Friday, January 16, 2015

Michelin chef and curried turkey; Inside the 'new Sangatte' which cost £2.3million and is partly funded by the British taxpayer

Michelin chef and curried turkey; Inside the 'new Sangatte' which cost £2.3million and is partly funded by the British taxpayer

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2912506/Michelin-chef-curried-turkey-inside-new-Sangatte-cost-2-3million-partly-funded-British-taxpayer.html

  • 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  
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’.

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The new camp will provide migrants with three course meals at a cost of £2.30 each, pictured 
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.
The kitchen is being run by three-star Michelin chef Christophe Duchene, pictured
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.

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