One of the hospitality industry’s highest achievers, Clare Smyth, who catered for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding reception and was named the “best female chef in the world”, is opening a restaurant in Sydney.

London-based Smyth, a protege of Gordon Ramsay, will head up a restaurant inside Sydney’s Crown development.

Hers is the first eatery announced for the Barangaroo behemoth, setting the culinary bar unbelievably high.

Smyth, who has been sworn to secrecy on the details of the royal wedding, said she was excited to bring her slice of “informal luxury” to Sydney, especially since she considers Australia to be leading the world in some areas of food.

“I think that Australia has got its own movement now,” she told delicious.

“Everyone seems to be passionate about high-quality ingredients in Australia and healthy food. It (Australia) has such a huge reach for a smaller population but it reaches the world.

“I remember working in Sydney when I was younger and there was a lot more European influence then and ingredients that were imported.

“Now I see hardly any of that and it’s very much home produced.”

In the male-dominated restaurant industry, Smyth said she had “stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the toughest kitchens in the world and excelled”.

When receiving the best female chef in the world award in 2018, she said: “To separate (male and female chefs) for me is strange, but we don’t see enough women coming through at the top.”

She is the first and only female chef in the UK to run a restaurant with three Michelin stars, Gordon Ramsay’s eponymous London restaurant.

And in 2017 she made history when she opened her own restaurant, Core, in Notting Hill to two Michelin stars. The restaurant champions British ingredients and producers — even all the cutlery and crockery is made in Britain.

Smyth said her Crown concept will have the same ethos as Core but the menu will be crafted to champion the world-class ingredients grown on Aussie soil and caught in Aussie seas.

The chef, who strives to achieve greater gender parity in her kitchens, said there were a lot of issues the hospitality industry needed to address, including underpayment of staff.

“I know the labour costs are quite high, but that is happening all over the world and the hospitality industry is struggling to catch up,” she said.

“We need to evolve as an industry and that’s a movement, we have to move forward with it.

“It is difficult sometimes with youngsters, you have to kick them out or they come in on their days off because they want to be there, they’re passionate and want to learn.

“It’s going to be hard work to monitor everyone but it’s just what we’ve got to do.”

Smyth’s restaurant is the first of 14 potential restaurants to open in the new Crown development, according to chief operating officer, Crown Sydney, Peter Crinis.

He said the vision for food and beverage was to have as much of it as possible and incorporate a healthy mix of international and local chefs — meaning there are plenty of big announcements to come.

“We really love the idea of having a really good combination, a good mix of international highly-regarded talent but also really strong local talent and doing different versions of what people might expect from that talent,” he said.

“We want to cover off as many interesting food genres as we can.”

The restaurants are due to open in December.

This story was originally published by the Daily Telegraph and was reproduced with permission.