It is a restaurant that oozes French chic. Set on the sixth floor of the Pompidou Centre, it has views of the Parisian skyline and celebrity diners.

Georges, however, has recently become the setting for an unlikely protest movement: chefs, assistant cooks, waiters and plongeurs — dishwashers — have gathered in a corner of the establishment to highlight their plight and that of thousands of others like them. All are illegal immigrants who have no official right to remain in France — but without them the vegetables would go un-chopped, the meat un-fried and the dishes unwashed.

They are asking the Government to recognise their contribution to French culture and provide them with papers entitling them to stay without fear of expulsion.

“French cuisine is famous throughout the world,” said Mamadou, 36, from Senegal. “But without the Africans, the Sri Lankans and the Asians, there would be no one to cook it. It just wouldn’t exist.” He is among an estimated 4,700 illegal immigrants across the country — including 1,500 in the restaurant trade — who have gone on strike to back their demand for une carte de séjour, the French equivalent of the Green Card. Most are simply staying at home in the hope that their absence will cause disarray for owners and diners, but Mamadou, an assistant chef in a Parisian bistrot, has joined the protest at Georges, which belongs to the prestigious Costes restaurant group.

Since October 23, he and the other demonstrators have camped, 24 hours a day, around the restaurant’s stylish bar, slouched on pink plastic sofas amid red flags.

Some while away the time playing table football as waitresses squeeze past carrying their plates of expensive food. There has been no attempt to dislodge them since Costes came to an agreement with the union that they could stay in Georges so long as protests did not spread to its other establishments.

The well-heeled diners tend to look away as they enter. “They don’t like to see who’s behind the stoves,” said Dramane, 38, from Mali.There are exceptions. “What are you guys doing here?” said Jamie Davis, the American jazz singer who was in Paris before performing at Ronnie Scott’s in London this weekend. “Damn right,” he exclaimed, when told of the protest. “It’s like the Mexicans back home.”

Dramane said that such support was heartwarming. “I’ve been in France for nine years and I’ve worked all that time. I pay my taxes and social security just like any Frenchman. But every time I go out, it’s with fear in my stomach, because I could be arrested.”

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