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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Crepes 'n Crepes: The Theory of Simplicity

My argument: plain doesn’t preclude packing with flavor.

It reminds me of a high school classmate’s overly done yearbook quote –compliments to Einstein, “simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Exhibit A:
On a roomy flight back to VT, I sit a seat over from the once chef to Jacob Javits (former Senator of New York).  We discuss cooking; he props his elbow on the armrest, leans in toward me, and with an air of gravity –as if he’s about to divulge the arcane whereabouts of the lost Arc –says, “The secret is that there isn’t a secret –you just have to use quality ingredients…really, you only have to use a lot of spices if you’re covering up shitty ingredients.  It’s that simple.”  His grey hair weaved with a slow southern drawl (sans southern accent) all sketched a halo of wisdom around his wizened visage –I take his words at face value. 

And like the crepe, the idea of ‘cover up’ is an easy one to grasp: when quality ingredients are used, there’s nothing to hide. Take milk chocolate for example –without being force-fed sugar, have you ever wondered how the low-grade cocoa would fare?  Pas très bien.

Soft and flimsy: pliant and resilient, the brindled coat (a choice of either buckwheat or whole) blankets the inner beauty of my smoked Salmon doused in a velvety lemon sauce (‘Saumon Fume Avec Sauce Au Citron,’ it’s called); in a sense, it has nothing to cover up.  Nor does the Crepe de Camembert (a creamy surface-ripened cheese made from cow’s milk) or the Crepe de Roquefort –made specifically from the red Lacaune ewe (a type of mature female sheep) because Crepes ‘n Crepes –a restaurant tucked into Cherry Creek North (two years ago they opened the doors at another location in Writers Square) –imports each of these cheeses from France.  Although the original techniques of cultivating Camembert have aged (when the Norman village first presented it to Napoleon, the cheese was ripened strictly from unpasteurized milk –modern cheesemakers, however, tend to use pasteurized milk for safety reasons), Roquefort still maintains strict regulations.  Unlike Camembert, any cheese bearing the label Roquefort must naturally mature for a minimum of four months in the caves of this French village in the Midi-Pyrénées –a rule that has held since legislated by King Charles VI in 1411.

And sometimes, with these rare and ripened ingredients, the tastiest of dishes can be whipped up in the flattest of things, fraught with flavor and simplicity.

I use flat in the literal sense because the largesse of crepes leaves a lot of room for taste; coincidentally, the restaurant demonstrates that French cuisine can also cater kindly to the heart.  And as the crepe is brimmed, buckled, and baked all within minutes, in its upcoming edition, the OED might have to redefine fast food.

But French and fast food don’t go hand in hand.  To quell any notions that this restaurant isn’t fully French, tout au contraire, I ask that you peruse the walls sponged in a musty cumin, matting the plentitude of imported French prints; gander at the table cloths shipped from the Southern French region of Provence; order a beer, French is all they have –between the Kronenberg and 1664, I opt for the latter…honestly, get your beer somewhere else, France is known for its food and wine not its beer and in this case, it’s a pity that the eatery maintains France fidelity.  It’s also a pity that the barmy Belgian beverage never trickled down to its Southern neighbor.  And of course, a list of French wines is available (it can be viewed on their website: crepesncrepes.com).  And if all that hasn’t quenched your skepticism, have a conversation with the French owner Alain Veratti and his wife, Kathy.

As you leave, a waitress might holler, “bon soir,” in a seemingly pinchbeck manner.  Accept it as an effort at milieu and not as a basis to impugn the pukka of this French dinette.  “Au revoir,” I reply as I scoot outside into the celestial streetlights of Cherry Creek.  In the end, the only thing you will find lacking in a “Euro” feel is the comity.

CnC (for brevity’s sake, adopting as acronym) is a place where the utility of hand supplants the sharpness of knife and –well…you can probably pitch the fork; where the frills of finger food connote something more filling than foofaraw manhandled by the cook; where the freedom to fiddle with your own food trumps tawdry décor.

