Luke Benedictus
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Issue 9 of Time+Tide NOW magazine. Issue 9 can be found in both physical and digital formats on the T+T shop, offering further industry insights, inspiring interviews, and of course a complete watch buying guide.
Tucked away in a residential area just a block from the hustle and bustle of Notting Hill’s Portobello Road, Core doesn’t feel like a fine dining restaurant. There were no starched tablecloths or leather-bound wine lists, and the maitre d’re gave me a genuine smile when I entered. In fact, the dining room is overall cozy, with bright interiors filled with soft beige banquettes and blonde wood fittings. At lunchtime this past Friday, the crowd was similarly relaxed, with far more customers wearing knitwear, sneakers and jeans than jackets and ties.
Don’t get me wrong. Core is a very authentic restaurant. If you have any glimmer of hope of getting a table at one of only six places in London to have achieved the distinction of being awarded three Michelin stars, we’re told you’ll need to book at least 91 days in advance. Ta. The price is suitably punchy too. If you order the “Core Classics” tasting menu and wine pairing, it will cost you £390 (approximately $500 USD) per person. But in the hands of founding chef Claire Smith, Core has acquired this culinary character with remarkable lightness. As a dining proposition, it is the quintessence of casual luxury.
The relaxed atmosphere was no accident. “Before we opened Core, what we were seeing was a shift away from fine dining, where people were probably finding restaurants a little cold and pretentious,” admits Smith. . “They weren’t happy with a restaurant like that, or they weren’t sure they would have a good time in a restaurant like that. They just wanted to get rid of all that formality. None of that mattered. Because food is an art form and that’s what we do. That’s why we put words on the menu that people may not understand. That’s also why we don’t list them. That’s why we have a lot of pictures and little snippets on the wine list that people can understand, because they don’t need to know anything about food or wine to enjoy a meal in our restaurant. I just want people to come out the door at the end of the meal and think, “I had a really good time.”
We sit at Core’s adjacent bar, Whiskey & Seaweed. The bar is named after its signature cocktail, which combines Irish whiskey with kelp, sea lettuce and black cardamom. It’s also an enchanting space, dimly lit and surrounded by dark blue-green panels. Sitting on a stool across from me, Smith has rushed straight from a busy lunch service in the kitchen wearing a chef’s white coat, his blonde hair slicked back and his sleeves rolled up for the action. This last detail highlights the watch on her wrist, the Hublot Big Bang Integrated Tourbillon Full Carbon. Featuring an exotic case and bracelet made from a shimmering mixture of carbon fiber and a material called Texalium, the high-tech combination makes it possible to weigh just 66g (or about the same amount of cooking time as a parsnip). . This watch is not something you see every day. The main reason for that is the $132,000 price tag.
Smith is a Hublot ambassador, but let’s be brutally honest here: 99% of the time, it’s easy to look at an arrangement like this with a cynical eye. The way these things work in the industry tends to be: Watch brands identify exciting movers and shakers and throw luxury watches and luxury timepieces at them. In return, the brand is able to bask in some of the star’s off-kilter glory, while also showing that it has its finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Relationships like this can often be a bit selfish and disappointing, as there is no synchronicity at all between the pair. But the partnership between Hublot and Claire Smith is one of those rare occasions that truly makes sense and is a delight. Let me explain…
Hublot may be a luxury watch company, but it’s always obsessed with being different. Far more open-minded and expressive than most Swiss brands, it shows a willingness to push boundaries, experimenting with innovative materials, quirky designs, and ceramics in retina-searing hues. While it’s certainly a luxury brand, the most affordable Big Bang starts at over $20,000, but it’s by no means stodgy. While other brands were concerned that the global populism of The Beautiful Game was preventing them from portraying their luxury products as high enough, they were happy to sponsor soccer. You may recall that it was Hublot.
