Step inside one of the wildest careers in modern British cooking as we sit down with Tommy Banks, once the youngest British Michelin starred chef, Great British Menu champion, author, farmer, preservation obsessive, cricket prodigy in a past life, and the man behind both The Black Swan at Oldstead and Roots in York. From hand milking cows on a tiny family farm to being crowned TripAdvisor’s number one restaurant in the world, Tommy charts the long, strange path that took him from near-empty dining rooms to global recognition. Along the way we hear about the early days of The Black Swan, complete with RAF chefs who bullied teenage Tommy at the sink, and his twenty-something imposter syndrome phase where he cheerfully admits to cooking straight out of Phil Howard’s cookbook before finding his own style.

The stories in this episode are the stuff of modern kitchen folklore. Tommy talks us through the heartbreaking illness at eighteen that ended his cricket dreams, the fierce work ethic that followed, and the moment Kenny Atkinson sat down for dinner and told him he had to get on Great British Menu. We hear about the ferocious creativity behind his fermentation rooms, the Douglas fir desserts, the legendary crab and beetroot dish, and the umeboshi-style strawberries now copied across the country. There is also the infamous pie-van heist that turned into a national news frenzy with Tommy fielding calls from Radio 1 through Radio 5 on the same day as he begged thieves to at least give the five thousand pies to charity. And of course the blackmail era of two-year waiting lists after The Black Swan went viral.

Tommy also gives us a hilarious and honest tour of life running an expanding Yorkshire empire. From the diners flying in by helicopter to tell him his restaurant is not the best in the world, to the email from an industry “expert” advising him to shut down the General Tarleton immediately, to his strict refusal to cook vegan food because he cannot grow lemons on the farm, the stories land one after another. We dig into Yorkshire pub culture, his dream blowout dinners, his disdain for truffle, and the perfection of a proper Sunday roast at The Abbey Inn. This is Tommy Banks in full flow: sharp, grounded, funny, straight talking, wildly inventive, and endlessly proud of his little corner of Yorkshire. A genuine must-listen.

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We're back for a new week with a riot of energy as we sit down with the endlessly charismatic Robin Gill, the chef who helped reshape modern London dining. Fresh from opening his vibrant new Bar Brasso in Nine Elms and on the eve of his forty sixth birthday, Robin talks candidly about the craft, chaos and creativity that have defined his twelve years at the top.

In a breathless tour through his career, Robin revisits the brutal Dublin kitchen that almost broke him, the three star intensity of Marco Pierre White’s Oak Room and the militant precision of Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir. He shares what it is really like to cook every garnish a la minute, to send salt baked pigeon to the dining room with military timing, and to learn from mentors who combine obsessive standards with deep humanity. Along the way, he unpacks why vegetables are more interesting than meat, why bread should be a sacred pause in the meal, and how a single review and its unhinged comment section changed the trajectory of The Dairy.

We also dive into MasterChef Ireland war stories, viral nightmare customers, and why neighbourhood restaurants are the real engine of London’s food scene. Robin riffs on Dublin and Malaga as under appreciated food cities, on the death of the endless tasting menu and the rise of fast, shared, snacky eating, and on why value and atmosphere matter more than ever in a tough market. Packed with humour, grit and wild detail, this episode will leave you hungry, inspired and slightly desperate to book a table at Bar Brasso.

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Rick Stein arrives on the Go To Food Podcast in full storytelling flow, and from about five minutes in it just does not let up. He takes us from backpacking through Mexico in his teens, blown away by the balance of proper tacos piled with slow-cooked meat, fresh coriander, raw onion and searing chilli, to the smoky mangals of Istanbul and the small-plate culture of Turkey and Greece. Along the way we get leftover turkey tinga tacos from his new Christmas book, the reality of Australian road trips clocking up thousands of kilometres in New South Wales, cooking lamb beyond “the back of Bourke,” and a wild dinner where a whole “pest” deer is cooked over fire and served to laughing locals. It is a world tour of appetite, told with that calm, amused Stein delivery.

Then he pulls us right back to Cornwall and the making of a food institution. Rick relives the chaos of turning a failing nightclub into The Seafood Restaurant in the mid seventies, flyer-ing caravan parks with a megaphone to fill tables in a ten week season, and keeping lobsters in improvised beer cooler tanks while local fishermen quietly pinched them and sold them back. There are shark steaks on early menus, mountains of hot crab in scallop shells, the birth of oyster chorizo shooters, and monkfish heads with beautiful cheek meat that British fishermen still throw away. He talks about closing in winter to travel and write English Seafood Cookery, training at college while hiring serious chefs, and quietly helping turn Padstow into a true food destination long before “staycations” were a thing.

The episode also digs into TV, culture and how the industry has changed. Rick remembers the brilliance and self-destruction of Keith Floyd, the blokey, unscripted magic he built with legendary producer David Pritchard, and filming trips where they would rather stay joking in the minibus than roll cameras. There are scenes of chaotic kitchens with lobster tanks by the back door, early fame when the phones would not stop ringing after his first BBC series, and brutally honest talk about the state of restaurants today: 2 percent profit margins, fish so expensive it is almost unsellable, and a sector hammered by taxes and costs. He jokes about truffle oil as the tomato ketchup of the middle classes, explains why street food in India is often safer than hotel dining, and even tells the story of inviting a harsh YouTube fish and chips critic down to Padstow and winning him over in person.

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