<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1593113 size-full-width" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/Restaurant-Story-Tom-Sellers-Jay-Brooks.jpg.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="" width="970" height="1455" data-caption='Chef Tom Sellers. <span class=”media-credit”>Courtesy Jay Brooks</span>’>
Tom Sellers is one of London’s most successful chefs. Since debuting Restaurant Story when he was only 26, Sellers has built a versatile, well-regarded group of restaurants and earned several deserved accolades along the way. But Sellers, now 37, doesn’t think he’s reached the top just yet.
“We’ve climbed maybe two-thirds of the way up the mountain,” he tells Observer, speaking from Restaurant Story’s private dining room in September. “We’re still climbing. It’s a journey and the road is long. I probably didn’t enjoy that journey for the first five years after Restaurant Story opened. Now it’s about trying to enjoy this process, trying to enjoy bringing on new talent, trying to enjoy the evolution of the restaurant being pushed by myself and by others. It takes a lot of energy and time and commitment to keep walking up the mountain, but I feel that energy here right now.”
These days, Sellers is at the helm of Restaurant Story, which earned its second Michelin star in 2021. In 2023, he debuted both modern European eatery Dovetale in 1 Hotel Mayfair and Story Cellar, a Parisian-inspired rotisserie. He’s in the process of opening a test kitchen and office around the corner from Restaurant Story’s Bermondsey location. Sellers shifts his time between the three restaurants and his work with brands like Rolls-Royce and Bang & Olufsen as a chef ambassador. It’s a balancing act that takes up six days a week, with only Sundays for himself.
“I’m always at the restaurant,” Sellers admits. “And if I’m not, it’s because I’m at Story Cellar or at an event in another country or in a meeting. But I love being in my restaurants. I love trying to influence the environments in a way that refines and sharpens the focus for all. But it’s really important I also allow the people who work in my restaurants to be able to flourish and to be able to deliver the experience. You can become disruptive if you over-manage.”
Sellers doesn’t mind being this busy, mostly because he’s never known things any other way. He’s been the one running Restaurant Story since it opened, rather than handing over the reins to a restaurant group or investors. He manages with such a deft hand that it’s almost shocking to learn that growing up, Sellers had no desire to be a chef. It was only after experiencing the atmosphere of a professional kitchen at 15, when he started washing dishes part time at a restaurant in Nottingham while still in school, that he found his calling.
“I fell in love with the environment of the kitchen—the energy and the hierarchy and the discipline and, at times, the volatility,” he says. “I loved it and probably needed it at the time. And then I was very fortunate to go work with some amazing chefs in amazing kitchens.”
After moving to London at 16, Sellers “jumped straight in.” He worked at Restaurant Tom Aikens in London before moving on to Thomas Keller’s Per Se in New York and René Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen. It was during this time that Sellers began to imagine his own restaurant.
“By the time I came to London I had decided, ‘I’m going to open my own restaurant one day,’” he recalls. “I didn’t know how, I didn’t know why, but I knew that would happen. It was time in the industry that was less controlled than it is now in terms of what was demanded of you as a human—the hours and the pace of everything. There was no balance. So I decided that if I’m going to go and do that for 10 years, there has to be something at the end of it that is for myself.”
From the beginning, the Nottingham-born chef knew he wanted to call it Restaurant Story. The name is less literal than it sounds. While some of the dishes do tell an actual story, not everything is based in narrative. Instead, Sellers sees the experience itself as a story, recounting everything that’s led him to this point. “The power of storytelling is one of the most beautiful things that exists, from when you’re a child,” he says. “This is everything: where I grew up, who brought me up, where I worked, everything that influenced me. My whole story is embedded in what we do here.”
Some dishes are more obvious than others. A mid-meal palate cleanser, dubbed “the half-time orange,” is reminiscent of the orange slices delivered to kids playing sports. One of the desserts is an homage to Paddington Bear’s beloved marmalade sandwich. Sellers likes threading the menu with these throwback moments. “It’s powerful when you can be nostalgic like that, and you can create new food memories at the same time,” he notes. “That’s one of our biggest strengths here 13 years on, and it’s part of our identity here.”
The bread course is perhaps the most famous—and most Instagrammed—dish at Restaurant Story. It’s been on the menu since the day the restaurant opened in 2013. In the early days, it was a surprise: the server would bring a lit candle to the table during the prior course, eventually revealing that the pool of “wax” was actually beef drippings. When I dined recently, the course’s reputation preceded it. But it was still a whimsical delight to dip the brioche bread into the melted drippings.
