In the quiet, sun-warmed corner of Finestrat, within the walls of a family-run hotel that has stood since the 1960s, a culinary revolution is unfolding one plated dish at a time. STRAT, the newly launched restaurant by MasterChef winner and seasoned chef Claire, is not just a restaurant. It’s a journey. One steeped in personal history, artistic curiosity, Mediterranean reverence, and global technique. And at the center of it all is a chef who’s lived a dozen culinary lives before even hitting her mid-thirties.
Chef Claire’s story begins not in the bustling kitchens of London or the Michelin-starred restaurants of Mallorca, but in the warm, roast-filled kitchens of her grandmothers. “None of my family were ever chefs,” Claire shares with a soft laugh, “but my grandma and my granny were always in the kitchen. I have these really strong memories of Sunday roasts, the smells, helping peel vegetables… I always wanted to be in the kitchen with them.”
This early love for food turned into a necessity when she was a teenager. With two working parents and an older brother at home, she began cooking regularly. “He used to pay me to make him dinner,” she recalls, smiling. “That’s probably when I first realized this was something I could do. Something I wanted to do.”
By the age of 16, Claire was enrolled at the University College Birmingham. It didn’t take long before the industry started to notice. During a brief three-week practical placement at Simpson’s, a renowned Michelin-starred restaurant, she found herself completely transformed. “It was like art,” she says. “I’d never seen food handled with such precision and creativity. I just fell in love with it all.”
That love proved mutual. At the end of her placement, Simpson’s offered her a job. She spent the next four years there, learning the intricacies of fine dining while simultaneously finishing her studies. From there, her trajectory moved fast. She trained under Tom Aikens in London, another Michelin star, another milestone. “It was the hardest kitchen I’ve ever worked in,” she admits. “Seventeen-hour days. Intense. But I learned so much.”
MasterChef and a Career Reimagined
In 2011, at just 22, Claire took a leap onto the national stage, becoming the youngest-ever finalist on MasterChef UK at the time. “It changed everything,” she says. “It gave me exposure, but also confidence. For the first time, I could cook under my own name instead of someone else’s.”
The exposure led to a year of pop-up restaurants across the UK—an important time of experimentation and independence. But soon, her path led abroad, to Mallorca, after her mentor, the legendary Michel Roux, suggested she take a position with a like-minded chef, Fernando, at the Michelin-starred restaurant Zaranda which was at the time situated in the amazing hotel Castell son claret in Es Capdella. “It was supposed to be just a new chapter,” Claire says, “but I ended up staying for five years.”
During her time at Zaranda, she rose to the role of sous chef, and the restaurant achieved two Michelin stars under her tenure. It was also in Mallorca that her deep bond with Mediterranean cuisine took hold. “The produce, the flavors, the respect for ingredients, it just captured me,” she explains. “The Spanish philosophy of using the whole fish, the whole animal, taking a tomato and turning it into something transcendent, it was completely different from anything I’d known in the UK.”
Mallorca also offered a rare mix of high-level gastronomy and international influences. Her time at sea introduced her to Japanese techniques and dishes, which she was encouraged to explore at the source. “I was sent to top Japanese restaurants to train,” she says. “It completely shifted my understanding of balance, umami, and precision.”
In 2018, she returned to MasterChef and this time took the crown. With the title came a renewed spotlight, and the seed of what would become STRAT.
Family, Finestrat, and a New Culinary Home
Despite her deep love for Mallorca, Claire and her husband made a life-shaping decision when they became parents. “We had our daughter there, but we didn’t have family around,” she says. “His family has this hotel in Finestrat, and his father was about to retire. It was either we take over or the family business would be sold.”
So they moved. From the serene cliffs of Mallorca to the mainland coast of Valencia. The decision to build STRAT within the family hotel was as practical as it was poetic. “It’s full circle in a way,” Claire says. “A family space. A family-run restaurant. A place where our daughter can grow up with both her parents pursuing what they love.”
STRAT: A Menu of Memory and Mastery
STRAT isn’t just a Mediterranean restaurant. It’s a curated map of Claires’ journey, with each dish a story from a different chapter. “The menu is Mediterranean at its core, but it’s fusion in the most personal way. It has an Indian influence because I grew up in Birmingham. It has Japanese elements from the yachting days. It reflects who I am as a person and as a chef.”
Dishes rotate seasonally, about every two months, based not just on the weather, but on the lifecycle of each ingredient. “Some ingredients only have a season of two weeks,” she explains. “Like figs, wild asparagus… We look at the vegetable first, not the calendar.”
This attention to detail extends to her commitment to sustainability.
One of her most meaningful creations is a dessert called Lúa, named after her daughter. It’s a biodynamic dish inspired by Mallorca’s fields—featuring crystallized black olives, sheep’s milk panna cotta, and oxalis sorbet. “The idea is that everything on the plate comes from the same ecosystem,” she says. “It’s a cycle. Like life.”
More Than Meat: A Celebration of Plants
Claire is also passionate about vegan and vegetarian cuisine—a rarity in traditional Spanish fine dining. “In London, there are so many options. Here, not so much. I wanted to change that,” she explains. Her vegan background was enhanced during a stint at a retreat in Mallorca, where she experimented with plant-based fine dining.
“I truly believe you don’t need animal products to make an incredible dish. The depth of flavor, the creativity—it’s all there in vegetables. Sometimes more so.”
As for technique, her philosophy is simple: long and slow. Whether it’s meat cured in herbs and salt for 48 hours or fish carefully brined before hitting the plate, everything at STRAT is made with purpose. “There’s a process behind every bite. Nothing rushed. Everything respected.”
A Future Built on Foundation
With STRAT now gaining acclaim, and a new seasonal tasting menu launched in March, Claire is carving out a space in Spain’s culinary landscape that feels both ancient and completely new. Her cooking is rooted in tradition, but colored by her own nomadic and bold path.
More than a restaurant, STRAT is a personal diary told through salt, smoke, spice, and sweetness. It is a culmination of years of relentless pursuit, of kitchens from Birmingham to Tokyo, of moments around family tables and behind Michelin-starred doors.
For Claire, the kitchen has always been a place of belonging, a space to share, to create, and to remember. At STRAT, guests are invited not just to dine, but to walk alongside her journey, one beautifully plated memory at a time.
