Having worked internationally, as deputy editor at b.inspired by Brussels Airlines, associate editor at easyJet Traveller and now Skyscanner UK editor, Florence is a travel industry expert.

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easyJet Traveller

Soul food: social street food in Paris

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The air in the crowded square is thick with the scent of spices. Children chase giant, rainbow-tinted bubbles in the sun, while hip-hop reverberates between a clutter of makeshift stalls and vintage trucks, all displaying their wares on handwritten signs: there are Moroccan lamb kofte pancakes, Senegalese chicken curries and Thai-marinated skewers, the occasional crêpe thrown in for good measure.

On the surface, this gathering outside an old warehouse at Halle Pajol, near Paris’s Gare du Nord, appears entirely unremarkable – after all, such markets have long been a firm fixture in the likes of London, Amsterdam and Berlin – but Street Popote (which roughly translates as ‘street grub’) is special for two reasons.

For a start, it was only last summer that the French capital welcomed its first ever food-truck event in the form of Le Food Market, in Belleville, which drew over 8,000 visitors to just 15 stands selling foods from 15 different countries. It proved that after years of grudging resistance, the French had finally succumbed and started to embrace the global phenomenon.

But such events are still something of a novelty here. “We are really brilliant at food, but we’re traditional and there’s always some reluctance to new things,” explains Lionel Guérin, founder of Street Popote. “But in the past few years, Paris has become much more dynamic and suddenly street food is exploding.”

Street Popote can claim to be the city’s second street-food event, but it is also doing something that goes way beyond simply giving Parisians the opportunity to eat global cuisines. Each stall has a social project attached to it, incorporating communities and cuisines that rarely figure in Paris’s somewhat elite restaurant scene.

“There are a lot of talented people here who don’t have the opportunity to express it,” says Guérin. “I want to draw attention to them – and if I can help to show how enriching and tasty cultural diversity really is, I can go to bed each night and sleep very well.”

Now let’s meet some of those talented people…

The business innovators

In the heart of the busy market, Street Popote’s largest stall is engulfed in a haze of smoke. It’s pouring out from a sizzling grill stacked with Thai chicken satay and Senegalese beef skewers, diligently watched over by young chefs Jiap and Nesta. Beside them, on a polka-dot tabletop, a salad of marinated fish and papaya is prepared by Crystelle, originally from the Central African Republic.

These women are entrepreneurs with plans to open restaurants and catering businesses, and they’re here thanks to Paris’s only state-subsidised kitchen incubator: Plaine de Saveurs.

In the north-eastern suburb of Saint Denis, the nonprofit provides space for aspiring chefs to trial recipes and gain business advice. Each ‘incubee’ uses the kitchen for six months at the cost of just €200 a month – about the same amount as renting a parking space in the city.

“In central Paris, the international restaurant offering is very poor – mainly just kebabs, pizza and sushi,” claims Bertrand Allombert, who launched the incubator programme back in 2013, “but there are 140 nationalities in Saint Denis alone. We try to work with people who don’t have enough money to invest in or sustain a business.”

As far as Allombert is concerned, creating a market – rather than competing with the types of cuisine that dominate the capital’s food scene – is good business sense, but it’s also a way of encouraging interaction between different local communities.

“When people eat each other’s food, they have a better cultural understanding,” he smiles. “Food is peace.” plainedesaveurs.fr

The gourmet grannies

The nutty-sweet smell of browning butter catches in the breeze as Patricia Pastrana pours a ladle of batter into a frying pan. To her right is the crêpe filling responsible for the stall’s long queue – salted caramel. Born in Argentina, Pastrana married a Frenchman 40 years ago and has lived in Brittany ever since. Today marks her fi rst shift with Mamie Foodie, a catering company where grannies rule. Set up in 2015, Mamie Foodie was inspired by Asian street-food culture, which often sees older women touting street-side specialities.

“This isn’t just a business – it’s also a social project,” says cofounder Johanna Pestour. “In France, over a million pensioners from all different backgrounds say they feel isolated. Cooking with us gives them a chance to get out of their homes and have a validated place in society again.”