The bread course was inspired by Sellers’ working class upbringing. He remembers his father eating a version of bread with beef drippings and wanted to pay homage to that. Each week, the team crafts between 200 and 400 of the candles. “It’s very hard to come up with an original idea,” he says. But I definitely think that was an original dish. And it’s very close to my heart. It’s been refined over and over through the years. From the first incarnation to what it looks like now is night and day.”
He adds, “When we love the idea or we love the story and we love that moment, then it’s about, ‘how can we elevate it? How can we progress it?’ That’s what we focus on the most.”
For Sellers, a high-level restaurant like Restaurant Story is as much about the food as it is about making memories and moments. “There’s only so far you can push the food on the plate or over-manipulate it or reinvent it,” he says. “So it’s about making sure that the produce that we use is the best shopping we can do in the world, and making sure we take care of that with the utmost respect and knowledge. And then making sure that people have an amazing time and they feel relaxed in our environment and they feel like they’re part of our restaurant. That’s a conscious decision. We engineer the room and the service and the music and the pace. It’s not by chance.”
It’s something he’s focused on more as he’s gotten older. Sellers empowers his team to research guests in advance and create surprising or memorable experiences. If someone is a massive Manchester United fan, a team-branded scarf might show at the table. The servers have curated lists of recommendations for Paris, just in case they overhear a guest say they’re heading across the Channel. It tends to get an overwhelmingly positive response, which is exactly what Sellers is looking for.
“It’s always nice to hear when people say they really enjoy their time here, because that’s ultimately the goal,” he says. “I’ve been around a long time and food is so subjective. Sometimes you have to remind yourself of that.”
When Restaurant Story opened in 2013, the London culinary landscape was different. There were less young, up-and-coming chefs and a 26-year-old fresh off the pass at Noma debuting his first restaurant was a big deal. The buzz around Restaurant Story, located in a converted Victorian toilet (it looks far more elegant than its history suggests), was intense. The scrutiny and attention could have overwhelmed him, but the chef didn’t cave under the pressure. Instead, Sellers received his first Michelin star only five months later. It’s perhaps why he has contended with the misconception that he’s some sort of “bad boy” chef ever since. Sure, he has some tattoos, but Sellers couldn’t be anything but true professional as the owner of Restaurant Story.
“I guess it was because I was young and had that image,” he says, shrugging, when asked about how much his reputation as an elusive, rock ‘n’ roll-style chef with a disorderly background has dogged him. “I just rolled with it. With the day to day running of my business and the restaurants and the level that we operate at, I don’t know whether I find it funny or insulting or both. It feels like lazy journalism. I was fortunate to be written about right away and I probably leaned into it. It almost became a character because it gave people this intrigue about me.”
Sellers certainly isn’t bothered by outside opinions. “I knew how hard we were working and how hard I’d worked previously to get there,” he says. “All of the great chefs that I worked under, and the amount of hours and dedication I put in. I try to concentrate on what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”
Several chefs I’ve spoken to recently, including Humble Chicken’s Angelo Sato, cite Sellers as an inspiration, both for his creativity in the kitchen and for his ability to drive his own career. He owns his restaurants—a rarity in hospitality—and he wants to exemplify the top one percent of the industry. He’s evolved over the years as much as his dishes have, although Restaurant Story’s ethos has never changed. There have been challenges, like the pandemic, but Sellers just sees all of it as part of that upward journey.
“You have good times and bad times,” Sellers admits. “Sometimes you struggle to be creative. Sometimes you feel burned out. And at the time, you’re telling yourself you’re not burned out. You have an up and down relationship with [the] media. Good things are said about you, then not so good things are said about you. The expectations come with having a restaurant like this.”
Sellers often asks himself and his team specific questions: Why did we open a restaurant? What do you want to feel when you go to a restaurant? As much as they can philosophically answer, it’s the experience at Restaurant Story that provides the real responses. Visiting is a precise, thoughtful encounter between diner and staff that never feels pretentious or inaccessible. During my meal, my accompanying friend was so impressed by her discovery of finger lime, an ingredient she had never seen, that the kitchen sent out a box of the citrus fruits for her to take home. The restaurant feels on the cusp of a third Michelin star, a goal that Sellers admits is present in his decision-making and efforts. And underscoring everything is the answer to Sellers’ why.
“I love hospitality,” he says. “I love creating happiness for people. That has to remain the essence of what we do, however far we push the food. I was very young when I opened my restaurant and had this dictatorial, driving attitude. And now I sit in a place where I’m surrounded by great talent and we have great conversations and we don’t make changes for change’s sake. We let the restaurant push us forward instead of pushing the restaurant forward.”
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