Afternoon sunshine pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows at MOR, Tom Sellers’ new seafood restaurant near St Ives. The beach below is busy with holidaymakers enjoying a scorching day on Cornwall’s north coast, blissfully unaware that, in a few hours, England’s hopes of World Cup glory will be dashed by Argentina.
With one of Cornwall’s finest views outside, the restaurant could have relied on its setting to do the heavy lifting. Instead, Sellers and designer Shayne Brady have created a room that more than holds its own: natural stone, timber and sheer fabrics sit alongside warm yellow tones selected to echo the sand of Carbis Bay beach and Cornwall’s changing skies.
MOR is the antithesis of bland hotel restaurant design. In fact, it is among the prettiest restaurants in the country. Sellers knows the location well, having run a successful pop-up in the space just ahead of the pandemic. MOR has taken over Carbis Bay Estate’s principal restaurant from Adam Handling’s Ugly Butterfly, which closed last summer after a four-year run.
I went into the kitchen at Tom Aikens when I was 16 and never really left. I’ve sacrificed a huge amount and left my home and family. I don’t have a big circle of friends.
At first, Sellers seems more interested in the evening’s service than discussing his new restaurant. He warms and becomes more expansive as we talk, but his strengths as a chef and operator are easier to see in the restaurant around us: in the clarity of its approach, the care with which it has been put together and the remarkable people he has persuaded to come to Cornwall.
Putting the catch of the day front and centre
An old-fashioned set of scales takes pride of place on the kitchen counter, where guests can choose their fish for the main course and decide how they would like it cooked. Today’s options include turbot, monkfish and a pair of enormous plaice. Each comes with a simple garden salad and potatoes, plus half a dozen condiments served in yakumi pans, among them nori butter, chopped red chillies and a secret-recipe hot sauce.
Around this centrepiece is a selection of outstandingly creative small plates: a spatchcock barbecue quail skewer with salted chilli and lime; a langoustine dumpling ‘in brodo’ with lardo from nearby Coombeshead Farm; and a bang bang Cornish squid salad that could have been rather pedestrian in lesser hands but proves anything but.
The cooking reflects the talent in the kitchen. Corrin Harrison, formerly head chef at Ynyshir and latterly its sister restaurant Gwen, leads it day to day, overseen by Sellers’ group executive chef Tom Anglesea. Elwyn Boyles, previously executive pastry chef for US titan Thomas Keller, has recently joined HiStory Hospitality and is helping with the launch.
There’s a huge amount of talent without a restaurant home right now. It’s probably never been harder in terms of costs, the economy and the challenges that brings. Talent as a cook will carry you only so far.
Front of house is just as strong: general manager Katie Russell has worked at Elystan Street and Evelyn’s Table, while former SOLA sommelier Tara Ozols, recently appointed group head of wine, and HiStory’s head of operations, Darren McHugh, are lending their support.
Seafood may taste better within sight of the water, but MOR has a more tangible advantage than its view. Sellers and his team work directly with fishermen and seafood specialists, adapting the menu to what they bring in. Some fish is carefully aged on site, but much of what guests eat at lunch and dinner is caught that very morning.
“Someone might drop off 12 mackerel in the morning and we’ll work with them,” Sellers tells me. “We have a local diver called Jamie Kirkaldy who free dives for our scallops. He goes down on one breath and collects each scallop individually and only dives for what we order.
“I try to be in tune with where I am in the world, and that dictated the creative direction here at MOR.”
Telling a new story
Given the personal narratives that have long informed his two Michelin star flagship restaurant, Story, it seems natural to ask how MOR will communicate those relationships to guests. Sellers bristles at the premise of the question.
“Everyone jumps on the fucking Story thing. Everyone tells stories now,” is his brusque response. “I called my restaurant Story all those years ago because I was telling my story. I had spent years working for amazing chefs. It was personal: where I grew up, how I was brought up, what influenced me, who I learned to cook from and where I was in the world.”
At MOR, he says, the produce and the people behind it don’t need an elaborate narrative, just as a perfectly sourced and cooked piece of seafood often only needs a scattering of salt and a squeeze of lemon.
“If we have great produce, perhaps the menu says ‘picked today’ strawberries. We walk guests up to the fish counter, talk them through the fish and know the fishermen by name. It comes out naturally.”
MOR is an impressive show of strength from a restaurant group at the top of its game. Although it is a partnership between Carbis Bay Estate and HiStory, with the estate employing most of the team, it feels anything but formulaic, as hotel-chef collaborations sometimes are. And it is only one part of an unusually busy period for Sellers.
A rapidly changing portfolio
Earlier this year, Sellers parted ways with Dovetale and 1 Hotel Mayfair following what he describes as a difference of opinion over the long-term direction of the restaurant he launched in 2023. But in the background, another, much larger hotel project was taking shape, although Sellers stresses that Dovetale did not close to make way for it.
“Because the projects are happening close together, people might think I’m suddenly throwing out restaurants. I’m not. They’ve just fallen into place at roughly the same time.”
