Black Swan, Oldstead

Tucked back from the roadside at the junction of two quiet country lanes, the Black Swin is in a delightfully secluded spot and has become justly famous for providing one of the best dinners in Yorkshire.

The Banks family farmed these parts for hundreds of years before deciding to put all their efforts into the handsome old village pub next door. That was in 2005. They served such progressively superior food that in 2012 they were awarded a Michelin star, and have kept it ever since.

It’s an ever-evolving menu that will have probably changed completely by the time you get there. Currently, they serve just one multiple-course menu. It comes at an eye-popping £175. Go around the world with one of the most surprising wine lists I’ve encountered. Drink by the glass or bottle or splash out further on the wine matching menu at £85 per person or trade-up with the £150 wine package or £250pp for the ‘Rare and Fine’ wine package. Oh and then there’s the 12.5% service charge.

You knew your credit card was in for a beating before you came here and you’ve come for the best meal of your life, maybe.

The tasting menu takes you through around ten small courses with smoked eel, hogget, cod with razor clams and on through a myriad of exciting dishes and a few pricey supplements we’re thinking scallop £25 supplement and cheese ditto.

All the veg, fruit, flowers and herbs are the product of their kitchen garden, a five-acre site at the back of the restaurant. Tommy Banks learned on the job and over the years has given the food an identity that is distinct from anywhere else in Yorkshire and it catapults the Black Swan into our Top Ten.

And having recklessly overdone it, check into one of their nine glamorous bedrooms. It’s all too good to miss.

They open for dinner Tuesday to Saturday and lunch on Saturday. Do save up and go because it will be one of the best meals you will ever eat in Yorkshire.

In 2019 they opened a sister restaurant Roots, in York.