Hunger to be the best

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10 April 2012

Clare Smyth is standing over a roasting hot stove. She dips a spoon into a saucepan. Everyone in the kitchen stops what they are doing and stares at her intently.

Clare looks up, pauses and then smiles. "Fine," she says, nodding her head. "It's fine." The 18 people surrounding her in the kitchen at Gordon Ramsay's eponymous restaurant look relieved. Then, a nanosecond later, they are back doing what they do 18 hours a day, five days a week. They chop, roast, baste, cook, taste, dip, fry, sautée and there encouraging them and haranguing them in equal measure is head chef, 29-year-old Clare.

It was only recently that Gordon Ramsay — now that he doesn't really cook at any of his restaurants — announced who his head chef actually was at his three-Michelin starred restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road. At first he would say no more than that she was called Clare. Immediately the gastronomic world was agog. A woman? Gordon Ramsay had given his plum job to a woman? After all, wasn't this the man who said, a decade ago, that women "couldn't cook to save their lives?" And yet there he was pronouncing that this Clare had snaffled the top job.

A few weeks after Ramsay's admission it was revealed that Clare Smyth was the newest and shiniest of chefs to be sheltered by the Ramsay corporate umbrella. "You only get a chef like this once in every 10 years," Ramsay said. "The last person like this was Angela Hartnett in 1995."

Blonde-haired Smyth rolls her eyes when I mention Hartnett to her. "I'm not the next Angela Hartnett," she says. "I really hate it when people compare me to her because, in all honesty, Angela is a one-star Michelin chef (Hartnett gained a Michelin star at the Connaught, before it closed for refurbishment) and I'm a three-star one." Smyth goes on to say that, in fact, it really annoys her all round when people go on about her being a great chef for a woman. "That's the implication!" she says.

"People say, 'isn't she a good chef ?' and they mean for a woman. But I want to be a great chef just because I am one, not because I am a woman."

She's fearsomely ambitious is Clare Smyth. She has taken a break from preparing lunch — the signature dish of ravioli of lobster, langoustine and salmon is well under way — and is sitting in the small bar area of the restaurant. During the time we talk various people, all of them men, appear with offerings for her. First up is the orange juice. "Better," says Smyth after a small sip. Then there's some cheese, coffee and spring truffles for a new turbot dish she has created.

"Nothing goes in or out of the kitchen unless I am happy with it," says Smyth. "I check everything. I have to. I don't think any other kitchen does this."

Of course she has to. She's a girl. Despite what she may say, it is certainly true that people are interested in Smyth because of her sex. She is one of the few women ever to make it to the top of her profession. Yet with the imminent arrival of French chef Hélène Darroze at the Connaught (no longer under Ramsay's control) the rise of Ramsay-trained Gemma Tuley, and Angela Hartnett being at the helm of two new Ramsay ventures, it seems women are on the march in the world of haute cuisine.

"Actually, the person I admire is Anne-Sophie Pic," says Smyth when I ask her who she aspires to be. "She has her own restaurant (La Maison Pic in Valence, south-eastern France), she has three Michelin stars and she is a wife and mother. Women who succeed in the kitchen are always described as being like lesbians but she's very feminine. She has it all really."

Yet it's true that Clare has had to be tougher than most to succeed. Over the past 13 years since she decided, aged 16, to leave home in County Antrim and pursue her goal of being a top chef, she has encountered just about every criticism, every obstacle. "Oh, I've been told I'll only last a week, that women are too weak to cope, that I'll whinge, cry, complain, look for special treatment, that kind of thing." She says the worst she had it was at Alain Ducasse's fêted Louis XV restaurant in Monaco.

"I really wanted to train in France so Gordon made it possible for me to go. My parents thought I was mad. They thought I was crazy to want to be a chef in the first place. We just don't do chefs in Northern Ireland. So when they found I was going to give up a good job in London and go to France and start all over again they thought I'd lost my mind."

But Clare is made of stern stuff. "I turned up at the kitchen and all the men there hated me. I was from England. I couldn't speak French. I was a woman."

How did she cope? "I did a four week, eight-hours-a-day intensive French course and just gritted my teeth and went for it." She had to grit her teeth especially hard when she sliced off a chunk of her hand when using a machine to cut thin slivers of beetroot. "There was blood everywhere," she says, "but I didn't complain because I knew I'd get told by the doctor to take two weeks off and I didn't want to do that." She worked on and her hand bled for a week. In contrast, she says, the men took two weeks off for a little nick with a knife.

Then again, this is the woman who has willed herself to the top. "I learned about food because my mum used to work front of house in a small hotel near Giant's Causeway." Clare would chat to the chefs and watch, then go home and read biographies of Escoffier and the like. "I was desperate to learn," she said. She ended up doing her midnight flit to London and then taking an NVQ in Food Preparation and Cooking. From there she went to Grayshott Hall as a commis chef and worked her way up via such esteemed places as Gidleigh Park and The Fat Duck, where she went for two days for a try-out.

What does she think of The Fat Duck style of cooking with its snail porridge and egg and bacon ice cream? After all, it couldn't be further from the dishes she is cooking today such as sautéed foie gras with roasted veal sweetbreads.

"I love The Fat Duck," she says, "but I hate the copycats. I am sick of hearing the term molecular gastronomy. It's just an excuse for not being able to cook. I love the taste of food and how it goes together. People who cook in the style of The Fat Duck and get it wrong are a waste of space as far as I am concerned."

What qualities does she thinks it takes to be a good cook then? "Passion. Dedication. You have to adore food and work long hours. You have to have a hunger to succeed and be the best. I have that hunger." But isn't there something else? After all, there must be hundreds of wannabe head chefs sprouting out all over the Ramsay empire.

"You are right," she says. "I only came to this conclusion recently but, yes, you do have to have something else in you. Not everyone possesses it. I have people in my kitchen who work extremely hard but they don't have it. I have others who maybe don't work so hard but they produce food that has something special about it. But, no one will get anywhere unless they have the ability to work hard without complaining."

Smyth gets up at 6am and is in the restaurant by 7am. She checks all the produce and ingredients then she and her staff start to prepare lunch. After lunch they prepare as much as possible for dinner. At 5pm everyone stops and they all eat together before service begins. She gets back home at 1am.

She tells me she has no time for a relationship or a family but that she hopes she will in the future. "That is the problem for women," she says. "It's impossible to balance this. My life will have to change." Until then, though, she will remain as focused as ever and, believe me, she's very impressive. I watch her in the kitchen for an entire lunch service and she seems to be creative but with a will of iron all at the same time. If someone gets something wrong she sends them home. "I cannot bear mistakes," she says. "I get so angry I will send that person away from me before I really lose my temper." Does she ever sack people? "One a week," she says shortly.

In a recent interview, Ramsay said he wanted the entire kitchen at his signature restaurant to be staffed by women (there are three currently). What does Clare think of that? She laughs. "He's such a naughty boy," she says. "He'll say anything to get a controversy started." So it's not true then? "No!" she snorts. "God. Imagine all that gossiping and bitchiness. I mean, men can be pretty tough but women are far worse. It would be a disaster!"

Gordon Ramsay, 68 Royal Hospital Road, SW3 (020 7352 4441)

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