Like Smith Restaurant, Hublot is not a restaurant that enforces a dress code. That was clearly demonstrated in 1980 when the brand’s founder, Carlo Crocco, wowed traditionalists with his classic fusion, daring to wear a gold watch on a rubber strap. This had never happened before. The reason for the initial outrage was that rubber was seen as a cheap, utilitarian material, the opposite of a luxury experience. But what Crocco was actually doing was demonstrating confidence in his design vision. Rolex, Patek and AP are now following suit, attaching precious metal cases to rubber straps.
From a culinary standpoint, Smith does something very similar by elevating the restaurant’s simple ingredients and making them the star of the show. “Before opening Core, I worked in a three-star Michelin restaurant for 15 years,” she explains. “So I knew exactly what it was. It usually used high-end ingredients like lobster, caviar, foie gras, and turbot. I knew it could be done, but it… It didn’t mean anything to me personally. And as a chef, I had the confidence that I could turn any material into something.”
Smith, who grew up on a farm in Northern Ireland, wanted to create food that reflected herself in an authentic way. As a girl, potatoes were part of her diet “every day,” she recalls. So she chose to apply her years of classical French training to the humble Spud.
The result was Smith’s creation “Potato and Salmon Roe,” which has become Core’s signature dish. Its apparent simplicity belies the fact that it takes about 25 hours to make. She explains that it was inspired by the potatoes she enjoyed as a young girl on Ireland’s North Antrim coast, where the soil is rich in sea minerals. To recreate that salty flavor, Smith tops a skin-on Charlotte potato with a spoonful of herring roe. Freshen up the dish with homemade salt-and-vinegar chips and shredded baby shoots of sorrel, chives, and arugula to cut through the buttery starch of the potatoes. “I wanted to apply my skills, knowledge and creativity to transform potatoes, an everyday ingredient that can be easily grown anywhere, into something amazing,” she says.
Another dish that shows similar bravery is Core’s “Lamb Carrot.” One carrot is slow-cooked in a lamb glaze and served with a little sheep’s milk yoghurt, carrot top pesto and lamb juice. The idea, she explains, came from the fact that when making sauces and stews in restaurants, carrots were often boiled and then discarded before the last dish could be used. “But as a chef, I always ate these carrots as a snack, because carrots absorb all the stock and gravy. So I thought, if I think this carrot is the best, I’m definitely going to give it to my customers.” I thought it should be provided.”
But as Steve Jobs memorably put it, simple can be “harder than complex.” Smith has the pedigree to do that. She left home at 16 to train in England, where she worked in Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck and Michel Roux’s The Waterside Inn. In 2002, she moved into Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen, impressing the notoriously demanding taskmaster and being appointed head chef at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. In the process, she became the first woman to run a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the UK. The accolades have continued ever since. In 2013, Ms Smith was awarded an MBE, and in 2018 she was invited to cater Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding reception at Windsor Castle. In the same year, she was named Best Female Chef at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards Gala in Bilbao.
She currently oversees two restaurants. Notting Hill’s Core and its cleverly named successor Oncore, located on the 26th floor of Crown Sydney in Barangaroo. Sydney Morning Herald restaurant critic Terry Dulac was effusive, giving Oncor the highest rating of the three in his chef’s hat. “Totally over-the-top, over-the-top, extravagant, a little boring, and a lot of fun,” he wrote in his review.
Let’s read Dulac’s line again and apply some of its words to Hublot. Weigh it to see if it doesn’t feel perfectly snug. “Totally excessive, excessive, extravagant”? Yes, it is, and emphatically so! Hublot actively promotes its features, including a collaboration with a tattoo artist on a mad sapphire case and the $5 million diamond light show that Beyoncé famously gave Jay-Z as a birthday present. are. “A little nuff?” Well, one thing’s for sure: Hublot isn’t a brand that aspires to be a grand example of quiet thoughtfulness or impeccable taste. But is that really a good thing in an industry that still feels overly formal and formal? If Hublot were a restaurant, they wouldn’t have starchy tablecloths. Mainly because it’s “so much fun” and perhaps because I believe the tables are really made for dancing.
