- Three-star Michelin chef Christophe Duchene is cooking for the migrants
- His newly installed kitchen will prepare 1,500, three-course meals every day
- Each meal costs £2.30 - three times that spent on Primary school lunches
- The 12-acre site is being partly funded by the British taxpayer
Published:
23:35 GMT, 15 January 2015
|
Updated:
13:36 GMT, 16 January 2015
A new
Sangatte-style camp opened in Calais yesterday, offering three-course
meals cooked by a Michelin restaurant chef to thousands of migrants.
The
12-acre centre will provide beds, showers, toilets, a laundry service
and medical facilities for the 2,500 migrants sleeping rough in the
French port town.
There
will also be 168 power points for them to charge their mobile phones so
they can ‘call their relatives back home and those already in Britain’.
Scroll down for video
+4
The new camp will provide migrants with three course meals at a cost of £2.30 each, pictured
The
three-course meals will be seasoned with imported spices to make the
migrants ‘feel at home’. Incredibly, the meals will cost £2.30 each –
three times more than the British Government spends on primary school
meals.
The camp will also offer legal advice from immigration experts for migrants wishing to apply for asylum in the UK.
The
permanent Jules Ferry camp – a ten-minute walk from where migrants jump
on lorries bound for the UK – will cost about £6million a year to run.
Half the bill will be paid using a £3million ‘special’ grant from the EU
which would include money from British taxpayers. The other half is
being paid by the French government.
Camp
director Stephane Duval said: ‘It will be a more complete service than
Sangatte, which only offered accommodation. Here we will also offer
food, medical care, laundry and washing facilities and social care.’
Last night hundreds of smiling migrants queued for the camp’s first meal.
+4
The kitchen is being run by three-star Michelin chef Christophe Duchene, pictured
Portions
of chick peas in lamb broth were served from vats inside a large
army-style tent in the grounds of the former children’s summer camp.
A
23-year-old Afghan called Raja said: ‘The facilities are much better
here than anything we’d had before. The food is also much better too.
‘I’m
really pleased that they have lots of power sockets as I like to speak
to my friends in England on the phone and over Facebook.’
He
added: ‘I worked as a chef in Scotland for six years after getting to
Britain on a lorry from Dunkirk. Now I am trying to get on another lorry
in Calais.’
Eritrean
Sami, 21, who has been trying to get on a truck for four months, said
the camp would help him stay for as long as it took to reach Britain.
He
said: ‘I think the new centre is a big improvement. The food here is
really good. It’s better than before.’ A camp source added: ‘We were
expecting more people but there are a large queue of lorries on the road
to the port which many are trying to get on.
‘This is their real priority.’
The
centre can cook for 500 migrants a day. By mid-March, up to 1,500 will
be given one three-course meal at two sittings between 5pm and 7pm. They
will be given soup as a starter, a different main course each day –
including lamb meatballs and beef with peppers – and fruit or yoghurt
for dessert.
One
of the four chefs is Christophe Duchene, who worked for two years a
trainee chef at the Michelin-starred restaurant Auberge Du Dun near
Dieppe. Mr Duchene, 43, said: ‘I am a chef and my job is to cook food
which people like so I will be doing my best for these people.
‘They
are African and Asian people and they like hot, spicy food so we have
laid on ample stocks of spices like curry, chili pepper sauce, turmeric
and pepper.
‘I
will be eager to talk to the people who serve the food because they
will be telling me whether the people like what we cook or not and we
will be adapting our dishes to their tastes.’
By
mid-March, accommodation for up to 100 women and their children will be
available. Men will not be allowed to stay at the camp.
No comments:
Post a Comment