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Stop homelessness the delicious way

100 million young people live or work on the world's streets.If you find this hard to swallow, use one of your life's 80,000 meals to help this stop by eating with us.

STREAT is a social enterprise providing homeless youth with a supported pathway to long-term careers in the hospitality industry. We run street cafes in Melbourne where youth get their hospitality training. Our food is inspired by street hawker food from around the world.

Our first mobile food carts are located in Federation Square. We're opposite St Paul's Cathedral, right next to the Melbourne Visitor's Centre. Have a look at the map and pay us a visit!

Blog

Fine dining joys

by Damien on 29 July 2010

I started STREAT with a very limited knowledge of food. I have always loved fine dining and have always wanted to be able to make fancy dishes, presenting them with excellence, working with complex tastes, but not overpowering or being over complex. Now I feel I have acquired the right knife skills and understanding of different tastes and sensations to make dishes even I am surprised of.

It wasn’t always like this. About a year ago I was working in a call centre. It was hell. I was getting abused by angry customers 100 times a day. I ended up having panic attacks and got emitted into hospital. It really is the worst feeling working in a job your hate and I believe it is bad for the body and soul.

Now that STREAT has helped me with accomplishing my goals I feel a lot happier and healthier, I have made some good mates and am always motivated to come into work. I am sure it shows too. Everyone is telling me I’m looking better and am smiling a lot more.

Why I want to be a pastry chef

by Jamie on 26 July 2010

STREAT is starting a series of blog posts by the STREAT trainees, as they reflect on their journey and share some of their passion around the skills they are learning. Here's the first example of the series, from Jamie, a STREAT trainee.

I was watching Masterchef recently, with special guest Adriano Zumbo who brought in one of his signature cakes called the V8 cake. He used white tempered chocolate to make spikes, of different heights, almost claws, on top of the cake. There were eight different layers of vanilla. Watching it, I felt like I wanted to do what he was doing. It looked so perfect. It’s something that I’d want to make for my family some day. For me, to cook for my family… my grandma has always cooked for me, and I’ve liked everything she’s made. Both my grandmas are sort of chefs, so they both cook. I’d be happy to cook for them one day, because they’ve cooked for me for 17 years.

I decided recently that I want to be a pastry chef. I talked to a couple chefs and they reckon pastry chefs are really good because there aren’t many good pastry chefs out there, and I like a challenge. Dessert is my favourite food. Dessert looks better than other food— it looks more clean. It tastes better. I reckon it’s very hard to make everything look so good.