Clare Smyth's Oncore restaurant in Sydney is her latest venture, post Core in London

At 29, she became the first woman in Britain to head a three-Michelin-star restaurant when she took over the reins at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 2007. In 2013, she was named the Good Food Guide's national chef of the year in Britain. In 2016, she opened her first solo restaurant, Core, in London's Notting Hill and five years later it was awarded three Michelin stars that were all hers.

But even though she had spent some time in her 20s working in Sydney, around the time of the Olympics in 2000, few people in Australia knew who she was. And then she opened Oncore at Crown Sydney. The Sydney Morning Herald's restaurant critic Terry Durack gave Oncore an immediate 18/20 when he reviewed it in December 2021.

"I didn't think I'd love it," he admitted. "But I was just so knocked out by how delicious it was. Everything was in its place."

But for all her successes - she also cooked at the Royal wedding reception of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle - many of Smyth's dishes have their origins in her childhood. The potato and roe dish here has been the signature dish at Core since day one.

"Growing up by the coast in Northern Ireland, I would eat potatoes every day," she says.

"Potatoes are the taste of home - my aunt and uncle were, and still are, potato farmers on the North Antrim coast, where the soil holds onto all that minerality from the ocean. When I was younger, I would help them with seeding and harvesting ... Afterwards, we'd eat a few - boiled and served only with salt, pepper and butter.

"Seaweed was another taste of childhood for me; dulse grew plentifully along the shoreline, and we'd buy little paper bags of it for five pence, to snack on as we walked along. Those flavours are foundational for me."

She began working in restaurants at 14 and by 16, had left school to cook full-time.

"My family was passionate about producing food, and loved good home cooking and using fresh produce," she says.

"Growing up on a farm we were blessed to have an abundance of local produce and potatoes, and because of this, my mum would make a lot of homemade soups and stews which I used to love.

"We rarely went to restaurants, and I wasn't into fine dining. My love of fine dining developed from working in local restaurants. I would borrow books from chefs at the restaurants I was working in, and I would just read and read - that's really where my cooking journey started."

By 24, she was working for Gordon Ramsay who quickly recognised her talent in the kitchen, but also that perhaps she was going further. In the foreword to her cookbook Core, which celebrates the restaurant and all it stands for, Ramsay says:

"In so many ways, Clare Smyth is one of the most talented chefs I have ever worked alongside. This woman is relentless, and in that pursuit of perfection, the exciting thing about Clare's demeanour is that she carries no passengers - she has a drive that cannot be bought or taught. But more than this, she has an understanding of finesse and style like few others; she cooks with attitude and personality, and that's rarer than you'd think."

She said working for Ramsay taught her a lot. "Gordon taught me a lot about business and how to run one and be successful. I learned discipline and management, and how to be a leader. That's had a big influence on my ability to run a business and ... not just be knowledgeable about cooking food."

She would like to see more women in kitchens, more diversity overall.

"I never found anything particularly difficult just because I'm a woman, the kitchens I worked in were very challenging environments but not because I was a woman.

"I think having more women and more diversity in general, make kitchens a better place to be. Some kitchens are very challenging because of the lack of women and having a lot of men together makes the kitchens unbalanced."

Sydney had to wait three years for Oncore to open its doors. She missed the opening service due to the pandemic and while she won't be here all year, she's trying to get out as much as she can. Why Australia for her second restaurant?

"I've been coming to Australia for more than 20 years and I've watched how the culinary scene has continued to grow and explode," she says.

"I have always been inspired by nature and I love the extraordinary produce that Australia has to offer. My team and I work closely with local farmers and producers who share our dedication to natural, sustainable, seasonal ingredients including potatoes grown in Robertson by the Hill family, pearl barley from Demeter Farm and Tasmanian wasabi."

Away from the pass, Smyth loves to cook simple dishes such as spaghetti bolognese and roast chicken.

"And I love salt and vinegar crisps, I've created my own version which tops the potato and roe dish at both my restaurants."

In her fridge you'll always find an aged cheddar cheese, good quality salted butter and fresh tomatoes.

"And I've always got a bottle of my favourite champagne - Dom Perignon and I also love a gin and tonic on the weekends, so I always keep pink grapefruit in my fridge for that reason."

You can bet there's a couple of cold potatoes in there as well.

This is one of Core's most celebrated dishes, and one of my most personal. This dish has become a calling card of our restaurant: a case study in our culinary style, with the humble potato unashamedly front and centre, punctuated with briny bursts of trout and herring roe. More than this, however - the dulse, the roe, the potato, even the salt and vinegar crisps on top (my favourite snack) - it's an expression of my identity and history on a plate. Where I came from, and where I am now.

Preheat a water bath to 98C. Add the potatoes to a sous vide bag along with the butter, kombu, dulse and salt, then seal.

Cook in the water bath for one hour until the potatoes are cooked through, then cool down in an ice bath. Once chilled, remove and separate the potatoes from the kombu and cooking liquid. Set aside. Top and tail the potatoes then transfer to a new sous vide bag with the cooking liquid. Seal and leave to marinate in the fridge for 24 hours. Finely chop the cooked kombu and dulse and reserve for the beurre blanc.

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan over a medium heat and reduce by half. Pass through a sieve.

Preheat the oil in a deep-fat fryer to 160C. Peel the potato and slice to a thickness of 2mm and deep-fry until golden, then drain on paper towels and season with vinegar powder and salt. Reserve in a dehydrator at 60C.

Reduce the vinegar reduction in a saucepan until it is a light syrup. Add the double cream, stir and let it come to the boil, then reduce the heat, add one-quarter of the diced butter and whisk gently, creating an emulsion. Repeat these last two steps until all the butter is added, then remove from the heat, add the chopped kombu and dulse, and mix. Leave to infuse for five minutes, then season to taste with lemon juice and salt.

