After nearly a decade at the helm of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Clare Smyth has secured a location for her first solo venture.

The multi-award winner and first female British chef to hold and retain three Michelin stars has signed a 15-year lease on premises at 92 Kensington Park Road in Notting Hill, London.

Clare left Ramsay’s restaurant on Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, in April 2016 to set up her own restaurant but remained within the Group on a consultancy basis.

Clare said: “It was pretty fraught at times in 2016, but I’m thrilled to have exchanged on this particular site.

“It was my first choice and I just love the history of the building.”

The restaurant, which will be housed in a 3,921-sqft space and is yet to be named, is expected to open late spring/early summer 2017.

Wandsworth Times:

Smyth grew up on farm in Northern Ireland, the youngest of three children. Her father was a farmer and her mother a waitress at a local restaurant.

She was inspired to become a chef while she was doing a holiday job at a restaurant when she was 15.

Clare first joined Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 2002 and worked her way through the kitchen ranks to become Senior Sous Chef.

She left London in 2005 to gain experience abroad before joining the team at Alain Ducasse’s renowned Le Louis XV in Monte Carlo.

Clare returned to London in 2008 as the head chef of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and became Chef Patron four years later, retaining the restaurant’s three Michelin stars throughout her tenure.

Smyth was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to the hospitalities industry.

In the same year Smyth was named the Good Food Guide’s ‘National Chef of the Year’ and was awarded a perfect ten score by the UK’s Good Food Guide in 2015.

The premises, owned by London estate and investor developer Amazon Property, will be housed within a historic Victorian building which was built in 1861 and modernised in the 1960s into a mixed use building.

The ground floor of the building was home to Leigh’s restaurant, now a Brasserie, from 1969 to 1995, which won a Michelin star and was a fashionable hangout for rock stars, actors and artists. 

Chief Executive of Amazon Property Charles Gourgey said: “Clare Smyth is an internationally renowned chef and her new signature restaurant at 92 Kensington Park Road will generate huge cachet for the local area, just as Leith’s did in the 1970s.”