From career beginnings in France and the UK to opening a groundbreaking gluten-free patisserie in Sydney, Sebastien Sans Gluten, Sebastien Syidalza is continuing to carve out his own path in the industry.

When Sebastien Syidalza was a child he loved to spend time in the kitchen cooking with his mother, but that was far as his interest in the culinary world went – that is until he watched on as his best friend stepped into the patisserie world.

Sebastien, who grew up in Guyancourt, near Versailles in France, said he was just 17 or 18 at the time when the realisation struck him: that’s what he wanted to do. The addition of getting to work with his best friend? Well, that was an added perk.

Sebastien convinced his best friend to have a word with his boss about taking on Sebastien as an apprentice, and the rest, as they say, is history. Sebastien launched headfirst into his apprenticeship, which he describes as being a cool experience.

“It was an apprenticeship. It was part school, part work, which was pretty cool. It was pretty cool to be at school and get some money for it – especially for something that you like to do,” he said.

After completing his apprenticeship Sebastien set out and worked in different parts of France before being drawn to London, where he worked for a decade.

The move across the Channel was inspired in part because Sebastien was ready for a change of scene, and also because his sister was already living in the UK.

With enough industry experience under his belt to know he could find work easily, Sebastien packed up his belongings and made the trip.

“I said, ‘ok, let’s try it’. I didn’t speak a word of English, so it was a real opportunity for me to try something different. Having this bread in my hand – my trade – helped me a lot because doors were opening for me,” he said.

“It was quite difficult [to learn English on the job] but as long as you know what you’re doing and you know what you’re supposed to get done, then nothing changes really. I was learning the language on the spot, which was really difficult because not one kitchen in the UK – or in London especially – has only English speakers.

“The kitchens were a melting pot between Polish, Brazilian, Italian, Spanish, French… I can’t even say which countries. It’s incredibly diverse.”

For the next 10 years Sebastien worked his way across the metropolis in kitchens ranging from restaurants to resorts and small bakeries, all the while honing his pastry chef skills. But it was a chance meeting with his now wife, Heidi, at a farewell party for a mutual friend that set the wheels in motion for Sebastien’s next career move – relocating to Sydney.

Sebastien out the front of Sebastien Sans Gluten

Making the move Down Under

Sebastien said Heidi brought up the possibility of moving Down Under and, after trying out the Harbour City on a holiday, they decided to go for it.

“I looked at it this way: it’s like London under the sun. It’s just a different climate,” Sebastien said.

Sebastien found a job at the popular gluten-free bakery Wholegreen Bakery, where he was tasked with helping to build up and restructure the business – something he balanced with mastering creating gluten-free products that were indistinguishable from their traditional counterparts – not an easy task even before you factor in the fact that Sebastien is neither Coeliac nor eats a gluten-free diet.

By 2020, however, Sebastien was ready to go out on his own. He’d found a good location for a business in Leichhardt and had begun putting plans in motion when the entire world was brought to a standstill due to the pandemic.

Rather than be disheartened though, Sebastien said the delay actually granted him the time to think about how to do things properly, examine new trends across the industry and really consider what products consumers would like access to.

“I worked in different places in the meantime because I love my trade. I worked in those places until I was ready, and also until we could reopen businesses after covid,” he said.

Through a stroke of luck – or fate – the location Sebastien had originally set his heart on was once again available and he decided to make the jump to open his own patisserie.

The time he had spent researching trends and consumer needs had shown Sebastien there was a large gap in the market for a high-quality gluten-free patisserie – and so he decided to fill that gap.

“I already had the incentive of thinking it worked for somebody else so it could work for me, and I wanted to push the boundaries even more because now it would be my business and not somebody else’s,” Sebastien said.

“So I thought, ‘ok, let’s go for it’. I could have done something like a normal patisserie or bakery but I decided to go into that [gluten-free] because there is massive need. And I think all the things that we’ve put up until now are things that people haven’t seen before, so I’m happy with where I’m getting with it.”

Sebastien in the Sebastien Sans Gluten kitchen

Creating an icon

Sebastien is quick to admit it’s not always easy to adapt recipes when working with gluten-free ingredients, and said it goes beyond the knowledge and how you learn from basic pastry.

“It requires you to understand how each ingredient will affect your product in terms of moisture, in terms of dryness, and because the replacement for gluten means you will have different ingredients but they don’t have the same role,” he said.

“At some point you have to play and see what works best until you find the right thing.”

Four years down the track, and it’s clear that Sebastien and his entire team are on the right track, and while it would be easy to focus solely on the stellar products being baked each day – Sebastien notes anything made using puff pastry is his best work – it’s actually the social aspect that Sebastien Sans Gluten provides that he is most proud of.

“Most of the people who come here know that it’s gluten-free, but when people who are coeliac come into the shop with friends [that aren’t gluten-free] or they have meetings and they bring someone here who doesn’t realise it is entirely gluten-free – that’s special,” he said.

“You can have a strawberry tart and think you’re in the best pastry shop without knowing it’s gluten-free and think ‘oh is it gluten-free? For real? No, it can’t be’.”