As soon as I heard about Creme de la Crepes from a friend, I was eager to try it. Crepe restaurants are rare in America, and especially rare in New Jersey. I’m from France and when I was growing up, eating out at a crepe restaurant was the ultimate treat, as common as eating at a great burger place is here. I didn’t expect to find completely traditional crepes at an American restaurant, but I still thought it would be a fun experience. I should have known better, especially considering that even the restaurant’s name had a typo (it should have been Creme de la Crepe).
We walked in to the cavernously empty restaurant with a cute Eiffel Tower theme (lamp posts, coat racks, and black and white pictures from different angles). A friendly waitress greeted us and gave us our menus. There were no traditional crepes in sight, no cheese, egg, or ham options. I decided to get with the program and let go of my sentimental focus on tradition. I ordered the French onion soup and the crepe la chateau (which should have been crepe le chateau) and my husband got the crepe poulet. The onion soup was fine, a bit bland, but perfectly acceptable. The crepe la chateau had a crepe as the base, but that was the last crepe like aspect of the concoction because it was topped by a mountain of mashed potatoes and a large patty of ground chicken and turkey with a creamy mushroom sauce. My husband’s crepe had the same mashed potato base but was topped with a pulled barbecue chicken. The mashed potatoes were buttery and perfectly textured but the meat and sauce were very average and were certainly not worth $20.
The real reason to come to Creme de La Crepes is for the dessert crepes. There is a huge dessert menu including the three basics: sugar and butter, jam, and nutella. They also offer more elaborate desserts including baked apple with caramel and ice cream, sweet mascarpone cheese with an assortment of berries, and honey, bananas and almonds. They also offer a large selection of teas and have an espresso and cappuccino machine.
Creme de la Crepes –
12-56 River Road, Fair Lawn, NJ (201) 791-0005
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Vanessa Druckman aka Chefdruck, is not a chef, as her online name suggests, just a huge food aficionado. She loves to cook and to eat out, and then to write about her experiences. Vanessa is a transplant from the big city and now resides in Northern NJ. She is half-French and spent a big part of her childhood in France, so as a result, there’s no fear of cream and butter for Chefdruck. Read more from Vanessa at: http://www.chefdruck.blogspot.com/ http://www.chefdruckwrites.blogspot.com/
