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Fast-growing restaurant chain Tomahawk Steakhouse is creating more than 100 jobs with its three latest openings – with more set to follow.

Last year restaurateur Howard Eggleston unveiled plans to build up a portfolio of 20 Tomahawk Steakhouse venues, having opened the first in 2017 in Potto, North Yorkshire.

The group currently has restaurants in Yarm, Darlington, Ponteland, Newcastle Quayside, Jesmond, Beverley, Thirsk and York, as well as takeaways in Yarm and Jesmond, which attract regular diners with their signature Tomahawk steaks, Himalayan salt dry-aged beef and wagyu beef.

Now, despite the impact the pandemic is having on the wider casual dining sector, the company is ramping up expansion plans.

The group, headquartered in Eaglescliffe, has opened a new venue at the former Jamie’s Italian site at Lendal Cellars, York, and has announced plans to open a Tomahawk Steakhouse on Jamie Oliver’s former Fifteen restaurant site in London’s Hoxton, as well as to take over the restaurant at Middlesbrough’s only Grade I-listed building, Acklam Hall. Meanwhile, it is also considering sites in a raft of other locations, including Harrogate and Manchester.

The Tomahawk group will run Acklam Hall’s former Brierley Restaurant, which closed as the coronavirus pandemic struck in March.

Around 30 to 40 jobs are being created at each venue, and diners won’t have long to wait to see how the Acklam Hall site is developed as the firm expects to open by mid-October.

Mr Eggleston said: “When lockdown was imposed it was a real knock as we had just opened in Beverley, near Hull, and were only trading for three days when it happened.