Ones to watch: Neil Bentinck

Though he grew up surrounded by food and enjoyed cooking, it would be years until Neil realised he wanted to be a chef. He worked in a few kitchens as a teenager, but at the age of twenty he went abroad in search of a new adventure. ‘I was a bit all over the place,’ he laughs. ‘I lived in Australia for a while and travelled around Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. Australian food is so diverse with all these Asian influences. I was tasting all these new things, and that's when it hit me – this is what I want to do.’

Neil returned to the UK with new vigour and took a job at Ye Old Sun Inn at Colton with head chef Steven King. ‘Steven had travelled around the world too so we had lots of different influences on the menu,’ he says. ‘It was great, but unfortunately he became ill about a year later, so they handed the pub over to someone else.’ Neil spent another formative year with new boss Ashley McCarthy (who still owns the pub to this day) before moving on, and working his way around a variety of different hotels and restaurants in York. He spent a year with James Mackenzie at The Pipe and Glass Inn, then two as the head chef of Van Zeller in Harrogate. ‘That must have been seven or eight years ago now,’ he says, racking his brains. ‘I left Van Zeller knowing that I didn’t want to work for anyone else – I wanted to do my own thing and see what I could accomplish. So I left, started my company, Skosh, and worked as a self-employed chef.’

Self-employment ought to have meant a bit of flexibility and extra time, but things only got busier for Neil. He was still working full-time in the kitchen – first with Lisa Goodwin-Allen and Nigel Haworth at Northcote, then with Steve Smith and Andrew Pern at The Star Inn at Harome – but simultaneously Neil was writing his business plan for Skosh, setting the scene for his own restaurant in York and preparing with his wife for the birth of their first child. ‘It was mental, yeah!’ he laughs. ‘But I have a very understanding partner, and it really felt like a now or never situation. She was like, ‘you keep talking about it – you’re just going to have to do it!’ So that’s what we did.’

It took a couple of years to pull it all together, but in 2016 the dream became reality and Skosh opened its doors for the first time on York’s Micklegate. ‘I wanted to go a little bit out of town just because the rent was cheaper,’ he shrugs. ‘The shop itself was an old letting agents – just a completely empty office – so it had the potential and enough space for thirty to forty covers. It took a year just to get the extraction built in, but it was worth it.’ Once upon a time, Micklegate was a prime stag and hen do destination – now it’s the heart of York’s dynamic food scene, thanks in large part to Neil and his team. As you might have guessed, dinner at Skosh is not for the unadventurous. The current menu features homemade sourdough with acorn dairy butter and a topping of crunchy Indian ‘gunpowder’ spice, chawanmushi (Japanese steamed egg custard) with white asparagus, hazelnut and black truffle, carrots with pomegranate and dukkah, and pork loin ‘hoi sin’ with rhubarb, sprouting broccoli, Sichuan chilli and peanut.

It’s ambitious, innovative stuff – even those who go with a wide culinary vocabulary and an open mind are bound to discover things they never knew existed. Anyone who has eaten Neil’s scallop sashimi pizza can attest to that. ‘I did it for New Year’s Eve – it was a crispy Indian ‘roti’ flatbread with creme fraiche, raw scallops, shichimi pepper and black truffle on top. It took people by surprise but it was so popular we had it on the menu for about a year!’

Alongside a bevy of local awards, Skosh won a Bib Gourmand in 2017 and has blazed an exciting new trail in York for adventurous diners ever since. It has given Neil a little breathing space at least – he finally has time to spend with his young family (four-year-old Henry and newly-born Arthur who is just turning one) and his labrador, Brian, as well as focusing on his restaurant. As for any bigger Michelin-sized ambitions, he remains unconcerned. ‘We just do what we do,’ he shrugs. ‘I’m not really sure what Michelin look for these days, but if they like scallop pizzas, who knows?’