Anyone over 60 can apply to work with Mamie Foodie – the only requirement is the ability to cook for 15 people or more, with recipes that they bring with them from their respective home countries including Martinique, Sri Lanka and Mauritius. Th e 12 grandmothers and three grandpas with their eclectic recipes have proved a big hit at the events that Mamie Foodie caters for – as have the cooks themselves, who happily share their tips during the cross-generational natter that accompanies each event. For Pestour, it’s this social element that confirms exactly why she set up the project in the first place.

“We learn so much from these grandparents and we know that cooking with us can change their lives, too,” she says. mamiefoodie.com

The culinary fixer

“i was born in Marrakech, but grew up in France,” says Asmâa Benhamra. “I never had problems integrating, but I realised the main thing people associate with Morocco is its food and the reason it’s so good is because there’s a beautiful culture behind it. I decided it was time to show that.”

Last year, she created La Table d’Asmâa, catering events with modern Moroccan canapés and holding workshops to teach children about North African history and culture via its food.

She also runs Gratin d’Emploi, a networking event that puts recruiters and long-term job-seekers into a kitchen together, in a bid to take the pressure off and try to address the unemployment cycle.

Today’s menu features chicken tagine with olives, preserved lemons and potatoes; chicken and thyme-stuffed pastry parcels; roast-vegetable couscous; and mini sugar-glazed cakes, traditionally eaten during Ramadan. Each ingredient holds a significance for Benhamra, who believes that recipes passed from generation to generation are a mirror of the cultures they belong to.

“Take the simplest of ingredients: tomatoes and peppers,” she says. “Every country has a different way of preparing them, with their own spices and flavours, but the base is the same.” For Benhamra, this is a metaphor for people, and food is an effective medium for bridging any cultural gaps. “Whatever religious or political differences we might have, deep down everyone is the same and one thing we can all do is appreciate good food together.” latabledasmaa.com

The community artists

A bubbling pan of spiced sauce, spoon outstretched.

“Have a taste,” grins Mam Fedior, chef at Pitch Me, a West African restaurant in Paris’s buzzing République quarter. His stall at Street Popote is serving steaming bowls of his native Senegalese chicken yassa, a citrussy, fragrant curry, with green and red peppers adding colour to the chargrilled meat. “As soon as people taste this food, it brings them together – just look at us,” he laughs.

Fedior’s gesturing to his business partner, writer and documentary filmmaker Karim Miské, who was born in Paris to a Mauritanian father. Together with French journalist Sonia Rolley, the three friends opened a restaurant in 2012 that combined their talents, matching Fedior’s homegrown cuisine with a passion for film showings, concerts and book readings.

“The idea was to attract a new kind of clientele and bring West African food to a broader audience, rather than simply serving one community,” explains Miské. Events at their restaurant include book-reading sessions for unpublished authors and experimental film and documentary screenings, all accompanied by Fedior’s delicious dishes and refreshing juices made from hibiscus flower, ginger and tamarind. The diverse crowd settles in, with the act of sharing their creative projects over food helping to break down social barriers.

“When you eat dishes like yassa, you know there’s a long history behind them and you connect to it,” says Miské. “You don’t have to make some kind of political point about being ‘open to otherness’. When you eat together, it just comes naturally.” pitchmeparis.com

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easyJet Traveller

Has French hip hop lost its bad rap?

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From the outside, it’s just another polished window in a row of commercial façades: Sephora, Lacoste, KIKO. But behind two sliding glass doors, a dance off is in session. Rapper Sofiane’s throaty growl reverberates from a boombox as dancers in snapbacks pop and lock to a whooping crowd and a backdrop of neon-coloured, spray-painted walls. It’s a Wednesday afternoon at La Place Centre Culturel Hip Hop, France’s first cultural centre dedicated entirely to hip hop in all its forms, from rap to street dance, graffiti to fashion.

Opened last October in the controversial Les Halles shopping mall – currently emerging from an eight-year, €1 billion reconstruction – the space comprises a gig venue (Oddisee & Good Company kick off this month); an auditorium for conferences and documentary screenings; recording, DJ and dance studios; and a co-working space. What makes La Place ground-breaking is that it was conceived of and largely funded by the Paris mayor’s office, marking a seismic shift away from France’s previous government rhetoric – past politicians have publicly blamed rappers’ lyrics for social unrest, at times even in court.

