NI hospitality hotshots make 2022 Murphia list

Two of Northern Ireland’s hospitality pioneers have made it onto a list of the most influential Irish food and drink professionals in London.

Bushmills-born chef Clare Smyth, who last January became the first female chef to run a three-Michelin star restaurant in the UK, took her place on the 2022 Murphia list alongside hotel entrepreneur Paddy McKillen.

Smyth is one of the world’s top chefs and achieved three Michelin stars within three years of opening Core by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill.

McKillen, who grew up in west Belfast, oversees the day-to-day running of three London hotels — Claridge’s, the Berkeley and the Connaught — all part of his Maybourne Hotel Group.

He ventured into property after leaving school at 16 to work in his family’s exhaust repair business.

In 2015, the Qatari royal family bought the Maybourne Group for a  fee rumoured to be around £1.4 billion and in 2019 he received a £5 million management fee for his oversight of the group.

Last summer they added the spectacular Maybourne Riviera to the group he heads.

The luxury venue, above, is the group’s first newly built property, set into the cliff-face at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, which the man at the helm described as a “truly untouched French gem”.

Names no longer on the Murphia list include Shauna Froydenlund, originally from Derry, and her Great British Menu finalist husband Mark Froydenlund.

Both were long-time chef-patrons of Marcus restaurant in the Berkeley hotel in Knightsbridge, but have since moved back to Northern Ireland.

The Murphia list, put together by Hot Dinners with support from the Irish food board, Bord BIA, takes in chefs, restaurateurs, those working in drinks, front of house staff, producers, operators and those in the media and communications.