A fateful time in Paris – a romantic dinner, a family farm in Aveyron and years of running bustling brasseries – set Alena Rayrolles on the path to her own restaurant business. Today she owns Frenchy’s Café in Mosman and co-founded L’Héritage at Chowder Bay and Café La Mer at Clifton Gardens. Here, she shares how she brought a little France to Sydney.
When I moved to Paris at 21, I was there to study science. I had no idea that a dinner with Pierre, who would later become my husband, and a visit to his family’s farm in Aveyron would change the way I thought about food, flavour and hospitality. Those experiences stayed with me when I returned to Sydney, where I’ve since created three very different venues, each with a little of the France I fell in love with.
From McDonald’s to the kitchen
But my hospitality journey began much closer to home. I was all of 14 years and nine months when I started at McDonald’s in Sydney – just old enough to have a job. Looking back, it was an incredible introduction to the industry.
The passion for food and what we were serving hadn’t quite landed yet, but the discipline, systems and protocols I learnt were invaluable. I didn’t know it at the time, but those foundations would stay with me throughout my career.
A few years later, while studying a science degree at Macquarie University, I was working in a sandwich and salad bar to earn some extra money. One day, the chef had a complete meltdown and quit without notice. Suddenly, I found myself thrown into the kitchen. I’d never even cooked rice!
But I learnt quickly, and I discovered something about myself. I had an instinct for cooking, particularly when it came to flavours. I wasn’t particularly good at following recipes exactly, but I could make something delicious.
I remember questioning why a recipe should always be followed to the letter. What if the pumpkin wasn’t as sweet as it had been the week before? Surely, you needed to adjust the other ingredients to achieve the same result?
That curiosity about food and flavour was there, even if I hadn’t yet realised where it might take me.
Paris changed everything
When I was 21, I moved to Paris on a scholarship from Macquarie University to complete part of my degree at La Sorbonne. My father was living there with my stepmother and stepbrother, so it felt like a free ticket home.
Dad had spent most of his career working in fine fragrance, but at the time, he had decided to pursue a dream of his own and open a café in Paris. The timing couldn’t have been better. As a student, my visa restricted the types of work I could do, and hospitality was one of the options. I quickly learnt to speak French and ended up managing his café.
I was a quick learner, worked hard and have always been a natural people pleaser. There was something satisfying about watching people come together over food and enjoy themselves.
It was here that I met Pierre, who would later become my husband and with whom I would spend the first part of my hospitality journey. He was the manager of Le Soubise, a large, bustling brasserie next door that traded almost around the clock. It was what the French would call une grosse machine (a big operation).
A dinner to remember
One evening he asked me to dinner and took me to a beautiful restaurant set in a garden around a softly lit swimming pool. On arrival, there was a majestic fountain with sculpted horses. The tables were dressed in linen, the silverware and glassware sparkled, the lighting was romantic and the music was at just the right volume.
Everything was perfect. I was young, impressionable and completely swept away by it all. I felt like a princess. Pierre ordered for us and selected wines to accompany each course. He explained the flavours, the different notes in the wines and why they worked with particular dishes. He talked about how grapes developed different characteristics depending on the soil, climate and conditions in which they were grown.
And suddenly, something clicked. I’d studied geology as part of my science degree. Of course the soil mattered! Of course the climate mattered! A tomato grown in Spain isn’t going to taste exactly like a tomato grown in Denmark. The sun is different, the soil is different, the growing conditions are different. It all made perfect sense, and I was fascinated that I’d never really thought about food in this way before.
Falling in love with hospitality
That evening opened my eyes to the wonderful complexity of flavour and the pleasure of pairing food and wine. But it wasn’t just the food that stayed with me. It was the service. The waiter carried himself with such pride and elegance. There was a confidence in the way he moved around the tables, an attention to detail and a genuine sense of pride in doing his job beautifully.
I began to understand that hospitality, when done well, is almost like a dance. There are so many moving parts, yet when everyone knows their role and everything comes together, it appears effortless. The food, the wine, the lighting, the music, the service, the surroundings—every detail contributes to the experience. And when it all works, something magical happens. I think that was the moment I really fell in love with hospitality.
A different kind of food education
About six months later, Pierre took me to Aveyron, in the south of France, where his family lived on a farm.
It was another experience that completely changed the way I thought about food.
His family made delicious pâtés and charcuterie, and his father had the most beautiful, lovingly tended vegetable garden. His mother was an excellent cook, and almost everything she prepared came directly from the land around them.
If we were having salad for lunch, they would walk into the garden to cut a fresh lettuce and pick cucumbers, courgettes or whatever happened to be ready that day. The menu was dictated by the season and what the garden had to offer. There was nothing complicated or pretentious about it.
The ingredients were so fresh and full of flavour that they didn’t need much done to them. A little olive oil, seasoning, perhaps some herbs, and you had something absolutely delicious. It taught me that beautiful food doesn’t need to be complicated. In fact, sometimes the simpler it is, the better. That philosophy has stayed with me ever since.
A little olive oil, seasoning, perhaps some herbs, and you had something absolutely delicious.
Learning hospitality the hard way
Throughout my 20s, I ran brasseries with Pierre in Paris, and while those years were incredibly exciting, they were also some of the hardest of my life. We worked extraordinary hours, often like ships passing in the night. There were staffing issues, supplier problems, disagreements with local authorities and all the challenges that come with running large hospitality businesses in a busy city—all of it in French!
One of our brasseries had 400 seats and closed for just four hours a night. It was enormous, relentless and at times completely chaotic. We dealt with everything from police raids looking for illegal workers to drug dealers trying to operate out of our toilets.
