YOU Magazine: Sunday, 21 July 2024
July 21, 2024
Article by Anne Robinson in the Daily Mail’s YOU Magazine: ‘My friend Sally Clarke, the best chef you’ve never heard of … ‘
‘At her superbly unfussy dining spot in West London, Sally Clarke has been feeding rock stars, art royalty, and loyal locals for 40 years. One longtime devotee is Anne Robinson (Annie to her friends), who considers her Britain’s finest chef and restaurateur …’
‘Once upon a time in mid-1984, when Mrs Thatcher was prime minister, the miners were on strike, milk came in bottles, and a sliced loaf cost 45p, I achieved a lifelong dream. I scraped together enough money to buy a small terraced house minutes from Kensington Gardens.
Importantly, the postcode was W8 – far smarter, we considered, than W11, as Richard Curtis and his film had yet to make Notting Hill Gate a playground for millionaires.
Such was my wonderment at my new address, I would sit at my study window early morning and watch the world. Three things were pretty much guaranteed to happen. An elderly man in pyjamas and a paisley dressing gown would stride purposefully to the newsagent around the corner and return with his Daily Telegraph. The milk float would rattle its way along. And about the same time, an old blue Volkswagon Beetle would park nearby. From it would emerge a tall, very pretty girl, sometimes dressed in chef’s whites and laden with huge pans. And that was when Annie first spotted Sally.
What I didn’t know was that Sally Clarke was on her way to achieving, some would say, an impossible dream. With no experience of owning a restaurant, no investors or partners, Sally had walked into Guildford High Street Nat West and persuaded the manager to lend her £40,000.
With an extra 50 grand borrowed from her father, one week before Christmas, 1984, Clarke’s Restaurant on Kensington Church Street was born …’ [read the whole article, here …]


