5th September 2012
The Good Food Guide Crowns Clare Smyth as Chef of the Year
Clare Smyth of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay has taken the prestigious crown of Chef of the Year in The Good Food Guide 2013 which is out now.
Smyth was praised in recongition of her "focused and faultless cooking, delivering a menu featuring graceful new dishes alongside glorious classics".
The Good Food Guide's anonymous inspectors lauded her food as both "delicate and generous, for interpreting and adapting Gordon Ramsay's approach to modern French cooking".
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay has also secured the fourth spot in the Top 10 restaurant listing, making Smyth's cooking the highest scoring of all female chefs featured in the guide.
Elizabeth Carter, consultant editor of The Good Food Guide, said the chef really stood out this year: "It's tough at the top. In the shadow of Gordon Ramsay for so long, it's been easy to overlook the fact that Clare Smyth is The Good Food Guide's highest-rated female chef.
"Clare Smyth and her team have been on a culinary fact-finding mission to some of the pace-setting redoubts of the nueva cocina in northern Spain, and the research has paid handsome dividends. New dishes have been developed, all stamped with a gracefully light touch and an even firmer grasp of the seasonality that is this hard-working chef's own determined signature."
Smyth said she was delighted to discover the news: "It is a great honour to receive this award from such a well respected and well loved guide. Of course I am supported by an amazing team of very talented and ambitious young people that makes the restaurant what it is. So a huge thank you from all of us."
Smyth joins a renowned alumni of other great chefs who have been given this award in previous years including Angela Hartnett, Sat Bains, Simon Rogan and Jason Atherton. The Chef of the Year award is one of eight Editors' Awards featured in The Good Food Guide 2013.