Next month, Sellers’ HiStory Hospitality group will open five F&B concepts at Stoke Park, the Buckinghamshire country estate and hotel near Slough. The 300-acre property has been undergoing a lengthy restoration since its acquisition in 2021 by Reliance Industries, the Indian conglomerate led by Mukesh Ambani. Sellers has previously worked for the Ambani family privately.
Outside whatever people think of me as a chef, I’m a serious fucking operator and always have been. I have dedicated my whole life to my restaurants; I live and breathe them every waking hour.
The five venues are The Piano Bar, The Terrace & Glasshouse, The Tea Room, The Clubhouse and The Penn. Named after former estate owner John Penn, the latter will be Stoke Park’s flagship restaurant. Its menu will draw on British produce and culinary history, but its guiding influence is a particular period in fine dining: the late 1980s and early 1990s, when chefs including Marco Pierre White brought new energy and ambition to classical French cooking in Britain. Sellers says the starting point for The Penn’s creative direction was the basket-weave patterned plates used at White’s iconic Wandsworth restaurant Harveys.
“We’re going to explore the early days of nouvelle cuisine and lean into a classical approach but try to make it feel right for now.”
Working alongside Sellers will be his long-time lieutenant and head chef at Story Tom Phillips, along with Dom Robinson, who joined the group more recently having previously attracted a Michelin star as chef-patron of The Blackbird in Berkshire.
Dishes will include terrine of spiced pig’s head with Scottish langoustine; roast wild sea bass with Orkney scallop; fish of the day en papillote; and venison wellington Rossini. Produce grown in Stoke Park’s kitchen garden, overseen by Kate Mannery, formerly head gardener at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, will inform the menu throughout the year.
It is an intriguing and apt sounding premise for a restaurant at an estate long associated with golf, country house hospitality and a more traditional sort of luxury. Sellers will not be drawn on his Michelin ambitions, although The Penn sounds like a more formal and ambitious proposition than Dovetale.
“The aim is to have a restaurant people enjoy coming to. The rest takes care of itself. I’ve been around accolades for much of my career, including when I worked for chefs such as René Redzepi and Thomas Keller, so of course that’s ingrained in me. But I don’t enter a restaurant saying that an accolade is the goal. You build a restaurant guest by guest. Story wouldn’t still be here if we hadn’t built it that way. The excitement around a new idea or brand only lasts as long as the people behind it keep driving it forward every day.”
A master of reinvention
Story is, of course, the clearest evidence of that staying power. Sellers opened it down the road from London Bridge station in Bermondsey when he was just 26; it will turn 14 early next year. Its tasting menu has always drawn on British ingredients, personal memories and the stories behind dishes, but the restaurant has been reinvented twice: first with a new menu and dining room in 2018, then with a major expansion that Sellers dubbed ‘Story 3.0’ in 2024.
“The soul of the restaurant has always remained the same, but it has become more refined. Story is the jewel in the crown. It’s my first and most personal body of work, and I’m extremely proud of it. It has never stood still. If it had, I probably wouldn’t still be here.”
Sellers is all too aware of how tough things are at the moment for hospitality. It’s also not lost on him that three of his key chefs – Anglesea, Harrison and Robinson – have all previously had their own names above the door at other restaurants.
“There’s a huge amount of talent without a restaurant home right now. I can’t speak for individual chefs or why their restaurants closed but it’s probably never been harder in terms of costs, the economy and the challenges that brings. Talent as a cook will carry you only so far.”
One tough cookie
Sellers has proved an impressively resilient and adaptable operator. While a few partnerships didn’t go the distance – not least Dovetale, which continues to trade – he has yet to close a restaurant.
Alongside Story, MOR and the upcoming Stoke Park project his mini empire has grown to include Story Cellar in Covent Garden, which has recently reopened following a facelift, and a bakery in Horsham, West Sussex, called Gwyn’s. It was also recently revealed that he is seeking to launch a central London pub.
“Outside whatever people think of me as a chef, I’m a serious fucking operator and always have been. I have dedicated my whole life to my restaurants; I live and breathe them every waking hour.”
But Sellers has also spent the past decade or so quietly building an events business that now rivals his restaurant operation in scale. What initially began with brands approaching Story for collaborations has developed into Once Upon a Time: a juggernaut that does between 200 and 300 events a year across the world.
Rolls-Royce has worked with Sellers for nine years; other clients and partners have included Beats by Dre, Birkenstock, Bang & Olufsen and Apple. The group also works on events connected with football clubs, Wimbledon and Formula One.
I don’t criticise chefs who want to grow their consumer profile. If it works for them, it works for them. But I have to feel passionate about something to deliver it. I’m focused on operating my restaurants.
At first, Sellers didn’t have the capital or infrastructure for a dedicated team, so he instead pulled people from the restaurant to make it happen.
