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Dateline: July 29

Dateline looks at Aussie chefs succeeding in the tough cuisine market of Paris.

2014-07-29_0030Missing your food fix already?

Dateline comes to the rescue tonight with a story on Aussie chefs succeeding in the tough cuisine market of Paris.

Over sixteen thousand kilometres from Australia, there are Aussies who are cooking up a storm in Paris – bucking centuries of proud French food tradition. Aussie chefs, entrepreneurs and café connoisseurs are revolutionising the cuisine scene, opening bistros, restaurants and hip cafes, serving modern Australian fusion.

Dateline’s Brett Mason braved the queues at the hottest eateries in town to find out about the chefs from down under receiving international acclaim in Paris.

Shaun Kelly is one of the Aussie expats creating waves in the kitchens of Paris. Born in the small town of Eumundi, Sunshine Coast, he was formally trained in Australia and is now a chef for a restaurant in Paris’ 11th arrondissement. Dubbed a rising star by critics, tables at his restaurant are constantly in high demand.

Shaun recounts the shock that customers share sometimes after eating at his restaurant. “You know they’d say…you mean you’re not French? A French man didn’t cook this food?”, he tells Dateline’s Brett Mason.

Brett Mason also meets Brisbane sisters Anna and Stella, along with their friend Rayne, who opened the type of café they missed while they were in Paris. The trio even introduced the novel Aussie concept of avocado & vegemite on toast along with Anzac biscuits to Parisians.

Stella tells Dateline, “None of us are trained chefs or anything….the principle is really simple things that, you know, that you would make at home if you had the time when living your busy Parisian life.”

Canberran, Tom Clarke is another Aussie with a success story in the food capital of the world, after opening a single coffee cart in Paris. Struggling to find coffee that he liked, Tom started his own café, but agrees that it wasn’t an easy start.

Tom tells Dateline, ‘Yeah, there was quite a bit of resistance. I think we used a lot of diplomacy, a lot of persistence”.

His cart quickly turned into three cafés and a wholesale coffee business – with Parisians flocking to his cafés on a daily basis.

Tuesday, 29 July at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.

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