Gourmet Crepe Xpress Cafe – Los Angeles

I really hate the name of this place. Express with an X can X out the respectability of any establishment and turn it into the restaurant cousin of a dive bar or a white-washed Panda Express for crepes. Sure, the crepes are standard street food, but nothing should be named Express unless it’s a clothing store with great graphic tees. 

Seriously, no place with barrel-based tables this cute should start with an X. I’m crossing myself at the blasphemy.

I loved the casual-chic tables, so how could a Tres-Chic Crepe go wrong? The crepe is a thicker pancake with a hint of savory buckwheat stuffed with a salty smoked salmon and a cascade of capers. The scattered green onion keeps it light. Nice but just a standard salmon crepe. 

The Tres-Chic was filling, but I wasn’t quite ready to say A Bientot to the savory crepes just yet. The fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil end this crepe on a lighter note while the pesto and pine nuts keep it from getting bland. I was satisfied, but I wasn't all that pleased.

There are worse ways to start the day than with these crepes, but there are no better ways than with a classic Cappuccino. I don’t know if it’s the frothy foam or the pretty cup it comes in, but if you need a to remember you’re in a French café, make sure you have some Xpress-o with your breakfast at Xpress.

The crepes were light enough that there was a little room for both coffee and dessert. The Déjà vu Crepe’s nutty nutella is the perfect pairing with espresso and a great way to end your experience at Xpress. And it's a nice experience overall, but the crepes are just too generic to pick this place over others.

Boring Blue Daisy Café – Santa Monica

When we think of all things organic, we think of things that are free, natural, made by mother nature, the most meticulous artist of them all. Our minds zoom to all things zealously zen, and sometimes we even slip into something slightly spiritual.

Organic is awesome in its purest definition. After all, who doesn’t want something down-to-earth, of the earth, and from the earth? But sometimes, at granola grub-hubs like Blue Daisy Café, organic tries too hard.

The Organic Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon tried so hard to be down-to-earth that it became as plain as dirt. The eggs are fluffy and fresh, but there was nothing natural about the salmon. I recently learned that some indigenous New Zealand tribes used salt as a currency, and I wonder how they'd feel if they knew that Blue Daisy Café had squandered their entire GDP in a slab of salmon. I assume this salmon was hot smoked because I've never had smoked salmon cooked, but judging by the complete lack of smoked taste, I honestly think they drowned it in salt to cover up forgetting the smoke.

The Salmon Crepe is the eggs with salmon for people who are lazy. Exact same thing except they wrap the crepe around the food for you so it spares you the effort of trying to intersperse it between bites. I have to say, this soft, light-yet-chewy, slightly sweet crepe was the best crepe I’ve ever had in my life.

I hadn’t expected the crepe to be so perfect because the it was the zucchini hash browns that had diners Yelping with pleasure. Well either everyone who raved about them slipped something special into their coffee that morning or the fryer is on the fritz. The hash browns were loaded with oil and very little flavor, and I wouldn't have known they contained zucchini if not for the few flecks of green.

Horrible hash browns and salty salmon aside, there’s no doubt organic foods taste better and Blue Daisy Café did nothing to dissuade me of that. It’s just that sometimes people try so hard to be purely natural they just end up being boring. Considering I only tried one thing in two different forms, I can’t speak for the rest of the menu, which is quite extensive, but I can say it did look all that innovative or exciting. And that’s okay too, but I can make organic eggs and less salty salmon at home. But I would come for a take-out stack of crepes on the side.

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. 

J’adore Dore Creperie - Boston

There is a god, and I think he may be French. Or at least a Francophile. Maybe he’s an Asian Francophile? That would rock my world…Either way, he’s smiling on the Francophiles in Boston because there’s a new accessible creperie in the Financial District and it’s actually good. Tragically, it’s only open on weekdays and only for lunch. WHY?!?! Sniffsniff…

The smartest thing I did after a grueling psych exam (which drove me crazy) was to go to Dore with my equally omnivorous friend. Why, you ask? Because crepes, no matter what size, are very amenable to being cut in half. And though my life would have been complete after just one crepe, who the heck turns down a ménage a trois?

Apples and Brie: We started savory with the Apples and Brie, and you gotta love the gaggle of Granny Smiths. Besides, apples are good for you! They have fiber and they keep the doctor away! Though I guess that didn’t really work since two aspiring MDs were munching away…Regardless, I just kept telling myself I needed the fiber because they definitely didn’t skimp on that gooey melted brie…but that’s calcium for bone density, right?

Figgy Smalls: Alas, what is in a name? Not much accuracy if that’s what you ordered. There is nothing small about the flavor in this sweet but salty, grainy but creamy prosciutto, goat cheese, and fig concoction. Maybe the name was dead on? They DID manage to cram a little bit of a lot into a “small” crepe…

Bananas Foster: Here is where I almost popped the button off my jeans. But that’s ok. Because I’m 5 short minutes from Downtown Crossing where I could buy new pants. So clearly that didn’t stop me from “crepe”ing forward. Every good savory crepe will foster your craving for a sweet finish. So I found my reprieve in the warm, cinnamon-sugar gooeyness of the Bananas Foster, which, believe me, will also foster your desire to take daily trips to Dore.

The best part, yes, this actually gets better, is that each crepe is a meal in itself, and the prices are so reasonable there’s no reason to not go daily. That being said, is anyone in the financial district in need of a useless med student? Will work for crepes…