Season 1 : Eating Europe
Episode 2
29 Minutes – France
In this second episode of the podcast we are talking about crepes and Galettes. I’ll talk about some of the crepes I’ve eaten in the past and why a creperie is a great option for the budget conscious traveller.
The crêperie in La Rochelle is Krep’ des tours (no website)
The crêperie chain Mamie Bigoude
The crêperie chain Breizh Café
Transcript of the European Compass : a food and travel podcast : Episode 2
The crêperie in the castle
There was a crêperie we used to go to when the girls were little. It was in an old ruined castle called the Chateau de La Citardière, and there was a crêperie inside. I still dream of that crêperie. It did the most amazing galettes with stewed apple and boudin noir, which is black pudding. Then they had a sweet crêpe with their homemade caramel beurre salé, and I’ve never found anywhere that did it quite as well since. And I’ve been looking. Believe me, I’ve been looking.
Welcome to Eating Europe
Welcome to Eating Europe, the podcast where we explore the heart of Europe through its food, its markets, and the stories behind every dish. I’m your host, Julia Doust, and if you’ve ever planned a trip around a meal, you’re in the right place.
What is a crêperie?
Today we’re talking crêpes. Crêpes, galettes, pancakes. But we’re sticking to French crêperies. So a crêperie is a restaurant that serves crêpes. This isn’t a pancake house. It really isn’t a pancake house. A crêperie is almost always a traditional Brittany-style crêpe restaurant, where they actually serve sweet and savoury crêpes. But generally, the savoury crêpes you’ll find won’t be crêpes, they’ll be what’s called galette, galette Bretonne.
The difference between that and a crêpe is that a galette is made with buckwheat flour, which in French is called sarrasin or blé noir, so black wheat. This isn’t a wheat at all. It’s not a wheat, it’s not a cereal, it’s not a grass. Buckwheat is actually more closely related to the rhubarb family. It’s not at all anything to do with cereal, and it grows in places that have particularly poor soil. I think it originally came from China, and it’s spread across. They grow it in Poland, they grow it in Russia. It’s what they use to make the traditional blinis out of in Russia, and they grow it in Brittany, in the north-west corner of France.
Why Brittany is full of crêperies
It became the traditional dish from that area and has now spread, and crêperies, you’ll find them across France. They’re ubiquitous. Every town, every city has a crêperie, or dozens of crêperies for the big cities. About half the crêperies in France are in Brittany. They are still in Brittany, so in Brittany, if you go to a town in there, then every other restaurant is a crêperie.
A budget-friendly French meal
A crêperie is a great place to go if you’re travelling in France, and particularly if you’re on a bit of a budget. Crêperies are great because you can eat really quite reasonably. You’re talking something like €15 will get you a main course, dessert, and a drink kind of prices, maybe a little bit more in Paris, but those sort of prices.
The galette menu
In general, the menus are split. You’ll have your galettes, which are your savouries, and there’s a fairly standard routine to these menus. You’ll have your galette with butter, which I don’t think anyone ever orders, to be honest. It’s not like a crêpe. A crêpe with butter is something delightful, something lovely. A galette with butter, maybe not. The galette really is a foil. It’s something that you use to support other flavours.
More normally you’ll have a cheese galette, a ham galette, a ham and egg galette, a ham and cheese galette. I have something called a complete nearly always, which is ham, cheese, and egg. Then each restaurant will have its specialities. There’s usually something with mushrooms. There’s quite often something with andouillette, which is a tripe sausage, not my favourite but very traditional. There’s almost always something with salmon or smoked salmon or some sort of seafood. Quite often you see coquilles Saint-Jacques, so that’s scallops.
Prices obviously vary, but the basic ham and cheese can be of the order of five or six euros. A complete might be eight to ten euros, and then the specialities are a little bit more expensive, sort of twelve to fourteen euros depending on what the filling is. Sometimes served with salad, sometimes not.
What a menu means in France
Quite often, crêperies will do a menu. Now, when they say a menu, it’s not what we mean by a menu in English. In France, that’s a carte. A menu is actually a fixed formula, where you get main course, dessert, and a drink, or starter, main course, dessert. That will be what a menu is. So if they say what’s the menu of the day, it’s the fixed offering for the day.
Quite often in a crêperie you’ll have a menu which will be a galette complete, maybe one of their specialities as an alternative, and then a dessert crêpe, perhaps Nutella or caramel beurre salé, and then you get a drink included.
