Comme Chez Nous
1/97 Grandview St, Pymble NSW 2073
So here I am at Comme Chez Nous chatting away with Alex, Mathieu and Michael, 3 French guys that migrated to Sydney and opened up a café with cuisine inspired by their homeland, and I can’t help but feel like this is the closest I’ll get to time travel. Not to be confused with air travel which will take you to France, where you can savour the OG croissants. Actual time travel in the sense that I’ve been allowed a glimpse at the recipe that helped birthed Sydney’s café culture.
I believe the reason that this aspect of Australian culture stuck around and evolved over the last 70ish years is because these businesses that initially introduced many Australians to the culture of the world were run with a passion and commitment that bred quality, quality that would go on to make our cafes world renowned.
To help understand the how lets for a moment appreciate just how crazy it would be to move to another country, 70 years ago, by ship, with little knowledge of the local language and with absolutely no internet (goodbye friends and family). Working in hospitality I got to meet a lot of people going through similar adventures so I can somewhat understand the dynamics but I don’t think my “first world problems” conditioned brain will ever empathise with what a quest it would’ve been 70 years ago.
Coming from a family of migrants myself I was able to bear witness to the somewhat heightened version of ownership that is often attained once the control you have over your life is realised post-migration.
“You have to come and be a guest at my house.”“You have to try this obscure vegetable that I grew myself.”“We have to fix this thing that a qualified tradesman should be fixing, by ourselves of course.”
It might have been that opening a business was just their version of creating a job for themselves…
Herein lies the point of difference that our immigration policies made common.
When your café is an investment you consider the numbers, competitors, perhaps the interest rate and you know that you can buy croissants from a supplier and sell them for a profit once you’ve toasted them, plated them and added a condiment of the customer’s choice.
On the other hand when you’ve grown up in France, made your life’s work hospitality, migrated halfway across the world to Sydney, gotten a taste for its café culture, dreamed of opening your own café, planned it for two years and finally done so... Well, if that were to be the case, you’d be more inclined to look at your café as the culmination of your life’s work. That’s why Comme Chez Nous has a authentic atmosphere, it’s why all the pastries are baked in-house daily and it’s why when you order a croissant with butter on the side you’ll receive a recommendation against it.
“Try just a small piece without and if you really need it I’ll give you the butter” is a common phrase for Michael.
A picture says a thousand words but that one sentence tells you everything you need to know about Comme Chez Nous. The croissants were made to a certain standard that doesn’t require additional butter, high standards rarely stop at croissants though.
The team went on to cover many intriguing topics that confirmed the thought process that I was confident they possessed. My personal favourite was the formulaic breakdown Michael gave as a reason for them not being able to include the famed bacon and egg roll on the menu. You see, to make bacon and egg rolls a grill is needed, which takes up either café space or the customer’s time depending on how big it is which dictates how much you can cook at once…and that’s after you’ve hired a chef to run it and adjusted the menu to make having a grill worth it.
Instead, they opted for a simple menu that would allow for quality with choices closer to what you would actually find in France such as pastries, salads, sandwiches and ratatouille. This way the 3 man team would be able to learn every aspect of the menu while also creating a more open and welcoming space, French style terrace included.
I got to experience the environment that such a philosophy encourages while interviewing the team; as customers entered the café they would politely interrupt our conversation with a first name basis greeting. This happened every 5-10 minutes for 3 hours and it’s a symptom of an environment that you’d want while enjoying a coffee.
“The welcome when you walk in the store is the most important part, 50% of the job is your smile, you make people feel welcome and half your job is done.”
With that it was crystal clear that Comme Chez Nous is a spiritual throwback to the personalised approach that developed today’s Australian café culture, the final piece of proof is in the name “like home”.
