Elise Thorel

Updated March 2026

Women of foreign origin are underrepresented in professional kitchens

In France, women often struggle to progress beyond invisible, low-paid roles in the food industry, particularly those from immigrant or refugee backgrounds. While women are responsible for 75% of domestic cooking tasks, only 10% of professional chefs are women, yet they represent 59% of kitchen assistants and multi-skilled restaurant workers. They primarily hold low-qualified, undervalued and multi-purpose roles.

Women of foreign origin struggle even more to have their talents recognized in the workforce. They are often underestimated, made to feel invisible and disproportionately subjected to racist and sexist violence.

Marie Curry offers an alternative — a safe, professional space where refugee and immigrant women’s culinary talents are valued and visible. Now a thriving catering service and restaurant, Marie Curry was co-founded by Elise Thorel and her business partner Sandrine Clément. The pair met in 2020 while volunteering for the Refugee Food Festival and quickly realized they shared a common vision — a more equitable society for women and a more inclusive one for people in exile.

A social enterprise that honors the skills and heritages of its cooks

Marie Curry’s menus showcase authentic recipes from around the world, honoring the diverse origins of its employees and offering its clients unique, homemade and eco-responsible meals. The vibrant diversity of its culinary staff, who hail from countries including Iraq, Brazil, Senegal, Congo, Morocco, Tajikistan, Syria and Colombia, is reflected in the abundance of flavours on offer, as every team member is invited to contribute to menu creation.

Recognizing the untapped potential of women cooks and how they will often have honed their talents through nontraditional routes, Marie Curry does not focus overly on formal professional qualifications during recruitment. Instead, it values a wide range of skills, know-how, attitudes, culinary heritage and motivation. New recruits receive permanent employment contracts to help them regain economic stability, confidence and purpose, and benefit from building relationships within the team.

The name is a play on Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, combined with a reference to the aromatic herb curry leaves. Mirroring the stories of the refugee and immigrant women Elise employs, Marie Curie was an immigrant who moved from Poland to France to pursue higher education (forbidden to women in her homeland at the time) and overcame many barriers including gender and identity discrimination to succeed.

Every meal served empowers refugee and immigrant women

Since 2020, Marie Curry has created 19 jobs, generated over $1.9 million USD in income and offered more than 20 internships. It continues to go from strength to strength and in 2025, catered its largest event so far, serving over 700 people.

For its employees, it has opened doors to confidence, independence and, for some, the courage to launch their own businesses. Its customers have enjoyed over 20,000 meals, each one telling a story about a faraway place or culture. 

Elise is determined to pay this success forward. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as restaurants in France closed or operated at limited capacity, other social entrepreneurs in the food industry generously offered their time and guidance, helping Marie Curry become the flourishing business it is today. Now, she is always willing to give back and offer insights from her own experience to others looking to launch a venture in the same space.