3. Clare Smyth MBE — The world's best female chef for 2018

Awarded the title of Best Female Chef in the World by the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2018 — in a time when only four of the top 50 restaurants were being run by women — Smyth remains the first and only female chef to ever run a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the UK, which she did while at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

After growing up in Northern Ireland and starting work at one of the best restaurants at age 15, Smyth moved to England and trained with the likes of Heston Blumenthal before working in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen and eventually becoming head chef, gaining three Michelin stars (and an MBE for services to hospitality in 2013).

Ramsay once told her she wouldn't last a week — now, she owns two-Michelin-starred restaurant Core, which she opened in 2017, and even catered the royal wedding reception of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last year.

"We still have a real lack of women recognised at the top of the industry and we have to do something about that — we're not going to change it by ignoring it," she told 50 Best last year. "Sometimes you have to go over the top by recognizing women and giving them a platform so that we can really start to change things and recorrect the balance."