Where the Chefs Eat: Clare Smyth and Daniel Boulud’s favourite restaurants

While Daniel’s Café Boulud will be a less formal but ample space for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with sweeping views across The Mall, Clare’s restaurant – Coreus – will be a fine dining, smaller space with “a heavy focus on the sea to reflect the maritime heritage of the building” in what was the former home of the First Sea Lord. Clare tells me she is “a creative, so I naturally approach a project like this with passion and, while I’m going to be focusing on the oceans for the restaurant, I’ll be drawing strictly on British produce, just as I do at Core. I want to do a deep dive into something different and explore new realms for the restaurant. Core was very much about vegetables, and I loved pushing myself for that. And, in some ways, restricting what we do makes us more creative.”

From what Clare tells me when we meet, the canvas for the restaurant space was stunning to start with; “Coreus is oval in shape and has fireplaces on each side. The details are already there because of the building, and we want to make sure we’re preserving the history and beauty while creating something very modern at the same time. Daniel will also be creating something innovative, while nodding to his own restaurant history, and even that of his family’s. “Café Boulud started as a place of tradition, and now it’s going to be part of the Waldorf Astoria in London, which is quite extraordinary. I left home very young, and my life has been very much about travel. Café Boulud was born in the late 1800s in the village where I grew up, just outside of Lyon. This lasted until the early 1960s when my parents closed it, and then I reopened it in New York in 1998.” The menu will, he tells me, reflect his love of French regional cooking “and there is lots of soulful French food on the menu, with French classic dishes that never go out of style and which people always come back for. I also like reinventing dishes that I put out there 20 or 30 years ago.”

Neither chef hails from London – Clare is from Northern Ireland and Daniel is a Frenchman living in New York – but both love London and relish opening in the capital. Daniel is returning to the UK with Café Boulud opening after a hiatus and says this “feels very exciting. When I was a young chef, I would go to London a lot. New York was trying to find itself, but London already had stuff happening. It has always been one of the most influential capitals in Europe, and it’s very exciting. It is comparable to New York in terms of offerings and lifestyle, and seeing the evolution of restaurants in London has just been unbelievable.”

Clare is nothing but loyal to British produce and industry. Since opening Core, she has constantly championed the British Isles, not only when sourcing ingredients for the menu but also for the restaurant interiors. Everything from the silverware (made in Sheffield) to the pottery (from Stoke-on-Trent), the flowers to the fabrics: all come from within the UK, and it’s clearly a great source of pride for her. “From Cornwall to Scotland, we are rich and abundant in everything,” she enthuses. “And we’ve got entrepreneurs doing things like never before, such as English Wasabi. That entrepreneurial spirit in Britain is great and I love to support it. I’ve said this before, but sustainability isn’t just about the environment. Of course, that’s a huge part of it, but it’s also about sustaining the economy and the people around you. This is the real backbone of British industry; it’s got a huge history and it’s something we should be protecting.”