And that, commingled with the helter-skelter of happy hour hunters (at $4/crepe it’s understandable) are the only attributes uncivilized about this creperie.  Strike that: if you’re Mormon, the armoire of alcohol –the restaurant touts a full bar –behind the counter might also tally a foul ball.

But the full bar is just another example of where choice abounds: two others are the menu –albeit penned excessively in French, subtitled in English –and the choice of seating.  The restaurant solicits nearly forty crepes, two soups (a soup de jour and a four season French onion), and three salad plates.  You can sit in the main dining area, the sun room, or at the counter (as children freckle the stools, it can’t really be called a bar) where you can watch your crepe come to fruition on one of four French imported iron griddles.  And I haven’t even brushed on the creperie’s caffeinated beverages, all of which seem to receive warm praise.  But I wouldn’t dare to call it a coffee shop because it’s so much more and such titles connote a hungover hangout; in the end, it’s not that you couldn’t bring a girl here the morning after, it’s just that you could’ve brought her here the night before as well.

I continue with my smoked salmon dish.  It tastes delicious: the marriage of salmon with thickened sauce brightened by the zest of lemon is astutely rich and flavorful, chewy, moist, and crunchless  –the smokiness adds a savory and complimentary component.  The nuttiness of the buckwheat catches the lacquer but somehow evades sogginess.  Satisfying?  Indeed, it challenges me; in size, it falls somewhere between Apollo Anton Ohno’s quad and his calf.

But when weeks later, I return to CnC –this time for happy hour –it seems like a prejudice slighted at money savers: the bolster that once tautly bundled the contents, appears loose and flaccid; the ratatouille I order, avec roasted eggplant, oignon, zucchini, red pepper et tomates, is good no doubt, it’s just that it’s served in such dinky proportions.  The Gourmet Cookbook assembled by Ruth Reichl, former food writer for the New York Times, contains the best recipe I have found for ratatouille.  In the recipe, each vegetable is chopped and sautéed separately infusing the final dish with a lasting marriage of interdependence.  CnC’s ratatouille is not that; instead, it’s most likely ingredients, albeit fresh, wokked together.  The second crepe I order, the Spinach and Feta, comes in the same minimalist fashion. 

Two jars infallibly accompany all crepes: pesto and a roasted red pepper purée –with eggplant –from Bulgaria.  The pesto, processed in the restaurant, consists of pecans, basil, and olive oil.  A side note: it’s not to say that even after the completion of my crepe, I don’t clandestinely ferry copious amounts of the substance onto my plate, it’s just redolent of an ill-fitting friend that you bring along anyway.  Had I ordered the Margarita (romaine tomatoes, bacon, and buffalo mozzarella) or the Crepe de Chevre, or any other fromage dish, it might not have lacked such purpose.  On the flip side, the pepper purée nicely compliments each of my crepes. 

The Fraises Avec Nutella (fancy way of saying strawberries with a hazelnut spread) leaves even the most devout savourist drooling and satisfies the sweetest of teeth.  The Nutella is slathered not skimped but in my Utopia, that too would’ve come in a jar. 

And that wraps up my meal but a few final words.  It is not unknown for celebrities –oddly enough, specifically basketball players –to pay a visit.  I am told that the French player, Johan Petro, left minutes before my arrival (which makes me wonder whether the economy is that bad that a Nugget’s player has to come to Crepes ‘n Crepes during happy hour).  Last year, Josh Smith, forward to the Atlanta Hawks made a cameo.  It suggests that although the hoopla of crepes may fade, the restaurant will outlive the fad –the upscale location approaches it’s sixth year since birth; pointedly, because these crepes aren’t potboiled –they are truly French.

When boiled down, French cooking stirs some age-old sediments: whether saturated fat should be sacrificed for health or whether taste transcends.  But to be candid –at this Provençal infused eatery –‘it’s the best of both worlds,’ where the crossroads of savory and sweet coexist –where you can have your crepe and eat it too.  All of this would leave even Candide an optimist and Pangloss uncontrollably salivating like Pavlov’s pooches. 


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