Great British Menu's Andi Oliver meets Michelin starred chef Tommy Banks down on the farm at the Black Swan Oldstead for his new podcast

"We’ve had Hairy Biker Dave Myers, who was great and so into his food, and we’ve made cocktails with Mel Giedroyc we just chat about the farm, seasonal food, sustainability and what we are about here as well as trying to highlight some local producers who share the same ethos as us when it comes to sustainability,” explains Banks. His latest guest is Great British Menu host Andi Oliver, who, a self confessed urbanite looks less than comfortable as we wade through the mud in the pouring rain and inspect Banks’s herd of Dexter cattle, something of a recent addition to the farm (and menu of both The Black Swan and his York restaurant Roots).

"I don’t do the outdoors,” says Oliver, dressed in white trainers and bright pink tracksuit, but with a broad grin on her face. “I’m only doing it because it’s you Tommy Banks.” The pair met six year ago when she was a judge on the Great British Menu having replaced Prue Leith who left to host the Great British Bake Off, and Banks was a contestant. It was the second year he had competed, the first he got a dish to the famed banquet.

"Prue seemed to love my food and so when they said she was being replaced by you (Andi) I was a bit worried.” He needn’t have worried, Oliver loved his food too and he got a second dish to the banquet.

Banks is now one of the veteran judges on the BBC show, and he is the first to admit it did no harm to his career or the fortunes of the Black Swan. “I take my job as a veteran judge extremely seriously as I know what it means to do well in the competition,” he says. "We had achieved the (Michelin) star but no one knew where we were – we are a bit in the middle of nowhere and we really needed to get some bums on seats. Taking part in the Great British Menu was a gamble, and it was a lot of hard work, but it really paid off.” It definitely did, and it heralded a change in the Black Swan and the entire Banks’ family’s fortunes. Since then they have opened a second restaurant, Roots in York, which also has a Michelin star, during lockdown when the restaurants were forced to close they launched Made in Oldstead a delivery box business which proved so successful they have kept it going ever since, with brother James to created Banks Brother wines, putting their favourite wines into cans and now they are opening a pub, The Abbey Inn at nearby Byland.

"We actually tried to buy the Abbey Inn before we bought the Black Swan, but English Heritage beat us too it. It is where both James and I worked when we were teenagers – I was a pot wash at 14, so it has always been a special place to us. I am always looking for the next thing – and when it came up for sale we jumped at it. We want it to be a pub where we want to go as a family, where kids and dogs are welcome.” The Abbey Inn is currently being refurbished and due to open May 25. "It also makes sense from a sustainable point of view. We want to use everything we grow and rear on the farm and having the pub will allow us to do that.”

Although Oliver and Banks knew each other well and she’d eaten and loved his food she had never visit his Oldstead restaurant and so when she was invited to take part in his podcast she jumped at the chance, although a fall and subsequent operation meant the 59 year old, was more restricted than she would have liked.

Having said that she was clearly thrilled to visit the polytunnel in the garden to the rear of the Black Swan where are the vegetables are propagated, before visiting the farm and what the Banks’s call the Palace of Preserves – one of three containers turned into a preserving area where they ready their crops to last throughout the year – sometimes tw0. Banks’s ethos is all about seasonality and therefore the need to preserve in various ways is essential. Oliver met Richard (Dicky) Jack, Head of Farm Production, where he explained the processes involved in the creation of ingredients such as black garlic, black apples and ‘peaso’ their own form of Miso which she tasted back at the Black Swan.

Oliver, who has a cook book out this month, The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories from My Caribbean Table, is clearly passionate about all things food. “I used to host my own dinner parties at the age of 12,” says Oliver, who travelled extensively as a child including living in Cyprus as her father was with the RAF. She rose to fame fronting the band Rip Rig and Panic with Neneh Cherry in 1981 – pair have remained firm friends ever since. “It’s always been food and music for me – they are inextricably linked. When we were on tour we used to cook for people all the time. We were teenagers – I left home at 16 – while everyone else was getting drunk on cider we were sousing 2kgs of mackerel.”

She believes there was actually more to her and Cherry’s need to cook. “It gave us a sense of community – a sense of safety – that’s what food and cooking for others means to me.” She went onto work in television in the ‘90s, debuting on Backstage at The Brits. She then went on to present the hit cult show Badaas TV with Ice T and the award winning documentary Crazy Sexy Cool. For six years she covered Glastonbury for the BBC as well as fronting various other BBC festivals. She has run a number of restaurants over the years including The Jackdaw and Star, a renovated pub in the heart of Homerton and her award winning restaurant – Andi’s – in 2016. In 2020, she launched her newest food project entitled Wadadli Kitchen which showcases Real Caribbean Home Cooking. But it is presenting the Great British Menu that has made her recognisable to millions of TV viewers, touched by the way she relates to the chefs battling it out to get to the banquet

"It is daunting being in that kitchen and being judged, and I do try to put them at ease although I do end up mothering them, I can’t help it.” She does have a very close relationship with her own daughter, TV and radio presenter Miquita Oliver.

It is clear she and Banks could talk all day, and he jokes that it could make two or three episodes of his podcast.

As for Oliver she says she loves what Banks is doing at his restaurants. “There is an honesty and authenticity about what he is doing here. And I love it – I can’t wait for dinner.”

Seasoned with Tommy Banks and Andi Oliver will be available on Wednesday

Seasoned is a podcast produced by Yorkshire based production company, What’s The Story Sounds and sponsored by True Foods. It’s released every Wednesday and is available on all podcast platforms.