It comes at a revolutionary moment for French rap, with the country’s hottest artists using streaming sites such as Deezer and Spotify to challenge the status quo. Rap duo PNL, from the south Paris suburb Corbeil-Essonnes, exploded onto the scene in 2015 as a YouTube sensation. They’ve never done an interview or signed to a label – yet they topped the iTunes album chart last November. “Only hip hop artists are this entrepreneurial,” claims director of La Place, hip hop guru Jean-Marc ‘JM’ Mougeot, whose past lives as break dancer, DJ, radio producer and festival organiser made him a clear choice for the job. “It means that we’ll always have an interesting angle at La Place, based on each artist’s unique way of doing things.”

Les Halles, too, is a fitting location for La Place. Sitting above Châtelet – the biggest underground station in the world, and the convergence of Paris’s suburban train lines – the site is infamous for spontaneous street dance and music. Nevertheless, the shiny new mall presents a decidedly cleaned-up version of a setting once known for its gritty urban activity. Between La Place’s spotless walls and sunlit, ballet-ready dance studios, none of the socio-political commentary that’s historically characterised hip hop in France is palpable there. You’ve got to wonder: does a state-funded hip hop initiative mark the sanitisation of a genre defined in opposition to the establishment?

“Some artists are chasing an ideal,” contemplates house dancer Babson, who uses the space and is holding dance workshops there this month. “But the fact is that hip hop stopped being underground the moment it arrived on MTV. As soon as you commercialise something, it’s no longer underground.”

For the artists and employees working at La Place, official recognition of hip hop as an influential cultural movement comes not a moment too soon. As Paris’s deputy mayor Bruno Julliard puts it, “there is a strong tradition in France of public finance for cultural endeavours. Hip hop was the only one not yet benefitting from funding.” It’s worth noting, however, that receiving funding from the mayor’s office is still a far cry from winning a Ministry of Culture grant, awarded to more conservative institutions such as the Opéra-Comique and the Philharmonie concert hall.

In any case, for Babson, focusing on the funding misses the point. “Working with an institution is not the same as working for an institution,” he asserts. “And to evolve, you have to understand the structures in place.” OLKM broadcast journalist and rap expert Mehdi Maizi doubts that many young people will even question the centre’s funding, noting that French hip hop has become dramatically depoliticised since the noughties. “Rappers don’t believe in anything anymore – politics, God, love. If young people decide that La Place is cool, they will go there, simple as that.”

Which leaves us with the major challenge facing La Place: how will it appeal to the youngest generation of hip hop fans? In the directors’ efforts to appeal to a cross-generational audience, the programme is in danger of being a bit too old-school. One of its first concerts was by 90s MC KRS-One, who at 51 is ideal nostalgia-trip material – but doesn’t necessarily speak to the banlieue-based teens who listen to PNL, and who the centre ultimately hopes to reach.

“Maybe in 20 years’ time, rap will be like jazz, and old people will listen to it with a brandy while smoking a cigar. But right now, young people make the law,” says Maizi. “If La Place is disconnected from them, then it’s not speaking to the people who listen to hip hop every day. It has to be relevant. Rap can never be boring.” laplace.paris

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easyJet Traveller

How to smash through the glass ceiling: Tel Aviv’s women tech entrepreneurs

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A weekday morning on Tel Aviv’s beach promenade. Bronzed 30-somethings jog under brilliant sunshine, preened dogs scurrying at their ankles. Baristas steam lattes and young guys in wetsuits ride the turquoise surf. But behind the pleasure-seeking surface, a quiet revolution is brewing, driven by young entrepreneurs, tapping on laptops and smartphones.

So far, so London or Berlin, you might think, but Tel Aviv differs from its rival tech hubs in one fundamental way (apart from the weather). There are currently over 1,000 startups in the city – fledgling businesses, usually internet based, and often nomadically run from cafés and workspaces around the city. Israel’s tech-obsessed financial centre is the most concentrated startup ecosystem outside of Silicon Valley in California and it’s growing fast: up 40% between 2012 and 2014. What’s more interesting, however, is that 20% of these are now run by women, according to the Compass Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2015 – the highest number of any city outside the USA and beating every European commercial capital. It begs the question: is Tel Aviv one of the best places on Earth to be a woman entrepreneur?

