From Refugee Chefs, a Taste of Home
'The restaurant is one of nine venues that offered to showcase a refugee chef for the first Refugee Food Festival in Paris. Mr. Khaldy participated along with eight other refugee chefs, most drawn from an organization that worked with the food festival: Les Cuistots Migrateurs or the Migratory Cooks.
Les Cuistots Migrateurs is a bold new venture created by two intrepid French entrepreneurs who are trying to change the way Parisians view immigrants by introducing the French to the best of the newcomers’ home cuisines. The entrepreneurs, Louis Jacquot and Sébastien Prunier, both 29, tracked down trained chefs who were among the thousands who recently obtained asylum in France; they then gathered a small group to form a catering company specializing in lesser-known cuisines.
With three Syrians, a Chechen, an Iranian, an Indian, an Ethiopian and a Sri Lankan (an Afghan and a Tibetan are auditioning in the next few days), the organizers have already put on 20 events since February, including lunches, dinners and buffets.
n a country where the dominant narrative is that refugees live off the state and are a burden on the society, and where French cuisine dominates the food scene, the project offers a small but striking counternarrative, showing that refugees can bring skills and are more than willing to work.'>>>
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/dining/refugees-chefs-paris.html?
