The can-do chef at the helm of Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen
IF there’s a glass ceiling hovering over Claire Smyth’s three Michelin star London kitchen, this chef can’t see it.
CLARE Smyth has a personal maxim: “It’s all very doable.” Career. Family. Business. If there’s a glass ceiling hovering over Smyth’s three Michelin star London kitchen, this chef — arguably the finest woman in the game and an impressive figure in modern British gastronomy — can’t see it.
It’s an attitude that has taken her to the top in a notoriously competitive and male-dominated trade, and all the while working for the world champion of chef belligerence, Gordon Ramsay.
Smyth, 36, in Australia recently for the Margaret River Gourmet Escape and as one of Tourism Australia’s “Influencers”, was the first female chef in Britain to run a restaurant with three Michelin stars when she took on Restaurant Gordon Ramsay for her famous boss and business partner in 2007. She has kept the restaurant’s coveted ranking ever since. Last year, she was made a member of the British Empire for services to the hospitality industry.
She plans to marry next year and hopes for a family, while keeping the restaurant at the very summit of fine dining.
“It’s all very doable,” she says. “For sure it’s still a male-dominated scene at the top, but there are exceptions, such as (chef) Helene Darroze at London’s Connaught … And there are people behind people that nobody would ever have heard of. One of the best chefs in London is a woman you’ve never heard of because the limelight’s not her style.”
She refers to Rachel Humphrey, who joined Le Gavroche as an apprentice in 1996, working her way up to become the first female head chef in the restaurant’s 40-year history. “There are many like her,” says Smyth.
But for a chef who grew up on farm in Northern Ireland and has worked around the world in some of the finest restaurants, the limelight has become a necessary evil. Her achievements are the result of considerable focus.
At 21, she came to Australia to “stage” — or work free — to expand her repertoire, working for, among others, Christine Manfield at her Sydney restaurant Paramount and Dietmar Sawyere at Level 41.
Changes? “I have noticed that a lot of people are using a lot more native produce and I didn’t get a sense of that previously,” she says. “There are more and more great restaurants and chefs, so many things on so many levels. I went to Attica and Vue de Monde; they’re cooking great food, cutting edge, right on the money, world class.”
But six months in Sydney at the turn of the century gave Smyth the impression that there was little she could learn here that she couldn’t pick up at home or in France. “I actually went back to the UK because at that time Australians were shipping produce halfway across the world, so it wasn’t at its best. Now it is premium products available locally, everywhere.”
Several other professional stints, including 18 months working for chef Alain Ducasse in Monaco, single out Smyth as a rare bird.
She admits to anxiety for several years over the mantel of three Michelin stars she inherited when Ramsay gave her the job. But time has helped, and Smyth’s measured management style is renowned in the London restaurant fraternity.
“I have grown up now and into my own style of how I want to work,” she says. “When you are in the kitchen it is your life and home, so I want it to be a good environment that people are happy to be in. I want it to be a profession that they are proud of. They work incredibly hard; the desire to learn needs to be treated with respect.
“I’ve established the restaurant as very stable; the head chef has been with me for seven years (and) they’re extremely strong. Between all of us we work hard to create that work-life balance. We all have every weekend off, we are closed Saturday and Sunday. We’ve all grown up now and changed, and I want to keep everyone together because that’s where our strength is.
“I loved working for Gordon. Yes, he was tough, but the TV persona is more for TV. His generosity is fantastic, he recognises talent and lets them run with it. I’ve learned a lot from him about management.”
John Lethlean’s First Bite column is online this week