“It kept growing,” he says proudly. “I worked hard to build an ecosystem of brands I felt aligned with us, in terms of integrity and being progressive in their markets. At heart I’m a creative person, and there was an opportunity to build a business around those partnerships and events more widely.”
The events business is run from HiStory HQ, which is just across the road from Story in the space that was once home to Tom Simmons restaurant in the One Tower Bridge development. The building has offices and a boardroom above a central production and development kitchen. Around 20 people work in head office roles spanning finance, marketing, events, logistics, operations and HR, while the events team cooks and prepares food below.
Keeping things low key
The scale of Sellers’ business is all the more impressive given his relatively low-key public persona. While well connected in the industry, Sellers hasn’t exactly courted the limelight, a few appearances on Great British Menu and Saturday Kitchen aside.
He has a substantial Instagram following – close to half a million – but doesn’t engage as most two Michelin stars chefs do choosing to run the account himself and mix info about his projects with sometimes zany content, for example an image of a seagull captioned ‘Under Siege’ - a Steven Seagal joke he estimates only a tiny fraction of his followers understood.
“I don’t criticise chefs who want to grow their consumer profile. If it works for them, it works for them. But I have to feel passionate about something to deliver it. I’m focused on operating my restaurants. I’ve wanted to be progressive and sometimes disruptive in the market, but that’s aligned with who I am; it isn’t something I’ve manufactured.”
It’s easy to hire good people and tell them what to do; it’s much harder to hire good people and have them tell you what to do
Soon after we begin to discuss the ins and out of this, Sellers reveals that he feels like he is misunderstood as a chef and operator. “If you asked ten people about me, you’d get ten different answers,” he says somewhat cryptically, before calling over to Anglesea to ask him for confirmation that he is an okay bloke to work for. The answer is a slightly confused but nevertheless emphatic “yes”.
While Anglesea was hardly going to use that moment to air any grievances, it’s clear that Sellers does not struggle to attract great people to work for him. Like a lot of chefs at his level, he expanded because he grew tired of losing people because he could not give them new opportunities.
After a decade running Story and doing little else in terms of other restaurant projects, the past five years or so have given Sellers a fresh perspective.
“Cooking and running restaurants in a different way has been healthy for me. It helped me see what was good and what was less good about Story. In a high-end tasting-menu restaurant, you tell guests what they’re eating and how they’re eating it. That can be magical, and worth a special journey. But when it’s all you’ve done for ten years with blinkers on, it can drive you mad.”
New creative outlets
MOR and The Penn give Sellers even more creative outlets, but their respective locations also offer practical advantages. London is quieter during the summer holidays, he says, just as Cornwall reaches its high season. That will allow the group to move some staff between businesses or plan closures around quieter periods. He is wary, though, of assuming that diversification makes every venture safer.
“Each individual business has its own profit and loss account. If one is suffering and another is doing well, all you may be doing is propping up the weaker one. You still have to hold each business accountable. My finance director and I have honest conversations about each business separately, but having a family of businesses means they can also help one another when needed.”
That structure has given Sellers room to delegate, even as he retains control of the creative direction. “A great restaurant is about much more than the food on the plate. As you mature, you move from cook to chef, chef to operator, operator to owner. Those are different skill sets. Fourteen years ago, I had to be all four at once, sometimes to my detriment. It was hard, but I learned quickly.”
The operation is now a very different beast employing well over 100 people. “The people working with me now challenge me too. It’s easy to hire good people and tell them what to do; it’s much harder to hire good people and have them tell you what to do.”
He wants the people joining HiStory to see a future within it. To that end, the group looks set to follow the US tech world playbook by closing all its venues for three days in January to take staff away for HiStory Camp, which will involve outside speakers and team activities.
Counting the personal cost
Yet for all the advantages of a larger team, Sellers has yet to find a work-life balance estimating that he works 100 hours a week.
“I’m a pretty lonely guy. I don’t have many friends. I went into the kitchen at Tom Aikens when I was 16 and never really left. I’ve sacrificed a huge amount and left my home and family. I don’t have a big circle of friends. My day-to-day life is largely run by my office and my business.”
I’d say I’m halfway between chef and operator right now. I’m still on the tools.
What time he has outside work goes to his partner and his daughter. He walks the dog and tries to run, go to the gym or play football or padel. “I’m proud of the consistency from being the young chef who opened Story to where I am now, but, honestly, it has taken everything I’ve had.”
Sellers traces some of his drive to a strict father who believed in hard work, and to playing sport at a high level before entering kitchens at a young age. That competitive streak remains, even as his role shifts from chef towards restaurateur.
So, what is the endgame for Sellers, now approaching his 40th birthday, and HiStory? “I own the business, but the true definition of an owner, to my mind, is somebody who doesn’t need to be in the business. That’s not me at the moment.”
For now, he wants to keep building restaurants while remaining close to the cooking.
“If you drew a graph, I’d say I’m halfway between chef and operator right now. I’m still on the tools. I love cooking at Story. An operator should still be in tune with that. I build, own and operate restaurants because I love them. It never gets old.”