Queen of the Cuisine – Clare Smyth

“I don’t care if customers pronounce the name of the wine or a dish wrong. It absolutely doesn’t matter. Just sit back and enjoy it.

Nobody who is paying for their dinner should ever have to do anything more than that”– says Clare Smyth

 It is unbelievable but she is the only British female chef with three Michelin stars in UK, and only the fourth in Britain to have this honou

Mrs. Smyth  prefers to challenge herself making something spectacular with a carrot or a potato because it is more powerful than any luxury ingredient

According to Clare Smyth the luxury is to feel relaxed and comfortable.

What is her secret?

It’s simple – the older she gets, the simpler her dishes get, and her standards about preparing become stricter.

Her addiction to “real” food has roots in her childhood on a farm in Northern Ireland.

 “We had sheep and cows and grew crops on our farm. Eating out was all about quantity over quality in Ireland back then; it was all mixed grills and high teas. There weren’t any fine dining restaurants. Being on a farm, we would butcher animals, freeze them and eat the whole thing. “

Since moving to London at the age of 16 to study catering, she has worked in some of the most celebrated kitchens in the world including Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monaco.

Nowadays Clare is the owner of Core by Clare Smyth in London.

Let’s be honest – she is not average culinary genius, she is a lot over-the-top in everything around her.

Smyth’s focus is to curate energetic and to develop the repertoire of the original recipes.

Once Clare challenged herself to see how long she would prepare the same meal without repeating.

“I found it incredibly difficult because I had never worked, and my job is my life. Then, to not do it any more, you lose a little bit of who you are.”

Maybe when Mrs. Smyth studied catering she couldn’t dream that she would join Gordon Ramsey’s planet for 13 years.

Once Mr. Ramsey said:

“Margaret Thatcher was a young woman once and she ran a country, we’re going to get you to lead the kitchen”. 

When she was 28, Ramsay helped her to become a woman – chef in the top-level cooking in the restaurant with Michelin stars:

“People were saying ‘you’re the first woman in the UK to run a three Michelin-star restaurant. But I could be the first woman to lose three stars. It was so much pressure. Would that have been seen as are women strong enough?’ So I was incredibly determined to show that I was, but it shouldn’t be like that, gender doesn’t play a part in it at all.”

In the summer of 2017, Smyth realized a dream to open her own restaurant Core by Clare Smith in the Notting Hill.

The restaurant had 54 seats, there was no dress and you could listen on stereo U2 and Van Morrison.

“To open my own restaurant with my own vision and ideas, to take it from that to three stars in just over three years…We didn’t even get to year three before we ended up in lockdown.”

Nowadays the top chef Clare is sure that Ramsey helped her in conducting herself and managed her kitchen.

“People might think that’s quite funny, given his television persona, but actually he’s not like that at all! That’s not how he operates his kitchens, and if it was, he wouldn’t be as successful as he is.”

Besides earning three Michelin stars, she received countless other for the original approach in preparing foods.

“Food tells the story of what’s around us. “

“When people travel to the UK and come to Core I want them to eat things that are British: jellied eels, beef and mince; these are the ingredients with stories behind them. That’s the story of our land and where we’re from.”

There is a new project in her life – restaurant Oncore in Sidney located on level 26 of Crown Sydney’s towering glass building in Barangaroo.

Smyth’s formula is Northern Irish heritage and mod-Brit culinary within an Australian context.

And again the playlist is funny – Cyndi Lauper, Smashing Pumpkins, Aerosmith, Oasis and Coldplay.

You can find more inspirations of successful women here.