Put the trout and smoked herring eggs into a bowl with the chives and mix gently.

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil over a medium heat. Add the sous vide bag with the potatoes and simmer for 10 minutes. Open the bag and transfer the potatoes to a tray to drain. Place a potato on a plate. Cover the top of the potato with the roe mix. Add the potato crisps so they are standing upright, then place all the herbs and flowers in between the crisps. Finish by pouring the dulse beurre blanc into a sauce jug. Once ready to serve, pour the beurre blanc around the potato.

Serves 4.

There's a fine balance to developing new dishes. Sometimes, your focus can be too squarely set on refinement, polishing things up and smoothing rough edges. Over time, we've learned that if we want to connect with our sense of nostalgia, we need to meet it where it is - and in the case of our "CFC", this meant harking back to the spicy, juicy, so-wrong-it's-right fried chicken that so many of us know.

We originally developed this as a canapé for a very special event, and the response was so overwhelming that we felt we should put it on our menu, too. What makes our fried chicken so good is the quality of our spices, sourced from our supplier, Ren Patel, who imports them in their rawest, purest state. We kept adjusting our mix, over and over again, until we got close to another famous "proprietary spice blend", and at Core, we serve it with an extra measure of caviar.

Marinate the chicken: Remove the skin and cut the chicken thighs into quarters. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl with the chicken thigh pieces and marinate in the fridge for a minimum of 12 hours.

Spice flour mix: Combine all the dried herbs, salts, powders and spices and blend with a hand blender until it forms a powder. Add the flour, cornflour and tapioca starch and mix well.

Chicken preparation: Heat the grapeseed oil in a medium saucepan to 180C. Drain the chicken thigh pieces from the marinade and coat with the spice flour mix. Fry the chicken for two to three minutes until the internal temperature reaches 75C and the thighs are nicely golden. Drain on paper towels and season lightly with flaky sea salt.

To assemble: Skewer the chicken thigh pieces with a small cocktail stick and add a quenelle of caviar on top.

Serves 20.

Over the last few centuries, whenever sugar has been scarce or a luxury, people have often turned to the humble carrot to bring sweetness back to their lives, falling in love with it at the same time. Carrot puddings and cakes have been on British and European tables since the 1500s, often combined with woody spices and dried fruits just as they are today. During the Second World War, with the rationing of sweeteners, carrot cake exploded in popularity among thrifty British households, being touted not only as a delicious dessert, but a superfood that could help you see in the dark; a handy skill in the time of blackouts.

We serve our "Other carrot" as the best bit of carrot cake - which is, in our opinion, the cream cheese icing. We make a cream cheese mousse, set it in a carrot gel, and place it onto a spiced cake crumb, before topping it with a mix of candied ginger and walnut in the same manner as the lamb in the original dish.

Soften the gelatine in ice water for 10 minutes, then drain. Combine the softened butter and icing sugar in a mixing bowl, then mix in the orange blossom water and cream cheese. Gently melt 50g of the mixture in a small saucepan over a low heat and add the drained gelatine (squeezed of excess water). Return the contents of the saucepan to the mixing bowl. Transfer the mousse into two piping bags fitted with 5mm nozzles, one with just 20g set aside for assembling the carrots later. Using acetate, create cones with a 12cm base and 3cm top. Pipe the cheese mousse into the cones and reserve in the freezer for 12 hours. Remove the cones from the freezer, take off the acetate and, using a knife, cut out a carrot shape, rounding the edges. Return to the freezer.

Preheat the oven to 215C. Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together the oil, sugar and vanilla. Add the egg to the oil mixture and mix for a minute, then slowly add the dry ingredients, ensuring everything is fully incorporated. Fold in the grated carrot and chopped walnuts. Pour the mixture into a 16cm square cake tin, 8cm deep, and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool, then cut into four slices 4mm thick. Cut the slices into rectangles of 10 x 3cm. Using a small knife, cut the rectangles into the shape of a carrot. Crumble the trim and reserve.

Soften the gelatine in ice water for 10 minutes, then drain. Gently warm the blood orange pureé in a medium saucepan over a low heat then, add the drained gelatine (squeezed of excess water). Remove the pan from the heat, stir to dissolve the gelatine, add the carrot juice, then strain through a chinois into a container. Leave to cool to 10C.

Put the fructose, sugar, pectin, citric acid and Stab 2000 into a bowl and mix well. Bring the water to the boil in a small saucepan over a high heat and add the fructose mixture, then bring to a simmer and whisk for two minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool before adding the vodka and carrot juice. Pour into a Pacojet beaker and reserve in the freezer.

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix.

Place the frozen cheese carrot on a wire rack with a tray underneath. Add a cocktail stick into the middle and another stick at the thick end of the carrot. Lift the frozen carrot by the sticks and dip it into the carrot jelly. Repeat three times, then leave them to set on the rack. Trim the bottom of the carrots with a palette knife, remove the sticks and transfer them onto a tray. Leave to defrost in the fridge.

Place the carrot cake onto a tray and cover with a layer of carrot salad, then position the dipped cheese carrot on top. Pipe a line of cheese mousse down the length of the carrot, then spoon over the crumbled carrot cake trim. Add the ginger, carrot tops, chervil tips, bee pollen and walnuts on top. Position the finished carrot on the left side of the plate. Add a small mound of carrot salad on the right, parallel to the carrot. Add a teaspoon quenelle of carrot sorbet on top. To finish, position the chervil stems at the thick end of the carrot to resemble carrot tops.