Clare Smyth: "Passion comes and goes. Dedication matters"
It feels a little unusual to be at Core, Clare Smyth’s multi-Michelin started restaurant while it is empty. The dark and secluded booths of the impressive whisky salon are devoid of imbibing guests, the tables are unoccupied, the kitchen is quiet. Smyth, in her chef whites, has no menu to instruct upon, no plates to serve. Instead, she sits placidly in the corner with the legendary chef Andreas Caminada and Dom Pérignon Cellarmaster Vincent Chaperon.
The trio are in the midst of plans for an exciting collaboration – a four hands dinner (a technical term for a feast constructed by two chefs) – in association with the prestige Champagne brand. What the dishes will be is still to be decided and one yearns to be a fly on the wall in those discussions when Caminada and Smyth start talking. The passion is evident, as is the ease they feel with one another. They have cooked together – informally – before and speak affectionately over each other about how much fun they had.
“I think we have very unique styles, but we were very rooted in nature,” says Smyth. “For both of us, it is a very natural way of cooking.”
The blend of Caminada’s and Smyth’s approaches will surely yield surprising and devastatingly tasty results, but the contents of the glasses is not up for debate. The menu, entitled 'Tactility' will be designed to replicate the sensations embodied by Dom Pérignon Vintage 2015 and Dom Pérignon 2006-Plénitude 2.
Cellarmaster Chaperon is the first to gush about the collaboration. “To be part of this group is extraordinary,” he says, with a grin. “To have creative people around you, there’s an energy. Obviously, I believe wine is an essential part of gastronomy, but it has been amazing to put it all together with everything else, like a symphony. I'm very excited about it.”
Both chefs speak animatedly about each bottle of Dom Pérignon serving as a muse for each course; providing a flavour profile from which to weave a culinary narrative. “Today we looked at dishes for the 2006 and came up with completely different ideas,” says Caminada. “It’s great to have something which inspires and makes you awake a new creative impulse.”
Smyth has never been a chef to shy away from a challenge. She left culinary college to tackle Michelin starred kitchens across the globe – notably under Thomas Keller at the legendary Californian eatery The French Laundry and Alain Ducasse’s Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo – as well as spending much of her professional life under the tutelage of Gordon Ramsay, with whom she worked for more than 14 years. Collaboration and mentorship have been, she says, the lifeblood of her career.
“I think because I’ve been lucky enough to have such great mentors in my life, I always want to reach down and help someone else,” she says. “And I still rely on mine today. I feel very fortunate to be able to just ask them things all the time. They have such a vast knowledge and experience. I feel like a lot of things Gordon would say to me when I was younger didn't really resonate as much, and then when I opened my own business it suddenly resonated.”
Smyth left her position as chef patron at Gordon Ramsay in 2016 to open Core. After decades of admired work, it might sound odd that she was terrified to strike out alone. Yet she regards it as one of her biggest, and most rewarding, challenges. “I started off with quite a smallish budget when I opened and I didn't have everything I needed, but I knew that I had the ability,” she recalls. “When I look back, it was very intense, but we did achieve so much so fast. To start something brand new is very, very tough. But we had so much passion and drive.”
Above and beyond her years spent in some of the most magnificent restaurants in the world, it was – to the surprise of Smyth herself – her upbringing on a farm in Northern Ireland which provided the most fertile fodder for her culinary style. “I guess, coming from the farm and producing food. I understood a lot about food projects, and I didn't realise that what I thought was normal other people didn’t have growing up,” she says. “We cooked every meal, we would have our whole animals butchered and put in the freezer, and then every single part of the animal would be used. It has absolutely influenced my approach to food because I have a huge understanding and respect for how its reared or grown.”
Smyth sounds most excited when discussing inventive ways to cook a potato or – her current preoccupation – a Jerusalem artichoke. Yet her career has been littered with a fair amount of glamour and a dazzling array of accolades. She was the wedding caterer for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. She received a perfect score in the Good Food guide in 2015 and was the first female chef in the UK to run a restaurant with three Michelin stars. With Core has become the first Northern Irish woman to have a restaurant awarded three Michelin stars.
“It was great to be the first woman, but it also put a lot of pressure on me,” she says, of when Ramsay made her chef patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London. She was in her late twenties at the time. “He put a young woman in charge of the world's most famous restaurant that time. And all I was thinking was: what if I lose a star and then that becomes the story?” She believes that her stance on gender has shifted over the years. “I also think I initially had the idea that I had to like the men, because I never had any real female role models and that everyone was looking at me thinking I wasn't strong enough or wasn't good enough,” she recalls. “Now it feels very different. We have this generation of incredible young women coming and I recognise that it is important for them to see other women in charge present.” Now, she says, proudly that approximately 50 per cent of her team are women.
Looking back, she wishes she had not been so hard on herself. “I wish I had pushed myself a bit more – maybe I would have gone faster,” she says, with a laugh, despite what many would view as an already impressive career. As she prepares for another wonderful milestone with Dom Pérignon, I ask what she thinks is the secret ingredient for a successful chef.
“Dedication and focus,” she replies. “Passion comes and goes. It is dedication that maintains quality and consistency and longevity. It is something I say to my young chefs: you can't be the best all the time. In your life and in your career, but you’ve got to stay committed.”
Dom Pérignon ‘Tactility’ - a four hands dinner by Clare Smyth and Andreas Caminada at Core by Clare Smyth is on Tuesday 5 November. Tickets are available here.
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