IT LOOKS like restaurant reviewers around the world have been scrambling to look up the tiny North Yorkshire village of Oldstead in the past week and vie for a table at its local, The Black Swan.

The Banks family pipped to the post Raymond Blanc, Heston Blumenthal and other global names to win the title of world’s best restaurant according to TripAdvisor.

It left many publications and reviewers pondering where on earth Oldstead was; one helped their readers by describing it as “225 miles from London,” others settled for “remote”. One reviewer, for Bloomberg.com, was notably bemused how a pub in a North Yorkshire hamlet could end up with such a momentous title, writing: “If you had to describe a restaurant declared the best in the world, you might think of somewhere distinctly glamorous.

“I’ve eaten at six establishments that have held that title. My travels have taken me to glorious locations, from a hillside villa overlooking the sea in Catalonia to the back streets of Modena, Italy.

“I never expected to journey to a village pub deep in the countryside of northern England—reached by a narrow and winding road—where the first thing you see when you finally arrive is a group of locals enjoying a pint of beer on a bench outside.”

He went on to give a favourable review of the dishes which provoked such a storm of approval on TripAdvisor.

The story of The Black Swan is such a compelling tale: farmers Tom and Anne Banks family bought the old drovers’ inn as a struggling pub in 2006. Son James took charge of front of house, aged just 19 and Tommy, then 17, worked in the kitchen out of necessity. By the age of 24 the self-taught chef had become the youngest recipient of a Michelin star.

And now they have put a very small corner of the North York Moors well and truly on the global map.