Clare Smyth is a Northern Irish chef. She is the Chef Patron of Core by Clare Smyth which opened in 2017 and received two Michelin stars as a new entry in the 2019 guide. She was Chef Patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay from 2012 to 2016. She became the first female British chef to hold and retain three Michelin stars. Smyth won the Chef of the Year award in 2013 and achieved a perfect score in the 2015 edition of the Good Food Guide. Smyth has appeared on television shows such as Masterchef and Saturday Kitchen. In 2017, Smyth opened her first restaurant, Core, in London. It has been awarded two Michelin stars in the 2019 Michelin Guide.
Early life
Smyth grew up on a farm in County Antrim. She is the youngest of three children, of her father William, a farmer, and mother Doreen, who worked as a waitress at a local restaurant. At the age of fifteen, Smyth held a job over a holiday period at a local restaurant, inspiring her to become a chef. She left school at sixteen to study catering at Highbury College in Portsmouth, Hampshire.
Culinary career
While at culinary college, Smyth served an apprenticeship at Grayshott Hall, Surrey. She left that post to work full-time at Terrance Conran's restaurant at Michelin House, London. She followed this with a six-month period in Australia to work for a catering company, and on her return to the UK she staged at a variety of restaurants including The Waterside Inn and Gidleigh Park. She worked at the restaurant of the St Enodoc Hotel in Rock, Cornwall, first as sous chef and then as head chef. While there, she won the title of Young Cornish Fish Chef of the Year. In 2002 Gordon Ramsay offered Smyth a post at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. In 2007, she was announced as the new head chef of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, becoming the first female chef in the United Kingdom to run a restaurant with three Michelin stars. Of the 121 British Michelin-starred restaurants at the time of her appointment, only seven had female head chefs. She had left Ramsay's restaurant to work for a year and a half in Alain Ducasse's Le Louis XV restaurant in Monaco, before returning once more to the UK to run the Chelsea-based restaurant. She took over from Zanoni, who was heading to Versailles to open a new Gordon Ramsay restaurant. In 2013, Smyth was named the Good Food Guide's 'National Chef of the Year'. Smyth was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to the hospitality industry. Smyth was awarded a perfect ten score by the Good Food Guide of the UK's 2015. She won the Chef Award at the 2016 The Catey Awards, previously won by her mentor Gordon Ramsay in 2000. Smyth left Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 2016 to open her first own restaurant Core. Her first solo venture, Core, opened in London's Notting Hill neighbourhood in July 2017. In April 2018, Core was named Best Restaurant at the GQ Food and Drink Awards. Clare Smyth was named the World's Best Female Chef 2018 by the World's 50 Best Restaurants. In 2018, Smyth appeared as a judge in the "UK" episode of The Final Table, season 1. On 1 October 2018, Core was awarded two Michelin stars in the 2019 Michelin Guide.
