Clare Smyth

Credit Brambilla-Serrani

Credit Brambilla-Serrani

Core by Clare Smyth

92 Kensington Park road
W112PN London
Great Britain
+44.(0)20.39375086

Originally from County Antrim, in Northern Ireland, the chef is famous because for many years she was Gordon Ramsey’, in the flagship restaurant on Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea, London. She arrived at 24, in 2002, after 8 years cutting her teeth in London. She soon became the senior sous chef at the restaurant, which had just received 3 Michelin stars the previous year. A very first for a Scottish chef.
 

But Smyth’s CV also includes three years at Louis XV in Monte Carlo with Alain Ducasse plus shorter internships at the Roux’s Waterside Inn and at French Laundry and Per Se, on the two coasts of the United States, working beside Thomas Keller. Strict fine dining temples. Yet if the restaurant still keeps the highest acknowledgement given by the Red Guide after 17 years, a great merit also goes to this iron woman, who stood the pressure between 2008 and 2016, when she returned to the headquarters, and first became head chef, then chef-patron.

Then in August 2017, before turning 40, Smyth decided to cut the umbilical chord and start working solo in her own restaurant, Core, in the heart of Notting Hill, a few blocks from Brett Graham’s Ledbury (another great speaker in a previous edition of Identità Milano). Core by Claire Smyth is a modern British fine dining restaurant that tries to give new dignity to British fine dining, proudly detaching itself from the classic style imposed by French cuisine.

Emphasis is given to high quality ingredients, of course, but most of all to ingredients that have a strong ethical and sustainable character. Their selection is the result of a long research of independent farmers and artisan producers. Examples include scallops from the Ethical Shellfish Company on the island of Mull, part of the Scottish Hebrides, and hand-selected potatoes from Chris Hayselden’s farm in Suffolk, in East Anglia. She uses these raw materials in an essential yet comprehensive menu through dishes like Lamb braised carrot, her signature dish in this first phase, where she’s clearly upturned the roles of lamb and carrot, with the latter gaining the main role in the dish.

Has participated in

Identità Milano


by

Gabriele Zanatta

born in Milan, 1973, freelance journalist, coordinator of Identità Golose World restaurant guidebook since 2007, he is a contributor for several magazines and teaches History of gastronomy and Culinary global trends into universities and institutes. 
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