The meals that shaped worldfamous chef Clare Smyth

She left Northern Ireland at 16 to pursue a career in world-class kitchens and today her own restaurant has two Michelin stars. Here, she talks about the meals (and chefs) that shaped her.

I did work experience at The French Laundry in the Napa Valley at the end of the summer of 2004. I was there for a couple of weeks. [Chef and owner] Thomas Keller is one of my heroes. One evening he said to me, “Clare, I’m going to cook dinner for you tonight.” I turned around and there was a place set for me. So I sat there and watched the team cooking and enjoyed all the classic French Laundry dishes. As a young chef, I was blown away: the generosity of it was incredibly inspiring. In the summer of 2004, I was in the south of France, learning to speak French so I could work at Le Louis XV in Monaco. Before I started there, the chef, Franck Cerutti, invited me to eat in the dining room. Being near the border of Italy, the produce was phenomenal. They started with beautifully cut raw vegetables served in a hand-blown glass, arranged like a vase of flowers. Le Louis XV is probably the most glamorous restaurant on the planet – gold cutlery, gold teapots, even the scissors they use to cut the herbs are gold. I was in awe. To suck all that in at the age of 25, when I’m from a small town in Northern Ireland, was amazing.

When I was chef patron at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, it was closed for refurbishment for a while so I went on an eating tour. Alinea in Chicago was one of the places I visited. They are incredibly creative. We had a dish called Lamb 86, which had 86 different things to eat with the lamb: fava beans, cherry, rum, rhubarb... “86” in America [in restaurant jargon] means they’ve run out of a dish but with this one, “86” was the opposite.

Two years ago, I travelled to the north of Sweden to visit Fäviken. It’s a restaurant that’s very much talked about in culinary circles but it’s a real pain in the arse to get to. [From London] you have to take two different flights and then drive for an hour. But the region is stunning. Fäviken itself is inside an 18th-century barn with fireplaces; they only cook for about 16 people and everybody eats at the same time. We had pickles, cured ham, salted herrings, foraged berries; there was king crab with an almost burnt cream; a quail slow-roasted over wood. I couldn’t even count the courses. At the end of the meal, we all went outside and there were teepees where you could smoke cigars, chew tobacco or sip cognac and whisky; it was a wonderful dinner-party feel. I had spent the long journey thinking, “I hope this is worth it.” It absolutely was. Need to know…

Born in Northern Ireland, the chef honed her craft working for the likes of Alain Ducasse, Thomas Keller and Gordon Ramsay. In 2017, she opened her first restaurant, Core by Clare Smyth (corebyclaresmyth.com), in London’s Notting Hill and, in 2018, it was awarded two Michelin stars. Last year, she was named Best Female Chef by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.