A Potato, Some Trout Roe, and Three Michelin Stars Since 2020
Clare Smyth's Notting Hill room, three Michelin stars since 2020, runs on British sourcing, a 91-day booking window, and a potato dish that has become its own reason to visit.
The potato arrives looking like a potato. Slow-cooked, glossed in a beurre blanc that has been coaxed into something more serious than a sauce, crowned with trout roe from the Highlands. This is the Potato and Roe, Clare Smyth's calling card since her Gordon Ramsay days, and it is the one dish on the Classics menu that everything else on the table gets measured against. Fair or not, it wins the measurement.
Smyth left Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in 2016 after years running its three-star kitchen and opened Core on a quiet stretch of Kensington Park Road in 2017. Michelin awarded three stars in 2020 — the first British woman to hold them at her own restaurant. The room she chose to do it in has almost no other restaurants in sight, which is part of the point. Notting Hill residential, not Mayfair theatrical. British producers on the plate, Isle of Harris scallops and Herdwick lamb credited by name. Two tasting menus — Classics at £265, Seasons at £275 — an à la carte at £205 for lunch and £235 for dinner, and one of the tighter reservation windows in the city.
Clare Smyth's Notting Hill room earns its status quietly, on sourcing and a potato, rather than through any of the theatrics the tier usually demands.
Editorial Deep
Almost every serious ingredient on the menu is credited by farm or coastline. Isle of Harris scallops. Merrifield Farm duck. Herdwick lamb from the Lake District. Porthilly oysters. This is not a British-ingredient garnish — it is the organising principle of the cooking, and it changes what lands in front of you. The Core de boeuf tomato on the Seasons menu, served with smoked curd, marjoram, and its own consommé, only reads as a fine-dining dish because Smyth has cooked it like one. On any other menu it would be a summer starter.
Lunch and dinner are two different rooms. The Thursday-through-Saturday lunch service, starting from around midday, gets natural light through the front, a quieter dining room, and tables that turn less aggressively. Dinner from 18:30, Tuesday through Saturday, is the version with the low pendant light and the fuller room — around fourteen tables, well-spaced, no acoustic pile-up when the room fills.
The floor corrects its own small errors before you have registered them — an unevenly poured pair of wine glasses evened mid-course, no comment, no ceremony. That is the register it operates in — professional, informed, warm without performing warmth — and it is the reason Core is easier to sit through than several of its peers. Pacing is handled cleanly. Occasional reports of rushed service do circulate and are worth flagging, but they run against the weight of the record rather than with it.
Put the £265 Classics next to Ikoyi's shorter menu and Core sits higher before a drink is poured; against the £275 Seasons it is wider still. Core is charging a three-star premium on a menu that Ikoyi — also a serious kitchen with a serious ingredient story — undercuts by that much without giving up much on ambition or execution. What the extra buys at Core is the sourcing depth, the room's calm, and a service floor that stays composed for three hours. Whether that gap is worth paying depends on why you are going.
Anyone hoping for a room that performs its rank back at them should book elsewhere — Core is deliberately quiet about its status, and diners who want the full theatrical fine-dining register will leave feeling underserved. It is also not the return trip for anyone who found the food merely accomplished rather than revelatory the first time; a second visit will confirm the impression, not overturn it.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Core Classics tasting menu (£265) for the Potato and Roe
“Sourcing, service, and one very serious potato hold up a room that refuses to perform its status.”
Go for the Classics tasting and the Potato and Roe. Skip if you want your tasting menu to feel like an event — Core deliberately doesn't, and Ikoyi's shorter menu gives you a more exciting evening for meaningfully less.
The Verdict
