Celebrity chef could be the most overused term of the decade, with seemingly everybody who has stepped into a restaurant kitchen turning out a cookbook, appearing on television, launching kitchenware lines and putting Food Detective right off her dinner. But it\'s good to see some of the high-profile breed are using their new-found fame and fortune to do a bit of good in the world.
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| Luke Nguyen, star of Luke Nguyen\'s Vietnam on SBS, has begun a charity for Vietnamese kids called The Little Lantern Foundation. |
Sydney chef Christine Manfield, who has joined Plan Australia\'s Food Fighters campaign in an ambassadorial role, will travel to Zimbabwe next week to help highlight the growing food crisis there, and the always energetic Kylie Kwong is developing a range of kitchenware to support the Oxfam charity.
Detective is also impressed by Luke Nguyen, who runs Sydney\'s Red Lantern restaurant and whose new SBS series, Luke Nguyen\'s Vietnam, has smashed records for international sales.
While the handsome 30-something could easily sit back and lap up the plaudits, Nguyen is instead focusing on what he tells Detective is his most important project to date: setting up a charity for underprivileged kids in Vietnam.
The Little Lantern Foundation came about after Nguyen met a young girl working on a mango stall at a Hoi An market and discovered her family was too poor to send her to school. "It costs about $100 a year there for an education and I thought of all the times I had spent a hundred bucks on a meal or blown it in an hour," Nguyen tells Detective.
"This girl was so bright and if she had an education she would go so far, but as it is she\'s stuck in a market with no future."
Nguyen vowed to return and do something to help. "My plan is to open a little guesthouse where youngsters can train in hotel operations and in a restaurant, doing front of house and commercial cookery," he says.
"It will be hands on, with a good curriculum, an 18-month training course. At the end of it I\'d hope these kids can go out and get a job in the industry but, if not, it will at least set them up for other things."
Nguyen and his partner Suzanna Boyd are searching for a central Vietnam site in which to set up Little Lantern HQ. "There\'s a lot to do," says workaholic Nguyen. However, one of the first things is tracking down the girl who was the inspiration for the project. Nguyen has not seen her since that fateful meeting at the mango stall. "She was gone the next time I went there looking for her," he says. "But I will find her." More: www.plan.org.au; www.oxfamshop.org.au; www.littlelantern.org.
ONE of the things Detective loves about her neighbourhood in Sydney\'s inner west is Galluzzo, an old-style, family-run greengrocer where you still get service with a smile and the produce is always perfect.
Detective has been doing her fruit and veg shopping here for years but is ashamed to say she knew little about the background of this Glebe Point Road institution. Thanks to a new website celebrating the city\'s traditional Italian greengrocers, however, she\'s now a font of knowledge on one of her favourite local businesses, established in 1934 by Calabrian migrant Sam Galluzzo and his wife Caterina. Galluzzo is still run by the same family (son Frank and his wife have taken over the reins) and Detective reckons they could teach many of today\'s dismissive young shop assistants a thing or two about customer service.
Galluzzo is one of nearly 200 fruit shops listed at Sydney\'s Italian Fruit Shops, an extensive archive of traditional fruit shops, past and present, which includes old photographs, store descriptions and recollections from owners and their families. The group behind the project, Co.As.It Italian Heritage, hopes to have at least 2000 merchants registered during the next five years and Detective would love to see similar initiatives rolled out Australia-wide, if only to provide an enduring record for future generations of what good, old-fashioned service was like before the superstores finally took over the world.