The city has come a long way. In 2012, only 9% of Tel Aviv’s entrepreneurs were female. Israel’s education system and the compulsory military service that all school leavers complete has played a big part in this. Among the various paths these conscripts pursue, the army’s cyber intelligence units are a popular choice and have proven to be a fertile breeding ground for some of the city’s most successful startup entrepreneurs. But with fewer girls studying hard science and maths at school, these units end up being largely male – and many who serve in them also go on to become board members on some of the city’s most influential tech investment bodies. This has, unsurprisingly, caused a powerful old-boy network to be formed – often to the detriment of female entrepreneurs who lack the connections to secure funding.

Enter Hilla Ovil-Brenner, who decidedto build similarly strong networks to give businesswomen a leg up. In summer 2013, she launched a ground-breaking programme called Campus for Moms, at Google’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, in partnership with her friend and business partner, Tal Sarig-Avraham. On the 34th floor of Electra Tower, the Campus is kitted out in Google’s trademark urban design, with vintage lamps spotlighting shared desk spaces.

“The idea came to us when I was on maternity leave and missing intelligent conversation. I kept meeting women who only wanted to talk about diapers,” Ovil-Brenner explains. “Babies are most welcome at Campus for Moms, but here women are encouraged to talk about their startup as well as their baby.”

The 10-week course hosts one meet-up per week, primarily for women on maternity leave who are looking for practical business guidance. As it’s grown in popularity, so has the diversity of applications. “We also have some dads on paternity leave, which is very encouraging,” says Ovil-Brenner. Industry experts and mentors hold workshops and lectures within the cheerful chaos that comes with a room full of infants. “Having major entrepreneurs as speakers changes the way female entrepreneurship is perceived and raises awareness to their need for support,” she says.

At the end of the course, the six most promising graduates pitch their business models to investors. “They are asked some tough questions, but they rock it,” says Sarig-Avraham.

For Ovil-Brenner, watching them develop is an emotional experience: “I cried on the first pitch night, I was so excited,” she admits. And, in less than three years, some 300 entrepreneurs have graduated from the Campus for Moms – and they sing its praises.

“Everything I learned here increased my confidence and success,” says Inbal Miron-Bershteyn, who founded KidkeDoo, a children’s online encyclopaedia. “To be an entrepreneur is like riding a roller-coaster. Having a supportive community that encourages you and believes in you is like the seatbelt that keeps you safe during the ride.”

Orly Shoavi, CEO of SafeDK, already had two young children when she began the programme. “I was concerned about being both highly involved in my kids’ lives and running a demanding business,” she says. “But seeing other moms build their companies and never look back gave me the confi dence to do it. I quit my job soon after.”

It helps that funding bodies are now becoming increasingly aware of the importance of investing in women’s ventures. “If I can help other women, I should. I see it as an obligation,” says Michal Michaeli, who worked her way up in high-tech for 15 years before setting up Eva Ventures in 2012 – a micro venture capital that invests in startups with at least one woman in a leadership role. “The more women there are in business, the easier it becomes to recruit more.”

Michaeli notes how the absence of women in business has its roots in childhood. “The sense you get is that you have to be beautiful and well behaved, not daring and smart,” she observes. “If a young girl is climbing a tree, she is usually told to be careful. If it’s a boy, he’s encouraged to explore and see what his limits are.”

Networking and funding are key, but the third ingredient for a successful startup is available workspace. Entrepreneur Merav Oren opened WMN last summer – a co-working space, which provides a temporary office for predominantly female-led startups. Five main meeting rooms are separated by soundproof glass, with notes scrawled over them in marker pen. The Mediterranean sun floods the desktops with natural light and weekly workshops and networking events are held by lawyers, tech experts and established entrepreneurs.

“It started because, as an entrepreneur myself, I felt alone working from home. I wanted to be surrounded by other women like me,” says Oren. “The only difference between WMN and any other co-working place is that I reach out and look for these women.” And they are happy to be found. During the first six months the space was open, it received over 100 applications from brand-new businesses needing desk space.

What of the women using WMN? “It makes a huge difference,” says client Limor Shilony, cofounder of a new app called Pauzz that helps dieters to manage cravings. “We inspire and help each other. It’s nice to see so many working towards their dreams.”

Ovil-Brenner also believes the environment fosters the different skills that women bring to the table, compared to their male counterparts: “Sensitivity, emotional intelligence, intuition and lack of ego.”

It’s easy to understand how quickly these powerful initiatives can shape the narrative in a small city of 400,000 residents. “We’re inside a revolution at the moment,” smiles Ovil-Brenner. “One day, someone will look back on 2015 and 2016 and say, ‘What a change those years made in women’s lives’.”

