Core by Clare Smyth

Core by Clare Smyth - elegant and informal fine dining

Core is the debut restaurant of Clare Smyth, the first and only female chef to run a restaurant with three Michelin-stars in the UK.

Clare grew up on a farm in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

In her time as Chef Patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Hospital Road, her many awards included 10/10 in the Good Food Guide, five AA rosettes and an MBE for services to the hospitality industry.

Clare also won the Cateys Chef of the Year Award 2016 and Michelin Female Chef 2017.

https://www.corebyclaresmyth.com

Core by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill, London (review by ...

Extraordinary (96-100) Outstanding (93-95) Very good to Excellent (89-92) Above average to Good (86-88) Below Average to Average (80-85) Avoid (below 80) More info > Extraordinary (96-100)Outstanding (93-95)Very good to Excellent (89-92)Above average to Good (86-88)Below Average to Average (80-85)Avoid (below 80) Exceptional chefs don't just create great restaurants and great dishes; if they are worth their salt they also generate professional offspring, thereby building there own culinary family tree.

Growing right next to it, and yes I believe he deserves his own tree by now, is Gordon Ramsay's tree with a significant offspring of chefs who have ventured out on their own, especially in London, like Marcus Wareing of 2-star Exceptional chefs don't just create great restaurants and great dishes; if they are worth their salt they also generate professional offspring, thereby building there own culinary family tree.

Growing right next to it, and yes I believe he deserves his own tree by now, is Gordon Ramsay's tree with a significant offspring of chefs who have ventured out on their own, especially in London, like Marcus Wareing of 2-star Marcus at the Berkeley Hotel , Angela Hartnett of 1-star Murano in Mayfair (amongst other restaurants) but also Jason Atherton, who's very successfully building a culinary family tree of his own and not to forget Paul Ainsworth at No. 6 in Padstow, Cornwall.

The potato was soft but had retained a little bite and its natural fresh flavours were wonderfully enhanced by the saltiness of the roe and caviar, but particularly by the dulse beurre blanc, the butteriness and mild smokiness of the sauce bringing out the best in the potato.

Smyth's head chef is Jonny Bone, who has previously worked in acclaimed kitchens such as Geranium in Copenhagen, Blue Hill at Stone Barns in the USA and of course Restaurant Gordon Ramsay 13 Hottest Restaurants in Amsterdam Read more Watch video A tour of the new kitchen Watch video Raising the curtain on the Michelin guide selection process MORE VIDEOS

Grace Dent Goes West and Adores Core By Clare Smyth - Eater ...

It remains to be seen whether this will kickstart a renewed appreciation of what Smyth is trying to achieve in her corner of Notting Hill; in a week where Dent’s exclusion from her own publication’s list of important people on the London scene ruffled more than a few feathers, though, it would take a brave soul to bet against it.

Maschler, of course, as a chronicler of the through-lines from Alistair Little to Jeremy Lee, and St John to The Clove Club; Henderson, double of course, as the fantastically accomplished cook whose wonderful Rochelle Canteen has remained (in Maschler’s words) “a hidden secret” to a world that has flocked to the other Henderon’s St John in zealous droves.

For Maschler, this is “a great move,” and while her ebullience dims a little after being reverse-ID’d at the museum entrance and told that “seniors are free,” hers is nonetheless a highly positive take, launching into a list of “items that particularly gratify” longer than some restaurants’ whole menus.

In another week, his paean to Ceremony, a “new restaurant and bar serving modern British dishes that happen to be vegetarian” would perhaps be more notable.

Places like this are the upside from the “topical outbreaks of gentrification” affecting neighbourhoods like Smoke Salt’s; for every Champagne + Fromage (a 280-character tweet populated entirely with the about-to-spew emoji), Londoners might strike it lucky with somewhere genuinely “exciting,” delivering an experience “little short of bravura.”

Core by Clare Smyth: fine dining made fresh

Core by Clare Smyth, London: Restaurant Review - olive magazine

After gaining a starry reputation (as chef patron at three-Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, and receiving an MBE for services to the hospitality industry), Clare Smyth has opened her first restaurant.

Clare and her team work behind a glass wall to prepare dishes such as Isle of Mull scallop cooked over wood, lamb with braised carrot and sheep’s milk yogurt, and pain perdu with peaches and cream.

Along with head chef Jonny Bone – who has Geranium in Copenhagen on his CV – and Clare’s passion for the produce of her home soil, means menus that are surprisingly unfussy, ingredient-led and low-waste.

The à la carte promises three courses for £65 but delivers seven if you count four canapés – including the lightest tomato and basil gougère – tangy sourdough with ‘virgin’ butter (more like a sour cream cheese), a pre-dessert, and petits fours of mini, still-warm chocolate tarts and passion fruit and pepper fruit pastilles.

My nosy tendencies were immediately indulged on arrival at Core, with a revealing glass wall the only thing separating Clare Smyth and her chefs from the dining room.

Fay Maschler reviews Core by Clare Smyth: 'You don't know what ...

Clare Smyth MBE not only held and retained the three Michelin stars originally awarded to Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 2001, but in the four years before she left Royal Hospital Road in 2016 she had the title chef-patron.

When asked for the name of the pastry chef the maître d’ mutters “Kevin” but adds that Clare is in charge of everything.

I don’t know of a formal kitchen where pastry isn’t its own fiefdom, but of course Core is Clare’s gig.

A canapé tart of exquisite brittleness holding a confection of smoked tomato tartare with macadamia nuts and black olive seeds, as much a work of art as desserts of pain perdu — lost inside a glassy sugar shell — with peaches and the chocolate and hazelnut crémeux, are presumably the handiwork of Kevin Miller, as the pastry chef is called.

Now is probably the appropriate moment to invoke the life-affirming malty sourdough bread offered with “virgin” Isle of Wight butter — also bought by Noma apparently — and the zingy passion fruit red Cambodian kampot pepper pâté de fruit that ends the meal on a jubilant note.

New Openings: Core

Clare Smyth emerges from Gordon Ramsay’s shadow to open Core in Notting Hill What’s new?

Clare Smyth stands up for haute cuisine at her first solo restaurant, Core by Clare Smyth.

Behind the scenes: As head chef of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay for eight years, chef patron for three, Clare Smyth MBE is one of the most powerful chefs in the country.

Yet outside of the industry, and in spite of the three Michelin stars she held and the Good Food Guide ‘10’ she earned, Co.Antrim-born Smyth remains a relative unknown.

Press interviews give little away but a steely focus and single-minded obsession with the hautest of haute cuisine.