Paris, France: Visiting Hardware Societe, an Australian cafe in Paris

"I love Paris in the springtime," crooned Frank Sinatra, but he was obviously having a better day than I am.

I arrive at Gare de Lyon railway station in the late morning, having caught a train from Zurich, Switzerland. I'm taking another train to London in a few hours, thus allowing for a leisurely walk and lunch in Paris. Much more fun than hanging around airports.

Or so I think. I plan to take a surburban RER train to Gare du Nord, my point of departure to London and where I will leave my luggage, but an electrical fault delays services and when I finally reach the left luggage room at Gare du Nord it's a shambles, complete with broken change machines. Then it starts raining. Not so much in a Gene Kelly singing-in-the-rain way, more as an icy unrelenting drizzle. So I ditch my pretensions of being a flaneur, strolling the Parisian boulevards, and hail an Uber to take me to Montmartre.

It drops me off near Sacre Coeur, the beautiful church which crowns the neighbourhood famed for its artistic heritage. It's a harmonious and elegant structure with its white domes and arches, and is understandably a tourist drawcard. Miraculously the rain clears and the pale stone exterior of the church gleams in sunlight, aloof from the tourist circus at the foot of its steps which includes buskers, living statues and a motorised "tourist train" weaving through sightseers.

Walking beneath the eastern flank of the church along rue Lamarck, I get to where I am heading: Hardware Societe Paris, the local branch of a popular Melbourne CBD cafe. I've long been fascinated by the spread of Australian-style cafes around the world, and I'm curious to see how this example fits into its Parisian milieu.

The exterior is classic Paris – a chic black-hued shopfront with a couple of pavement tables. Inside it's tres australien with its colourful decor and dangling lamps, an identity accentuated by a waiter from Sydney with whom I place my order. The savoury mille-feuille with sesame-crusted seared tuna is excellent, with beautifully judged flavours and a dash of the New World in the form of avocado.

While I eye off a large lamington in a glass cabinet, which I hear a waiter describe to a bemused French customer as "an Australian cake", head chef Jess Keane joins me. I'm curious to learn how this distant outpost of Aussie cuisine came to be.