Casual Creperie on Newbury – Boston

Anything Bostonian with Newbury in its name begs to be avoided. Newbury Street is Boston’s Times Square – a flocking of full-fledged tourists, small-strided sidewalk stoppers, mindless of the New York minute. But all snarky sightseer satire aside, Newbury Street is a delightful distraction for those taking in their first blustery Boston afternoon, and the Creperie is just another stop along the journey to crawl the mall. As a jaded local, I generally avoid Newbury restaurants, but after Dore’s untimely demise, Boston creperies have been about as common as people who keep their eyes on the ground in Times Square.

For starters, unlike pretty much everything on Newbury, the Creperie is reasonably priced. If you bought the groupon like I did, make sure to bring a friend. If you have no friends, I recommend fasting for a couple days.

The list of savory crepes looks quite catchy, but we were craving the sweet so we only tried the Provencale. I expected a heavily creamy goat-cheese-loaded luxury, but the red pepper, fresh tomato, and dash of olive added a surprising lightness. Not a bad stop along the shopping trail – if you’re trying to exercise your cardswipe arm before and after you eat, crepes like this one allow you to saunter down the sidewalk afterward, rather than rolling.

The Provencale may have been surprisingly well-executed, but the Crepe Suzette was a disaster. They remembered every last cup of Grand Marnier but they forgot the flambé. Setting it on fire burns off the alcohol, but this one tasted more like a bottle of peroxide.

The Crepe Au Sucre was a standard sandwich of sweetness, props for making the crepe as paperthin as it should be.

La Tropicale is a fun fest of citrus, and coconut sorbet is an awesome topper for anything. Unfortunately, like many things on Newbury, the canned fruit tasted a little too much like touristic license with a scoop of sellout.

The Au Fruits Savages was far better, boasting a berry blaze.

The thing that annoyed me even more than Newbury’s demographics was that the temperature of my food was about as frigid as a New England frost. With the kitchen a mere ten feet from my table, my crepes should have been gooey-hot enough to burn my tongue on the first bite, but they were lukewarm at best. Despite the fridge-tastic food, I remain quite fond of the Creperie on Newbury. Though the crepes are nothing special, this Creperie caters as an ideal a shopping stopover…if you can’t stop on another street.