A Michelin-starred village pub on the edge of the North York Moors, kept by the Banks family — Yorkshire farmers for generations — with a land-based tasting menu drawn from the…
The verdict
A village pub with one Michelin star, a Green Star and four AA rosettes — kept by the same Yorkshire farming family who took the licence in August 2006. Tommy Banks was the youngest chef in the UK to hold a Michelin star when the kitchen took its in 2017, and the menu is now drawn entirely from the land that the family has worked for generations.
From the editors · Vedere House
The particulars
Setting
Oldstead, North Yorkshire YO61 4BL — a hamlet on the south edge of the North York Moors, between the Cistercian ruins of Byland Abbey and the Kilburn White Horse
House
A pale-stone village pub with red pantile roof, taken on by the Banks family on 1 August 2006 — twenty years on the licence in 2026
Family
Anne and Tom Banks with their sons Tommy and James — Yorkshire farmers around Oldstead for generations
Kitchen
Chef-patron Tommy Banks with executive chef Callum Leslie and head chef Alice Power
Stars
1 Michelin star (since 2017) · Michelin Green Star · 4 AA Rosettes
Menu
A land-based tasting menu — no seafood — built around what the kitchen grows, rears, ferments and forages
Nine bedrooms named for the surrounding dales and woods, in Ashberry House across the lane and over the garden
Family table
Sister venues — Roots York (2018) and The Abbey Inn, a country pub with rooms a mile away (May 2023)
Best for
A long Yorkshire weekend — Thirsk station 10 miles, York 20 miles, the Moors and the coast beyond
Oldstead is a hamlet of stone houses on the south scarp of the North York Moors, between Byland Abbey and the Kilburn White Horse. The Banks family have farmed the parish for generations; Anne and Tom took the licence of the village pub on 1 August 2006 with their sons Tommy and James, and the kitchen has been the family's work since. The first Michelin star arrived in 2017 — Tommy Banks the youngest chef in the UK to hold one at the time — followed by the Green Star and the four AA rosettes. The shape of the place is still that of a country pub: a fire, a low ceiling, a bay window onto the lane.
“
There's an 'Oldstead' style — plenty of tradition and culture, cut through with a modern earthy exuberance.
”
The Banks family
The menu is land-based. No fish, no shellfish — only what the family grows, rears or forages around the village, then carries through the winter by ageing, fermenting and pickling. The kitchen garden sits a few hundred yards from the pub, in a fold of calendula and lavender behind the polytunnel; the family fields run up the slope behind. Dinner is served Tuesday to Saturday, 6.00 to 7.30, at £175. Saturday lunch is £135 from a 12.30 sitting. Tommy Banks works alongside executive chef Callum Leslie and head chef Alice Power, with sister-venue Roots in York (2018) and The Abbey Inn — a country pub with rooms a mile down the lane (May 2023).
Nine bedrooms wait across the road in Ashberry House and along the garden, named after the surrounding dales and woods, each with a freestanding roll-top bath and a Yorkshire breakfast in the morning. The right way, in the end, to take the long tasting menu into the evening and a slow walk to Byland Abbey the next day.
Signature moments
01
A village on the edge of the Moors
Oldstead is a fold of stone houses sunk into the south scarp of the North York Moors, half an hour from York by the slow road through Coxwold. The Cistercian ruins of Byland Abbey stand at one end of the parish and the Kilburn White Horse — a chalk figure cut into the hillside in 1857 — at the other. The Banks family have farmed the land around the village for generations; Anne and Tom took the licence on the pub in August 2006 with their sons Tommy and James, then in their teens. The shape of the place has not really changed since — a country pub built around a fire, with the family's fields and the woods and the kitchen garden a few hundred yards off.
02
A land-based menu
Tommy Banks took the kitchen on in his early twenties and the first Michelin star arrived in 2017 — at the time he was the youngest chef in the UK to hold one. The menu is land-only: no fish or shellfish, only what the family grows, rears or forages around Oldstead, then preserves through the winter by fermenting, pickling and ageing. *It might be something outwardly simple but really fresh and delicious,* runs the house line, *or perhaps an incredible flavour developed by fermenting, pickling or prolonged ageing.* The Green Star followed for the same reason — a kitchen that has set down its anchors in the parish and refuses to look further.
03
The garden at the back door
A few hundred yards from the pub, the kitchen garden sits in a hollow of beech and lavender — calendula and borage along the rows, a polytunnel beyond, and the Banks family fields running up the rise behind. The cooks come up most mornings to pick what the menu needs that night; the rest is dried, fermented or buried. The Oldstead style, as the family describes it on the door, is *plenty of tradition and culture, cut through with a modern earthy exuberance* — a phrase that does, on a calendar of marigolds and a forager's basket, quite literally describe the work.
