Tom Sellers

Tom Sellers is the chef patron and visionary behind Restaurant Story, a Michelin-star restaurant in the heart of London. The story of how he rose to become one of Britain’s finest chefs is a classic tale of a lad who left school at 16, started working in a pub kitchen and, through sheer hard work and focus, worked his way up to the top. The viewing public will recognise him from his appearance in the 9th series of The Great British Menu on the BBC.

Sellers hails from Nottinghamshire. He moved to London aged 16 to pursue a career in cooking and knocked on the door of Tom Aikens’ Michelin-star restaurant in Chelsea, asking for a job. He was taken on and spent two-and-a-half years training under Aiken, eventually becoming the restaurant’s Chef de Partie. When he was 19, he moved to New York, working at the world-famous, three-Michelin-star Per Se restaurant. His journey then took him back to London, then to Denmark, and finally back to London in 2012.

In 2013, aged 26, he opened Restaurant Story, a fine-dining restaurant in Southwark, London. Within months, it had been awarded a Michelin star. The following year, he raised his media profile when he appeared on The Great British Menu, a quintessential piece of BBC television. Unfortunately, illness meant he had to bow out, but the show helped bring him to a wider audience—as his large social media following will attest. With a restaurant whose food evokes memories and narrative, it’s natural that Sellers should also be an author, and his book, A Kind of Love Story, was published in 2013.