Clare Smyth has three Michelin stars, and cooked for Harry and Meghan’s wedding. Her mission? To make the humble magical
When Clare Smyth first looked round the premises of her restaurant, Core, she had a strong feeling that “the place was full of good times”. Though she did not know the history of the building, that instinct was spot on. Back in 1969 another pioneering woman, Prue Leith, had made her name at 92 Kensington Park Road, in the same knocked-through ground floor of a pair of grand stucco-fronted Victorian terraced houses. When Leith’s had opened, Humphrey Lyttelton, then restaurant critic of Tatler, urged diners to make their way to an unfamiliar part of the capital by any means possible: “If you can rob a bank, or beg or borrow a fortune, go to the seamy end of Notting Hill…” For 25 years, many followed his advice, including several Beatles and Princess Margaret.
Half a century on, this end of Notting Hill is very far from “seamy”. What was 1960s Portobello bohemia for Leith has become grown-up and gentrified – but you still would be advised to consider grand larceny in order to get a table at Core. When I visited the restaurant earlier in the summer, it was the opening week after lockdown – which meant it was also the first week that Smyth, 42, had been able to celebrate with her diners the fact that she had become the only British woman ever to be awarded three Michelin stars for her cooking. Good times, indeed.
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