Yahoo News Fay Maschler reviews Core by Clare Smyth: 'You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone'
OK, three stars from me are not the same thing as three stars from the Michelin Guide. Clare Smyth MBE not only held and retained the three Michelin stars originally awarded to Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 2001, but in the four years before she left Royal Hospital Road in 2016 she had the title chef-patron. This is often described as a notable achievement for a woman; more straightforwardly it is just a very impressive achievement.
In premises where Prue Leith OBE GBBO opened her eponymous restaurant in 1969, when Notting Hill Gate was a no-go rather than a go-to area, Smyth is now doing her own thing.
The thought process is palpable. Formality must be minimised, so there are bare boards and no tablecloths in the dining room — environmentally defensible but in this instance lending itself to hideous, angular, jarring acoustics. The menu is not a leather-bound volume but a folded card which the customer is encouraged to keep. Music burbles in the background and I can make out U2 and Van Morrison (Smyth comes from Northern Ireland). Artworks include ones by YBAs Michael Landy and Marc Quinn as well as a screenprint from Bridget Riley, a neighbour, apparently. Staff are genial but the men in suits, a fluttering flock of them, look like a convention of Mormons trained in tray-carrying.
'A canape tart of exquisite brittleness holds a smoked tomato tartare and macadamia nut confection'
Two tasting menus of five and seven courses, which the whole table is not, as usually happens, obliged to have — difficult to imagine how that works in practise — and a three-course à la carte are topped and tailed in haute cuisine style with amuses-bouche and petits fours, the former arriving with what feels like unseemly haste.
My chum at dinner recently graduated with “Distinction” from the professional course at Leith’s School of Food and Wine (there’s serendipity for you). She is impressed — as am I — by what she calls the pastry work.
We need to talk about Kevin. When asked for the name of the pastry chef the maître d’ mutters “Kevin” but adds that Clare is in charge of everything. I don’t know of a formal kitchen where pastry isn’t its own fiefdom, but of course Core is Clare’s gig. A canapé tart of exquisite brittleness holding a confection of smoked tomato tartare with macadamia nuts and black olive seeds, as much a work of art as desserts of pain perdu — lost inside a glassy sugar shell — with peaches and the chocolate and hazelnut crémeux, are presumably the handiwork of Kevin Miller, as the pastry chef is called.
Now is probably the appropriate moment to invoke the life-affirming malty sourdough bread offered with “virgin” Isle of Wight butter — also bought by Noma apparently — and the zingy passion fruit red Cambodian kampot pepper pâté de fruit that ends the meal on a jubilant note.
On the CV of head chef Jonny Bone is Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, New York. This venture, where the aim is to raise consciousness about responsible, virtuous food use and the menu is $258 (£201) excluding “beverage” and tax, reverberates in Core.
Protein is found almost taking a backseat to vegetables in main courses of Charlotte potato and lamb braised carrot. This works quite well with the spud from Chris Hayselden’s Suffolk Farm, although innate sweetness beats a retreat under copious topping of fish roe, recherché herbs and spices and the sauce of seaweed beurre blanc.
'Protein takes a backseat to vegetables in main courses such as Charlotte potato and lamb braised carrot'
Seaweed is a generally a favoured ingredient, turning up to remind the hand-dived Isle of Mull scallop cooked over wood where it has come from. The carrot, however, is a sorry specimen and attention turns quickly to the little bun stuffed with shreds of lamb presented alongside. A pool of sheeps’ milk yoghurt has turned up at the wrong party.
Roscoff onion expertly stuffed with rich oxtail and its accompaniment of sliced beef short rib tips the balance back in favour of meat.
At the second visit there has been one alteration to the menu. Roast grouse, red cabbage, bell heather is substituted for chicken, corn and buckwheat velouté.
The game bird, breast only, has been cooked sous-vide before finishing, which is as impertinent to grouse as grouse shooting these days is to moors.
It is such a miscalculation with its flabby, liverish result not remedied by a forcemeat ball with gizzards however jauntily it’s presented in a cradle of red cabbage leaves.
Word around town is that Core is booked until October, which makes it to the point to mention that walk-ins are welcome to tables in the bar where it is possible to eat. Beyond the bar is the kitchen behind a plate-glass wall where on both visits Clare is seen beavering away.
Towards the end of lunch on Saturday, straining to discern what music is playing I am pretty sure I hear Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi — “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” Hmmm.
92 Kensington Park Road, W11 (020 3937 5086, corebyclaresmyth.com). Open Thurs-Sat noon-2.30pm. Tues-Sat 6.30pm-10.30pm. Tasting menus £80/£95 for five/seven courses. A la carte, three courses £65. Wines (75cl bottle) £38-£5,100. Service charge 12.5 per cent.