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IBT

Knitting for freedom: the Faroese brand employing displaced women

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Ever since Gudrun & Gudrun – the Faroese knitwear brand behind Sarah Lund’s woollen jumper in the cult Danish TV series, The Killing – stitched its first sweater, an ethos of sustainability was spun into the company’s fabric.

Not only did it champion traditional hand-knitting methods with its team of 30 knitters on the Faroe Islands, but it developed two fully-fledged women’s empowerment projects at outposts in Jordan and Peru, where they have employed between 25 and 30 local women since 2008 and 2012 respectively. The aim? To provide fair and culturally non-threatening income to women with limited moneymaking options due to the fact that, in both societies, they are expected to be homemakers.

The brand’s development work has now taken a step further as they have begun employing female refugees from Syria in their Jordanian outpost and helping them take a step towards regaining their freedom.

Disproportionately affected by the ongoing conflict, both within Syria and beyond, there are currently 655,217 UNHCR-registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, of which 36% are in female-headed households.

Already-stretched resources in Jordan mean that refugees – particularly women, due to entrenched social stigma – have trouble supporting themselves financially, and often must make impossible choices between family necessities: healthcare, food and shelter. Add social isolation and lack of income to the mix, and women become especially vulnerable to exploitation.

Enter Gudrun & Gudrun and their Jordanian project coordinator Hind Hammouqah who explains that while she hasn’t actively recruited knitters from refugee camps, Syrian women who have made it into Amman have contacted her after hearing about the opportunity for work. Experiencing the same traditional barriers that limit Jordanian women’s ability to work, but with the added complexity of starting from scratch, they are looking for opportunities for independence.

Once signed up, the knitters receive basic tuition, meet at a warehouse to pick up yarn and equipment, and follow knitting patterns at home as they work around their other family commitments.

“These women once had good lives in Syria, but were scared for their children’s safety when the war began. They came to Jordan to feel secure,” says Hammouqah. “There are NGOs here that can help with food and clothes, but not money.”

Knitting for Gudrun & Gudrun offers an opportunity to build a new life, and earning a salary brings with it a dignified place in society, as well as a supportive social circle – something that can’t be underestimated for Syrian women forced to leave everything behind. As the brand’s co-founder Gudrun Rógvadóttir has observed, the knitters’ personal experiences can be conveyed through the textiles they produce.

“It takes days or even weeks to knit a sweater. And during that time, you have good and bad times, and a lot of thoughts,” she reveals. “You can see it in the knitting if it was a tense or a relaxed day – if you’re stressed, you have a tighter hand.”

Can a woman’s story be stitched into fabric? “Work itself can be therapeutic, and focusing on a specific thing – knitting – can give you a break from thinking about past, current and future difficulties,” Rógvadóttir says. The end product can feel like a physical and remedial record of a chapter in a knitter’s life, and all the ups and downs that came with it.

Some refugees arrive in Amman in desperate need of medical attention, which – for those that are eligible for healthcare – is expensive.

“One of our knitters, Liza, was heavily pregnant when she started working with us in 2013,” Hammouqah reveals. “Public healthcare didn’t cover antenatal care for Syrian refugees. The project helped her to save enough money to have her baby in a hospital, and to continue to start a new life afterwards.” For Liza, employment with Gudrun & Gudrun was the lifeline she needed to give her family a degree of stability during a turbulent time.

The UN announced recently that at 65 million worldwide, the number of people displaced by conflict is at the highest level ever recorded. Considering the success of Gudrun & Gudrun’s empowering business model, could larger textile producers follow suit?

“For big clothes companies it is very difficult to start working sustainably – they really have to change direction,” acknowledges Rógvadóttir. “So they focus on a small contribution, for example making 1% of their production a ‘conscious collection’. But we believe that sustainability should not be the icing on the cake, but the cake itself.”

At least for now, the army of knitters on Gudrun & Gudrun’s books demonstrate how a traditionally feminine pastime can be transformed into a socially powerful project, allowing a handful of female Syrian refugees a level of stability and freedom that’s denied to so many.

“The most important thing is to be able to live a normal, dignified life,” says Rógvadóttir. “Refugees, like everybody else, want to support themselves. And if you can help them to do that, it’s the best form of development aid.”