Meet Callum Leslie the Yorkshire chef cooking in this week's Great British Menu finals
This week Callum Leslie will be fighting it out with some of the country’s top chefs to get a dish – or maybe even two – to the 20th Great British Menu banquet. If successful he will join the celebrated chefs who have succeeded in getting dishes to the prestigious banquet – including his boss Tommy Banks.
Leslie, 29, is executive chef of Bank's Michelin-starred the Black Swan and Oldstead and his more recently acquired pub with rooms the Abbey Inn at Byland Abbey, a position he has held since he was just 26. Not bad for a self-taught chef who didn’t even know what a Michelin starred restaurant was until he left school.
"I’ve been lucky as Tommy has cooked at the banquet a few times and head chef of Roots Will Lockwood went to the banquet in 2023. Tommy is very supportive of us doing it and then I was approached and asked if I’d like to do it.” Banks is still one of the veteran judges from Yorkshire, alongside Michael O’Hare who judged Leslie’s North East and Yorkshire regional heat which he won. “It’s not something you turn down and I had such an amazing experience and I had such fun doing it – everyone was so nice,” says Leslie. "The time constraints are pretty unrealistic but somehow you get it done. I oversee two of Tommy’s restaurants now with two amazing teams, but you don’t get to take them with you – you are on your own. It’s a lot of pressure but you are in the same boat as everyone else. I’ve never done any telly before but people couldn't have bee nicer. We all know how to cook but it’s how you deal with that in front of the cameras and being asked questions. You want to come across well but also you need to get everything done it the time.”
He was up against Ahmed Abdalla head chef of Legacy at the Grand, York Minal Patel Head Chef, Prashad and Teeside’s Scott John-Hodgson Head Chef, Solstice in the regional heat and then battled it out in the judges’ chamber with Abdalla, narrowly beating his Yorkshire colleague impressing the judges with a number of his courses all inspired by Yorkshire people. "They were all amazing chefs and Ahmed is so talented and had a tough week, I just think I adapted quicker to it than he did but by the final day the penny dropped and he got on tip of it which was brilliant to see.”
This year’s theme ‘Great Britons’ was one that Leslie relished. "It’s a perfect choice for the 20th birthday – celebrating great Britons. I really enjoy researching people I’d heard about growing up. Coming from Yorkshire there are so many inspirational people and so much produce and incredible stories to tell it came together quite naturally. At the Black Swan we tell stories all the time through food, including our story.
"To try to link dishes with a person can be quite challenging but I have very creative team around me.” He actually credits his wife for his show stopping main course. “My wife takes credit for my main course. She said it was her dish all along – she’d burn boiled water she’s terrible cook, but she’s very inspirational and creative. It’s about the story you are telling and the food on the plate. I wanted to go on the Great British Menu to show a representation of me, my food the ethos of what we do here. We get a lot of positive feedback but so many people haven’t heard of some of the ingredients we use here” One of the bravest dishes he served – which split the judges – what is dessert which included mushroom ice cream. Make the Moors Never Change – which was motivated by the wild moors that inspired the Emily Bronte novels and included mushroom ice-cream, chocolate ganache, heather honeycomb and méringue shards and woodruff, and was served to the sound of a howling wind.
"It’s a competition you can’t play it safe all of the time," he says. “It’s (mushrooms) ideal for ice-cream as it has an earthy, sweet flavour but I realise it’s quite unusual to use it in this way. It is a dish I have been perfecting over the last few years and it does sometimes take some people a while to realise that they do actually like it .” The other ‘Great Britons’ that inspired Leslie’s dishes included Maltham born Suffragette 16-year-old Dora Thewlis and British Explorer Captain Cook who was born in North Yorkshire.
Leslie’s vegan starter was called Deeds Not Words after the Suffragettes’ slogan and featured different elements of onion. It was served in fine china floral purple cups in the suffragettes colours that he found in a charity shop in Thirsk,
“I was brought up in Netherthong, the next village on from Meltham, and so Dora’s story had a special significance for me. She was a very honest and humble person.”
Leslie’s career began as a young teenage pot washer at Punch restaurant in Honley when was about 13 years old after school. By 16 he was working at Huddersfield restaurant The Three Acres in Shelley.
“I fell in love with the thought of cooking and being a chef which I saw as far more fun than going to school which I found very boring. I loved doing anything other than school,” he says, admitting he would sometimes skip school to work in the kitchens.
“Then one of the lads mentioned he was going to eat at a Michelin star restaurant. I’d never heard about Michelin before so looked it up, was instantly inspired and it all went on from there.”
At 17 he left home and despite having no formal catering training, he got a job at the then Michelin-starred Box Tree restaurant in Ilkley, under Simon Gueller, where he spent two years ‘”really learning the ropes. I was working six days a week but it was the most amazing place to work .”
From there he moved to Cambridge to work for Daniel Clifford at two Michelin-starred Midsummer House. “It was another eye-opening experience and is one of the few two starred restaurants in the country.” He moved back home for a short period to work in a local restaurant where he met his wife, Eve. He then moved to London to work as chef de partie at acclaimed British chef Marcus Wareing’s Michelin-starred restaurant Marcus in South Kensington, London. He had been offered a job in New York but he was only 20 and so decided to work in London to see if he liked working in a city.
“I absolutely hated living in London,” he recalls. “I’m a bit of a country lad. I prefer being out in the country. After London Leslie went to work at two Michelin-starred Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham.” He was probably one of the most inspiring people I have ever worked for. The way he runs everything is just class . He’s a very intelligent guy they way he goes about food and he taught me to think. It sounds silly but as a chef that isn’t something you have to do very often you are given a list and told to get on with it.”
But he got tired of living in the south and wanted to move back north. "Tommy (Banks) has always been an inspiration to me and so I thought I’d see if I could get a job at the Black Swan and here I am six years later in my dream job. Tommy gives me a lot of autonomy and I love working in both the Black Swan and the Abbey Inn – it’s a really fun place to work..”
In finals week which starts on BBC 2 on Monday and concludes on Friday March 28, the winners of all eight regions will cook off one last time against each other in a last bid to win a place at the prestigious Great British Menu banquet which this year will be held at Blenheim Palace with the judges making the final decision.
Although the finals have already been filmed, Leslie remains tight-lipped about whether or not he is successful in getting a dish to the banquet. You will just have to tune in and see.