Cider in a bowl
One of the particularities about crêperies, which I found quite surprising when I first came to France, is that the traditional drink is cider. That’s not what’s surprising. I like cider, I’m quite happy with that. Brittany and the north coast of France in general have a lot of apples and orchards, so cider is traditional, and there’s a bit of a competition between Brittany and Normandy as to who makes the best cider.
But when you go into a crêperie, the cider isn’t served in a glass. In a pub in the north of England, I’d order a pint of cider in a pint glass. In a crêperie, cider is served in a big earthenware teacup called a bollée. That’s what you get your cider served in. Quite often they’ll serve beer. You can get wine, but it’s much more normal to be served cider.
Sweet crêpes
Then you have the crêpe part of the menu. The galettes are made with buckwheat, and the crêpes are made with what they call froment, which is just flour from a soft wheat, more akin to all-purpose flour. The classic recipe is flour and liquid, normally milk, sometimes beer, melted butter, and egg. Crêpes are not necessarily as low fat as you might think. You have melted butter and egg in there. Quite often you’ll have rum added as well.
Sometimes people say their crêpes don’t taste like the ones in a crêperie. It’s possibly because they’ve added rum and you haven’t.
The classics are butter, butter and sugar, butter and sugar with lemon juice, which is one of my favourites. You’ll almost always have Nutella, or sometimes a homemade chocolate sauce, and then caramel beurre salé, this delicious mix of caramel and salted butter. Brittany uses a lot of butter, and you can get fleur de sel from the region as well. You get this unctuous mix of delightfulness that you put over a crêpe. Absolutely gorgeous.
You can also get fruit: stewed apples, pears with chocolate, banana, often mixed with Nutella. Some crêperies do particularly good whipped cream. Sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference in a restaurant.
La Chandeleur
They even have a special day for crêpes in France called La Chandeleur. This isn’t the same as Pancake Day in the UK. Pancake Day is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. La Chandeleur is the second of February, fixed in the church calendar. It marks Candlemas, when the baby Christ was presented at the temple.
The story goes that in 1472, Pope Gelasius was receiving French pilgrims who had gone to Rome for Candlemas, and instead of the sacred bread, he gave them crêpes. So it became the tradition that you eat crêpes on February 2nd for La Chandeleur.
Everyday food and Crepes Suzette
But crêpes aren’t just eaten then. They’re eaten all year round. They’re not breakfast food. They’re afternoon, evening, lunch, or snack food. A British pancake is more like a crêpe, but not quite as thin, not as crispy at the edges. It’s the same mix as Yorkshire pudding, you just cook it differently.
Crêpes are common food. You see crêpe stands at every fair, every festival. Quite often it’s sweet crêpes rather than galettes, because they’re easier to carry around. They’re everywhere.
Crepes Suzette, on the other hand, are haute cuisine. You make the crêpes as normal, then melt butter and sugar, add Grand Marnier, put the crêpes back in, fold them up, and traditionally flambé them. The story goes that it was accidentally set on fire while being served to the future King Edward, and he loved it. It was named after a lady at the table called Suzette.
Back to my galette
That’s the gourmet side of crêpes. But it’s spectacle. It’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking to go back to my castle, the Chateau de La Citardière, and have a galette where the edges crisp up into a lacy edge and are folded in four, leaving a little square in the middle where you can see the egg yolk if there is one.
I had a very good galette the other day in La Rochelle. I had a forestière with tiny lardons and mushrooms cooked in a cream sauce, possibly with a little apple and onion. It was sweet and savoury, very good. But still not my boudin noir.
Chains and recommendations
Crêperies are almost always individual restaurants. They’re not generally chain restaurants. But there are two exceptions. One is Mamie Bigoude, a growing chain in the west of France with retro decor. The other is the Breizh Café in Paris. Breizh means Brittany in Breton. They now have multiple cafés in Paris and even in Japan.
If you’re in Paris, it’s a good recommendation. If you want traditional food without a traditional budget, or something quick while sightseeing, a galette and a crêpe come quickly. When we ate in La Rochelle the other day, we were in and out within three quarters of an hour.
It’s also good for kids. Even if they’re not keen on the mains, you can usually persuade a child to eat some Nutella with a crêpe.
Final tip
So that’s my top tip for the day. Eat in a crêperie. Go and find one and eat in one. If you’ve eaten in a particularly good one, let me know. I’m always up for recommendations. And if you find a crêperie that does boudin noir with apples, let me know if it’s any good, because I’m looking for it.
Thanks for joining me on Eating Europe. If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it with a fellow food traveller and don’t forget to subscribe for some more delicious adventures. Until next time, bon appétit and happy travels.