Hospitality exposes you to such an extraordinary cross-section of people and life. You see people at their happiest, their saddest, their most vulnerable and sometimes their most difficult. It teaches you patience, resilience, empathy and how to think on your feet. Despite the chaos, I loved the energy of it.
Watching our talented team manage a packed restaurant was something quite extraordinary. Orders flying, waiters weaving between tables carrying enormous platters, bartenders making cocktails while greeting customers and keeping an eye on the entire room. There is a skill and elegance to doing it well that I think is often underestimated. Hospitality is hard work, and I have enormous respect for people who do it beautifully.
Eventually, we decided it was time for a different life. We wanted to start a family, move to Australia and create something that reflected the kind of hospitality we loved. Something a little calmer, more personal and perhaps a little more conducive to a good night’s sleep!
Frenchy’s Café: bringing a little France to Mosman
My mother and stepfather were living in Mona Vale at the time, so we began looking for a business anywhere between Avalon and North Sydney. Eventually, we came across a little café tucked away in the bushland of Mosman.
It was perfect. We called it Frenchy’s Café.
I was six months pregnant when we opened the doors, and Pierre spoke very little English. It was an exciting challenge, but it was certainly not easy. We struggled to find staff, so in the beginning we did absolutely everything ourselves. We would arrive at five in the morning, prepare all the food, open for breakfast and lunch, then spend the afternoon and evening preparing for the next day. Often we wouldn’t finish until nine at night, only to get up and do it all again.
The Roseto Effect
A few years ago, a customer told me that Frenchy’s reminded them of something called the Roseto Effect. I’d never heard of it, so I went away and looked it up.
The Roseto Effect comes from a small Italian-American community in Pennsylvania, where researchers observed unusually low rates of heart disease and explored whether the strong social connections between residents might be part of the explanation.
I thought it was such a beautiful thing for someone to say about Frenchy’s. Over the past 14 years, we’ve watched children grow up, friendships develop and families return week after week. People come in for their morning coffee and end up chatting with someone they know. It’s become a meeting place, somewhere familiar, somewhere people feel they belong.
You can create a beautiful space, serve wonderful food and provide great service, but when people start making it their own, when it becomes part of their lives and their memories, that’s when something special happens. You can’t manufacture that sense of community. It develops over time, through the people who come through your doors. And to think that Frenchy’s has become that kind of place for people makes me incredibly proud.
Three venues, three different experiences
Around six years ago, I had the opportunity to create something completely different with my good friend and business partner, Julien.
That became L’Héritage, located in a beautiful heritage building on the water at Chowder Bay. Where Frenchy’s is relaxed and casual, L’Héritage is about elegance, beautiful food, exceptional wines and the pleasure of taking your time over a meal. It represents a different side of my love of hospitality. It’s my passion for beautiful French dining, elegant service, wonderful wines and the attention to detail that first captivated me in Paris.
Our kitchen celebrates traditional French techniques with a contemporary approach, and our wine list is highly awarded.
What I love about L’Héritage is that it offers different experiences depending on the occasion. Guests can enjoy a beautifully crafted degustation menu with matched wines or a relaxed prix fixe lunch. It’s somewhere to celebrate a birthday, an anniversary or a special occasion, but equally somewhere to escape for a beautiful midweek lunch overlooking Sydney Harbour. Guests can even arrive by water taxi to our jetty below!
Café La Mer at Clifton Gardens, Sydney
More recently, Julien and I opened Café La Mer at Clifton Gardens, a little café right on the beach.
Café La Mer is all about that wonderful feeling of a summer afternoon by the water. Fresh seafood, oysters, Aperols, music and sunshine. I wanted to create somewhere that felt like a little escape to the south of France.
Each of my venues is very different, but each represents a part of my life, my experiences and the things I love. Although my journey began alongside Pierre, our lives eventually took different paths. Today, I run Frenchy’s independently and have continued building my hospitality businesses in my own right.
I wanted to create somewhere that felt like a little escape to the south of France.
Creating the setting for people’s memories
People often ask me what I love most about hospitality, particularly when it’s such a demanding industry. For me, it’s not simply about serving good food or creating a beautiful restaurant. It’s about creating a space where people make memories.
At L’Héritage, we have guests who come back five years later and tell us about an incredible dinner they had, or the night they met their partner or the birthday they celebrated with their mum. They remember how they felt, what they ate, the atmosphere and the people they were with. I love knowing that I’ve created a space for people to enjoy and that it becomes part of a memory they still treasure years later.
At Café La Mer, it’s about giving people that feeling of escape. For a few hours, they can sit by the water, enjoy beautiful food, listen to music and feel as though they’ve been transported somewhere else. I love creating that feeling.
I think what fascinates me most about hospitality is how all the elements come together. The lighting, the furniture, the music, the food, the drinks, the service, the energy of the staff—they’re all ingredients in creating an experience, whether the guests realise it or not.
Get the balance right and you create something that people remember.
A little full-circle moment
Not long ago, I was going through some old belongings and came across a list I’d written years earlier when I was running brasseries in Paris. It was a list of everything I dreamed of creating in my own café one day.
As I read through it, I realised that everything I’d written down could now be found at Frenchy’s. It made me smile. Sometimes you’re so busy running businesses, solving problems, managing staff and dealing with the everyday challenges that you forget to look around and appreciate what you’ve created.
Today, I’m incredibly proud of all three venues. They’re completely different, but they’re all a piece of me. And perhaps the greatest compliment I can give my own businesses is that if they weren’t mine, I’d still choose to go there. I love sharing them with my friends and family, and watching people walk through the door and have a good time.
That’s what hospitality has become for me. It’s the art of creating places where people feel something, where they come together, connect, celebrate, escape and make memories.
And after all these years, that’s still what gives me my buzz.
Read more: Paris Unplanned: Five Days of Art, Walking and Letting Go as a Solo Traveller
