Together, the invited chef and the restaurant will elaborate their menu: it needs to be consistent with the refugee chef’s home country’s cuisine. This step is crucial as the success of the event is mostly defined by what’s in the guests’ plates! Aim for a quality menu that will appeal to all taste buds! For you this is a very interesting moment, as you’ll witness the meeting of two different culinary worlds!

Ideally both chefs need to agree on the menu at their first meeting so that there is enough time to source all necessary supplies. Different options are possible: the host chef can decide to give complete freedom to the refugee chef to elaborate the menu or it can be elaborated in partnership. Either way, the most important is that the skills and the cuisine of the refugee chef are showcased during the event. Don’t forget that one of the promises of the Festival is to celebrate the best of the refugee chef’s home country's cuisine!

Once the menu has been agreed upon, both chefs will need to draft a specification sheet for each dish: a recipe containing all ingredients and quantities. You’ll then be able to figure out with the restaurant which ingredients are already available through its usual supplier and which ones need to be sourced from specialised shops. Do not forget to ask the invited chef to check that all the utensils necessary to prepare his menu are available in the restaurant.

Managing the supplies is a very interesting moment of the event’s preparation, as both chefs discover ingredients and suppliers they do not know.

As a general rule, the usual supplier of the restaurant should be used for all ingredients that can be ordered through it. For all other ingredients, specific to the cuisine of the invited chef, he or she will be in charge of sourcing them. But encourage the chefs to get their supplies together whenever possible. That way they’ll both get to meet new suppliers. During the edition of the Refugee Food Festival in Paris, some restaurateurs insisted that the invited chef come along to get supplies so that they could introduce him or her to their usual suppliers.