- Company
- Core by Clare Smyth
- Role
- Chef-Owner
- Est. Net Worth
- $5 Million (Est.)
- Stage
- Emerging
- Industry
- Hospitality
Clare Smyth
Chef-Owner at Core by Clare Smyth
About
Clare Smyth is the chef-owner of Core by Clare Smyth in London's Notting Hill, a restaurant that earned three Michelin stars and was named The World's Best Female Chef — a title she has pushed back against, arguing that her cooking should be judged on its own merits rather than through a gendered lens. Smyth is the first and only woman to hold three Michelin stars in the United Kingdom, and one of very few women worldwide to achieve the distinction. Her cooking at Core celebrates British ingredients — particularly from her native Northern Ireland — with a precision and elegance that reflects her training under Gordon Ramsay, for whom she served as chef patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, becoming the first woman to hold that role. Smyth's menu at Core transforms humble British ingredients like potato, lamb, and crab into dishes of extraordinary refinement, and her commitment to sustainable sourcing and minimal waste reflects a growing consciousness in fine dining about the environmental impact of luxury cuisine.
Current Company
Core by Clare Smyth — Chef-Owner
The Chef Who Proved Excellence Has No Gender
Clare Smyth's achievement of three Michelin stars at Core — the only woman to hold that distinction in the United Kingdom — represents both a personal triumph and a challenge to the fine-dining establishment's deeply entrenched gender biases. Smyth's path to the top of British gastronomy was anything but easy: she left her family's farm in Northern Ireland at age sixteen to pursue cooking, trained in some of the world's most demanding kitchens, and worked her way through the notoriously masculine and often hostile culture of professional kitchens at a time when women were routinely told they didn't belong. Her appointment as chef patron of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay — the first woman to hold the role at any of Ramsay's restaurants — was a milestone, but it was her decision to leave and open her own restaurant that demonstrated the full scope of her ambition.
Core, which opened in London's Notting Hill in 2017, earned its third Michelin star in just two years — a trajectory that confirmed Smyth as one of the most technically accomplished chefs in the world. Her cooking at Core is a celebration of British ingredients, particularly those from her native Northern Ireland: dishes built around potatoes, lamb, crab, and dairy that are elevated through extraordinary technique into compositions of remarkable refinement and elegance. The restaurant's signature dish — 'Potato and Roe,' which transforms a humble baked potato into a dish of exquisite luxury through the addition of herring roe, trout roe, and dulse — exemplifies Smyth's philosophy: that the greatest cooking begins with the best ingredients, treated with respect and transformed through skill rather than disguised by complexity.
Sustainability, Mentorship, and Redefining Fine Dining's Values
Smyth's influence extends beyond her cooking to her advocacy for sustainability in fine dining and her commitment to mentoring the next generation of women chefs. Core operates on principles of minimal waste, seasonal sourcing, and close relationships with farmers and fishers — practices that Smyth views not as marketing gestures but as fundamental to the quality of her cooking. She has argued that fine dining's traditional reliance on luxury ingredients flown in from around the world is both environmentally irresponsible and culinarily unnecessary: the best dish she can make, she insists, starts with the best potato she can find from a farm she knows personally, not with truffles airfreighted from Italy.
Her refusal to accept the title of 'Best Female Chef' — arguing that the gendered category implies that women compete in a separate, lesser league — has made her a leading voice in the conversation about gender equity in professional kitchens. Smyth has been candid about the harassment, dismissal, and discrimination she faced throughout her career, and has used her position to create a kitchen culture at Core that is rigorous but respectful — proving that excellence does not require the abusive management styles that have been normalized in many professional kitchens. Her success has inspired a generation of young women to pursue careers in fine dining, demonstrating through her example that the highest levels of the profession are not reserved for men and that the standards of excellence are universal.