The Menu
Offering a tasting menu allows us to bring together everything that we have grown, foraged and developed into a purposefully designed experience. The menu is inspired by the ingredients that we grow and forage in and around Oldstead. It might be something outwardly simple but really fresh and delicious or perhaps an incredible flavour developed by fermenting, pickling or prolonged ageing.
View our Sample Tasting Menu here
View our Sample Lunch Menu here
Please note that due to the nature of our tasting menu experience, there are several allergies and intolerances that we are unfortunately unable to accommodate. Please contact our reservations team for further information before making a reservation: reception@blackswanoldstead.co.uk
In the Glass
It’s not just the food; developing the drinks list is work that’s truly steeped in passion. There’s constant experimentation. It’s about preserving and enhancing flavours; it’s fruit, vegetables and herbs; its juices, cordials, liqueurs and essences; it’s pressing, filtering, distilling, drying, fermenting and ageing. And then it’s there in a cocktail glass – sweet, sour, spicy, spirity and special. Designed and made in Oldstead.
View our Sample Drinks List here
Our Roots
“When you work somewhere that your family has lived and farmed for centuries you just feel like you have ‘roots’; it’s like the place belongs to you and you belong to it. Once you get to know what’s there and learn how to use it, you just want to build on it.”
Adjacent to the restaurant are the rolling pastures of our farmland; home to our livestock and field-scale crops, with the herbaceous Eden of our kitchen garden showcasing seasonal exhibitions of perennial plants, edible flowers and our colony of honeybees. And in the hedgerows and woodland around Oldstead you’ll find wild fruits, flowers and herbs, nature’s bountiful larder of foraged ingredients. Tommy Banks works closely with head chef Callum Leslie to bring this produce to our menus all year round.
Straight to the plate
Farming, foraging and growing our own gives us incredibly fresh produce and exciting rare ingredients. With field-scale crops on our farm and two acres of growing beds and terraces in the garden adjoining The Black Swan, Tommy and the team produce wonderfully diverse seasonal menus with a real connection between field and plate.