British chef’s triumph is bittersweet as legitimacy of gender-specific award is questionable
The chef Clare Smyth is the first Briton to receive the World’s Best Female Chef award, which she accepted in Bilbao at the World’s 50 Best Restaurant awards on Tuesday night. Despite her own modest claims in the past that she is just a “traditional, boring chef”, Smyth’s talent is widely regarded as singular. Born in Northern Ireland, she remains the only UK woman with three Michelin stars – a talent that has now rightly been recognised on the world stage. So far, so good.
But the triumph is undeniably bittersweet. If this is a coup for Britain and British cooking, it’s less so for women. That such an award even exists confounds many, particularly when the recipients are of Smyth’s calibre. Her career to date stands up against the very best in the world, male or female – at just 28, she was Gordon Ramsay’s head chef at Royal Hospital Road before she went on to open her own place last year, Core by Clare Smyth, in London’s Notting Hill (not to mention having catered a certain high-profile wedding recently).
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