Silver service in the Jungle

ONE of France’s top maître d’s has been giving lessons in table service to migrants at the Jungle camp in Calais.

Gil Galasso, who was crowned meilleur ouvrier de France in 2003 spent a week in the camp, setting up restaurant scenarios and giving lessons to refugees from Sudan and Iraq.

The week-long course included taking customer orders, room service, table service and working behind a bar.

You can see videos of some of the lessons on his Facebook page.

“My objective is offer permanent jobs in the restaurant sector for five migrants who ask for it,” said Mr Galasso.

The restaurant sector is one of the fastest growing areas of employment in France he said.

“The area of Biarritz alone has need of 5,000 servers in the coming months,” he said.

“Among the migrants there were engineers and students, I was nearly ashamed to offer them my course,” he said.

Mr Galasso was partly inspired to go to the camp by his family history. His grand-parents arrived in France among migrants from Italy who came across to help with the clean up of major floods in the Garonne in 1930.