For young French chefs working in Melbourne restaurants to pay for their holiday Down Under, profiter de la vie is easy. Jobs are plentiful, they pay well, and your head chef doesn’t hit you; only the smokes are expensive.

“We’re used to working long hours, under pressure, not get paid much, get beat up, get yelled at, insulted all day long, and we say nothing because we want to move up,” says Lucas Julien-Vauzelle, head chef at The French Brasserie in a laneway in Melbourne’s CBD. “And you come back the next day after a 16-hour day.”

Restaurants and cafes in Australia are enjoying the upside of Europe’s economic malaise: record numbers of young Italians and French – such as ­Julien-Vauzelle and his Francophone colleagues – coming here on working holiday visas.

It seems like every French and Italian restaurant is staffed by the real deal.

Across the European Union, youth unemployment is 22 per cent. In Italy, it’s 43 per cent; France is 26 per cent.

Little wonder the number of Europeans seeking working holidays in Australia has risen considerably since 2009 and the GFC morphed into the euro zone crisis. The five years to June 2014 saw the annual number of Italians granted working holiday visas in Australia treble. The numbers of French working holidaymakers increased by 42 per cent. Spain and Greece, where youth unemployment is above 50 per cent, do not yet have working holiday arrangements with Australia, but negotiations are under way.

The 417 visa allows those aged under 30 from designated countries to work for one year in Australia.They can stay for another year if they spend three months working in a regional area.

City return

One of those opting to do that is Italian Denis Arman, 19, who comes from near Venice and has been herding cattle and sheep on a farm in Eugowra, in central-western NSW.

He earned no money but received free food and board.

Arman has since returned to Sydney and his old job waiting tables at Café Sydney near Circular Quay in the CBD.

He’s still surprised how easily he got the job. “In Italy it’s hard to find a job – really, really hard,” he says. His father has been unemployed for two years, but “that’s quite common in Italy”. He is full of praise for Australia: the weather, people’s kindness, even the public transport.

Lucas Julien-Vauzelle is happy to work only in French restaurants; Australian standards, he says, are just too low. And he, his sous chef Edouard Deplus, and restaurant manager Gauthier Georgelet also feel as if they’ve been let in on a bit of a secret: Australia is easy.

“Two weeks [after I arrived] I had a job and an apartment. It happens much easier here than in France. Less paperwork,” Julien-Vauzelle said. Salaries can be double what’s paid in France, although the cost of living is higher. Especially when your essential items include cigarettes.

They know they’re competing with Australians for jobs in the hospitality industry – but really, what competition? Julien-Vauzelle says, “The training is not the same level in Australia. The commitment is not the same. You work in a French kitchen with a French chef, life can be very hard for them because they’re not used to it.”

Deplus interjects angrily: “We had one guy who came yesterday for a try. He came at 8 o’clock. After one hour, he said it’s too hard for me, he left. And he didn’t do much.”

Source:  The Australian Financial Review - 8 November 2014