Eat Out London!Black & Blue
Home | Black & Blue
In 1999, the boys decided that they wanted to bring a high-street, high-quality steak concept to London, Black & Blue, the first modern American steakhouse in the capital, was born.
The Group has gone from strength to strength over its 14-year life with the boys taking the bold decision to move from the high-street to open up 5 more centrally-located and state-of-the-art locations including sites under the arches at Waterloo, Borough Market and the Southbank.
Reviews and related sites
Black Swan Oldstead Michelin Restaurant Yorkshire Tommy Banks ...
menu reservations
The Black Swan at Oldstead is, according to TripAdvisor, the Travellers Choice Best Fine Dining Restaurant in the World 2017!
For us at The Black Swan, it's so much more than just Michelin Star food.
Whatever it is - it's us – and as our guest you'll see it for yourself; How do I Book using my gift voucher as payment?
PRE-ORDER NOW Tommy managed to impress the judges once again on this year's Great British Menu, getting another of his dishes through to The Banquet that this year celebrated 140 years of the Wimbledon Championships.
Read more about his experience by clicking below... More Have a read of our Blog, Made In Oldstead, which we started almost 2 years ago, at the very beginning of our adventure to build The Black Swan its very own kitchen garden.
The Black Rat - The Black Rat
drinks food
You can now book online below for tables up to 4 people maximum, for tables of 5 or more, please call the restaurant.
The Black Rat Restaurant, located on Chesil street at the bottom of the town centre, recently celebrated its tenth year!
Located nearby is our kitchen garden where we grow some of our own herbs and vegetables, all of which helps to inspire the kitchen team to create the menu using wild, unusual and forgotten ingredients.
The Front of House team is a small group of experienced hospitality characters who pride themselves on their personal service styles and, together with Head Chef Jon Marsden-Jones and his Kitchen Team.
The owner, David Nicholson, has been in Winchester since 1995 running The Black Boy Pub just across the road in Wharf Hill.
The Black Swan, restaurant review: A Michelin-starred pub in the ...
food drinks
Boasting a Michelin star and run by the most dynamic combination of brothers since Romulus and Remus, the Black Swan is what food guides used to call a "destination" restaurant.
No sooner have you sat down than a pinkly sensational nasturtium vodkatini is pressed into your hand, and a small procession of pre-dinner "snacks" appears: a couple of wagyu beef sliders – my wife Angie instantly declared hers the best burger she'd ever had; a mixum-gatherum of cep and trompette mushrooms nipped by a vinegar gel; a tartare of scallop on a squid-ink cracker freshened by some cucumber bits; and a frankly stunning combination of grilled quail breast with fermented cabbage, bean sprouts and roasted garlic, all gathered into a saltbaked celeriac taco and held in place by a bloody great nail.
Tom Banks and his wife Anne were farmers here, before working in the bar and restaurant; their son James is the genial front-of-house guy and wine wrangler, while his brother Tommy is head chef.
All the dishes came with wine recommendations from James B. With the scallops he suggested a Chassange Montrachet Vielle Vignes 2011, which I initially resisted (£14 a glass?)
James reappeared with a palate-cleanser of three lollipops that crammed sweet and savoury tastes into tiny spheres: beetroot with cabernet sauvignon vinegar ice cream (hmmm), cep mushroom and chocolate ice cream (fabulous), and apple and rosemary sorbet (revelatory).
The Black Rat, Winchester, restaurant review - Telegraph
food staff
While it might be melodramatic to delve deeper into Duke Orsino’s speech in Twelfth Night, and claim that as a result of piped music “the appetite may sicken, and so die”, it doesn’t half drive you up the bleeding wall.
murmured my wife in The Black Rat, Winchester’s only Michelin’ed joint, glancing up the bleeding wall behind us to a speaker mounted above a row of pewter tankards.
This rubbish, as I smugly informed her, a pubescent boy of our acquaintance, an old friend and his daughter Phoebe, was Teenage Dirtbag, Wheatus’s bubblegum pop classic from 2000 about the unrequited passion of a high school student (no Orsino manqué) whose love object “doesn’t know who I am, and she doesn’t give a damn about me”, and prefers a rival suitor who takes a gun into class.
Owner David Nicholson has converted an old pub with flair and feel for mood, congregating oil paintings of distant forebears, old wood furniture and floorboards, bookcases filled with legal volumes, candles on spikes, brickwork walls, an inglenook fireplace and a haphazard plethora of eccentricities to create an aura — a hint of Renaissance, a touch of Mrs Miggins’ pie shop, a dash of Scrooge-era Dickens – that somehow doesn’t seem contrived, confused or ersatz.
By the time we called for the bill, Wheatus had been ousted on the PA system by Canadian country rocker Shania Twain, the lyrics of whose biggest hit seemed entirely apposite to the pretty but tedious food at The Black Rat: that don’t impress me much.
Black Swan country pub in Yorkshire named world's best restaurant ...
The Black Swan in Oldstead, on the edge of the North York Moors, shot straight to No 1 in a list of fine dining restaurants compiled by TripAdvisor.
TripAdvisor first started publishing its list in 2012, but this is the first time a British restaurant has taken the travel website’s global top spot.
The restaurant’s website says the Banks family have lived and farmed in the area around Oldstead for generations.
TripAdvisor said its restaurant rankings differed from others as they were based on feedback from guests and not a small judging panel.
While the first and second places went to British restaurants, the third and fourth spots went to establishments in France – Maison Lameloise in Chagny, and L’Auberge de l’Ill in Illhaeusern.
Vanilla Black
food
We became vegetarian for no major reason.
But we liked eating out, and when we went to a restaurant the vegetarian option was mainly mushroom risotto or Halloumi kebabs.
So, we decided to open our own vegetarian restaurant back in 2004.
We set some standards for the food: no dish would rely on pasta, meat substitutes or heavy spicing.
The dishes we create here are forward thinking, our food is challenging.