At this early stage in his career, aged just twenty-one, Tom could have very easily carried on gaining experience in other kitchens and pubs but instead chose to take the plunge and started looking into opening his own place. He began talking to his now-business partner Peter Creed, who at the time was running a few pubs for the Lucky Onion Group, and they quickly decided they would open their first spot together. In late 2017 they took over The Bell Inn in the small Oxfordshire village of Langford with Tom heading up the kitchen, although that wasn’t the plan initially. ‘We basically couldn’t find a chef,’ he laughs. ‘So Peter was like ‘why don’t you just be head chef’. I was absolutely terrified at first and had no idea what I was doing but over time I grew into it.’

Inspired by the likes of institutions such as St John (‘Our copy of The Book of St. John at The Bell is completely knackered because we’ve used it so much’) and The River Cafe, Tom began to develop his own hearty style of cookery grounded in classical technique. It can only take one amazing review in the restaurant industry to put a chef truly on the map, and for Tom it came from Times restaurant critic Giles Coren, who visited The Bell Inn shortly after it first opened and described his garlic, parsley and bone marrow flatbread as ‘the best mouthful of his life’, and heaped praise onto the chef. This, however, only put further pressure on Tom. ‘It almost came too soon for us,’ he says. ‘It was such a great review but it suddenly meant that every day was as busy as a Saturday and the people were coming here expecting to have one of the best meals of their life. It was madness for about three months.’

The quick success of The Bell Inn (which included being awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand in its first year) meant that the young chef’s food was in hot demand, grabbing the attention of Soho House founder Nick Jones, who wanted to work with Tom and his business partner on a new concept. This eventually led to the opening of The Little Bell in the grounds of Soho Farmhouse in 2018 with a menu similar to that of the original pub, but with a focus on biodynamic wines and more sharing plates. ‘It wasn’t something we’d really planned to do but it’s been great,’ says the chef. ‘The Little Bell attracts a bit of a different clientele so we’ve met some really interesting foodie people through it.’

Plans to open a second pub were put on hold when Coronavirus hit the UK in March 2020 – a time during which The Bell Inn was turned into a shop selling pies and dried goods as well as offering takeaways – but 2021 finally saw Tom and Peter open The Lamb Inn in the rural village of Shipton-under-Wychwood. Here, Tom continues to serve both crowd-pleasing plates of food like pizzas and fish and chips as well as some bolder, more refined dishes – something which Tom sees as a key part of the continued popularity of the pubs. ‘I just really like the idea that someone can come along and have a burger and a pint on a Monday night and be in and out for £15,’ he explains. ‘But you can also come for a celebration and order a £25 main and a very nice bottle of wine.’

Not many chefs can say that they ran a kitchen of their own by the age of twenty-five, let alone at two separate pubs, but this hasn’t let Tom get carried away with dreams of Michelin stars and fine dining ventures. This a chef who’s found his happy place cooking the unpretentious food that he loves in the atmosphere he fell in love with aged eighteen – and he shows no sign of stopping any time soon.