, freeze it and then mince it which gives us a light texture. It’s very important that the meat is not compacted. We make our own ‘squirty’ cheese from farmhouse cheese including Tunworth and Ogleshield and there’s also a bacon jam we make with the pancetta from our own pigs. Other elements include homemade gherkins, fermented tomato ketchup and onions cooked in bone marrow. 

Around £20 for that seems fair enough... 

You do hear people say £20 for a burger is ridiculous. But there’s more work that goes into this than anything else on the menu. Other pubs regularly charge around £15 for a burger and it’s often not that great. Our aim is to be 20% or so more than those places but for the food to be much much better. 

What else is on the menu? 

Our dishes include chicken liver parfait with chicken skin, toasted milk bread and Yorkshire Salad; dry-aged Bedrock steak with fermented mushroom béarnaise and hen of the woods; and barbecued red mullet fennel, buttermilk, elderflower hollandaise. We’ll also offer a great Sunday lunch made with our own meat and veg. Simple things done well are so good. It might be a pub, but we’re still not compromising on quality. We are taking the processes and recipes we use at our two Michelin-starred places and applying them to a pub setting. 

How big is the pub? 

We always try and make things too nice so we never do as many covers as we ought to. We have around 70-covers and hopefully we will do that number regularly. But we won’t be doing 200 plus covers on a Sunday as many pubs do, that’s not us. Hopefully the way we will sweat our assets is with the outdoor space, which will offer charcuterie boards, ploughman's and the burger and not a lot else. The Abbey Inn has got my name on it, it can’t not be good and it certainly isn’t a cash cow. 

How is business across the group at the moment? 

In common with nearly everyone else we’re not quite as busy as we would like to be but things are okay in general. We’re busy at weekends and ticking along in the week. The pub is also attracting a totally different part of the market, so I’m hopeful that it’s a welcome addition that won’t cannibalise. It also gives us an additional three bedrooms (The Black Swan at Oldstead has nine) and will allow us to offer packages that will see people eat at the pub one night and the restaurant the next. 

What about profitability? 

Restaurants and pubs aren’t great at making profit at the best of times but it’s very tough at the moment. But we’re playing a long game here. We want to build something bigger over an extended period. The pub gives us another string to our bow. I see security in having a varied and robust business. We felt vulnerable over Covid because we just had two restaurants that had to close. Now we have Made In Oldstead (the group’s pandemic-born meal kits business) and a busy events catering business (the group has contracts at Lords and Twickenham). There’s a lot going on at the group. It’s hard work but it provides us with security because we don’t have all our eggs in one basket.