Tommy Banks has been the victim of a major robbery with the chef revealing he’d been fleeced of £25,000 worth of luxury pies.
The chef, who runs Michelin-starred restaurants The Black Swan at Oldstead and Roots in Yorkshire, took to Instagram on 2 December to explain that a van carrying 2,500 handmade pies had been stolen.
The van had been filled with the pies in preparation to be delivered to his pie shop at York Christmas Market. However, when a member of the team went to pick up the van in the morning, it had gone.
The post read: ‘I am guessing the thieves didn’t realise they were stealing 2,500 pies along with the van! The pies are all in boxes with my name on so not very easy to sell.
‘If you are the thieves and read this I urge you to drop the pies off somewhere. So we can at least give them to people who need food and they are not wasted.’
The van, a white Fiat Ducato, has since been found by Cleveland Police abandoned with false number plates in the Hemlington area of Middlesbrough. Both the van and the pies had been badly damaged meaning that both would have to be written off.
Banks has since posted 'one final pie update' on Instagram, explaining that the van had been found and was 'almost certainly a write off'.
'It's just so much waste. It's just rubbish', he said. 'A van is a van, but the amount of work that goes into making pies is huge.'
Friends and followers of the chef expressed their sympathy in the comments section of Banks' original post, with Aktar Islam of Opheem posting: ‘Sorry to hear about this brother! Absolutely disgusting individuals responsible for this!’.
Jeremy Lee posted ‘sending the biggest hug’, while Andi Oliver said, ‘OH NO! Awful’.
Tommy’s Pie Shop is a new venture from the chef, launching as a stall in York Christmas Market from 14 November to 22 December. It serves handmade, luxury pies from locally sourced ingredients, allowing guests to sample the Michelin chef’s food for a snip of the price.
In other news, you can keep up to date with what's been happening in MasterChef: The Professionals right here, including what happened in the 2024 semi-finals.